Non-Fiction – Page 6 – Philadelphia Stories

A Neighbor Like David

I live across the street from a forty-year-old man with Down syndrome. Every morning, a bus takes him to—well, until this winter, I didn’t know where the bus took him. I knew only that his name was David (same as my dad’s), that he lived with his parents (as I did), and that the insignia on his hats and jackets marked him as a sports fan. We regularly said hello from our respective curbs, but that was about it.

As usual, one morning in December, when my mom and I were leaving for work, David stood across the street, waiting for his bus, his construction worker-style lunchbox at his feet. He smiled and waved at every car that passed—his routine. “Hi, Dave!” he called when he saw us. Dad was out of sight, waiting in the car. But my mother and I brightened to realize our neighbor had expanded “Dave” into an all-purpose name for our family.

“Hi, David!” we called back.

“I love you!” he shouted, still waving.

There is nothing like a spontaneous declaration of love to start your day. I want to say “I love you” all the time—to the security guard who tells me stories about her son, to the waiter who accommodates my food allergies, to the homeless girl and her kitten on the corner near my office in Center City. People would think me odd, though, so I don’t. Here was a man uninhibited by the conventions that limit the rest of us. Tears came into my mom’s eyes, and mine.

Growing up in South Jersey, my best friend’s sister Alexa had Downs, but she couldn’t be left alone or feed herself, and the sounds that came out of her mouth weren’t so much words as repeated syllables. I used to look into her eyes and wonder what she was trying to tell us. When I was five and Alexa three, I said to her mother, “When Alexa learns to talk—” and she corrected me: “If Alexa learns to talk.” Alexa didn’t learn, though as a teenager she used to sneak away to listen to Power 99 FM. Emotions would play over Alexa’s face, but she couldn’t articulate them, and I limited my words to her even though, at the time, I practically lived at her house. That morning when David declared his love felt like the breakthrough that Alexa and I had never had.

A few weeks later, in January, Mom was taking a sick day from work when David appeared at the front door with a piece of paper in hand. He had written “DAVID” in block caps on the top line—denoting himself or my dad, we weren’t sure—with his phone number in the middle line, and on the bottom, “7:30 PM.” He was inviting us for dinner, he said, to see their Christmas tree.

“What day?” Mom asked.

“Oh. Um, tomorrow.”

Mom grabbed an amaryllis plant and a holiday card and scrawled our phone number on it, asking him to bring the gift to his mother, Dorothy, whom we’d never formally met. Not long after he left, Dorothy called to say thank you. Mom asked if she knew her son had invited us over for dinner.

“No! Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” Dorothy said. “This happens all the time at our Shore house. Every summer on his birthday, David invites the lifeguards over without telling us.”

But that Saturday, David got his wish. His parents called back and officially invited us, along with our next-door neighbors. Ambling downstairs in athletic shorts, David gave handshakes all around, introducing himself as “the manager.” We saw the Christmas tree that was still up and followed him to his “office,” a den with an entertainment center in the corner and a calendar on the coffee table. “SmackDown, SmackDown, SmackDown,” he said as he ran his finger down each Friday on the calendar, talking me through his hand-written schedule of wrestling TV shows. We looked at his Special Olympics medals on the wall. That’s when we learned that the bus takes him to his job at an abilities center, where he lifts boxes like a pro. As we left, David’s father told us to look in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday for an article about David’s athletic accomplishments.

At work the next week, we looked up David online. There on the screen was a picture of our neighbor gripping a barbell. We beamed at the video of him power-lifting at the gym. I appreciated the quote from his mother: “He’s such a good-natured fellow.” But in the next paragraph, the writer claimed, “Although he is unable to read or write…”

Not so, I thought, and I had proof in the form of an invitation David wrote without his parents knowing. Had the article come out just a few weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have known the truth; it would have been like reading about a stranger. But as it happened, our neighbor had invited us into his life. Once he did, his early morning waves and smiles became my wake-up call. These days, when I get to work, I may not say “I love you” to the security guards who greet me with smiles–I’m not up to David’s level yet–but he convinced me that it makes a difference to grin back and at least think those three little words.

Not long ago, I saw David trudging through a snowstorm to his bus. While wind pelted flakes at his face, he carried two large recycling bins, his lunchbox, and a tall water bottle—all at once. His weightlifting had paid off. David was also engaged in another form of strength training: Every day, he exercises his bravery by operating in a world that doesn’t often celebrate differences. Articulating our love may be something the rest of us wrestle with, but this guy says what he means.

Elizabeth A. Larsson grew up in New Jersey, now works in Philadelphia, and spent most of the interim living up and down the East Coast. Her writing has appeared in New Moon Girls magazine’s series of advice books and Cicada, among other places. She keeps David’s hand-written invitation on her bulletin board.

A Broken Arm, a Mended Heart

From the get-go I thought, “this guy is dangerous.” By day, Kris was the web geek at the first magazine I worked for. But in his free time, he was an adrenaline junkie. He climbed 14,000-foot-tall mountains, skateboarded in empty swimming pools and, on a fat-tired bicycle, careened down steep, rocky hillsides. Each Monday, he arrived at work with a new bruise or glistening red wound from the weekend’s folly.

One winter, he took a six-week sabbatical from work so that he could bike across Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the oldest, deepest lake in the world. Of course, in winter, it’s not really a lake at all, but a 400-mile-long swath of ice sandwiched between jagged rocks. On his list of gear to pack were studded bicycle tires, a sleeping bag rated to -40F, and a screwdriver in case the ice broke and he fell into the churning, subfreezing water (he’d use the screwdriver to claw his way out). Another time, he nearly plunged 1,500 vertical feet off the face of Oregon’s Mount Hood. By luck — or divine intervention — the tip of his mountaineer’s axe caught in a fissure of ice and stopped him mid-slide. He went on to summit the mountain, triumphant.

Kris was also dangerous in the sense that he was fiercely attractive. At the office, he fastened his long, wild, curly hair into a ponytail. He wore short-sleeved button-down shirts that complemented his broad shoulders and climber’s biceps. Behind his glasses shone ocean blue eyes that could slice through your soul.

Adventure was his lifeblood. He had grown up a free-range kid on 300 acres in central Wisconsin, where he’d learned to hunt, climb and ice fish. He loved the cold, and insisted he’d teach me – a timid girl from Atlanta – how to snowboard. One January night, after he hosted a happy hour for several coworkers, I lingered. He set me up with boots that were two sizes too big, strapped me to the waxed fiberglass board, gave me a few pointers, and nudged me down the hill behind his apartment building. I thought snowboarding was easy and fun…until we got to the real slope in Vermont a few days later. During my inaugural run on the bunny hill, I tumbled and broke my arm.

That was our first date.

I could have cut my losses and walked away right then. Bones heal, after all. I wasn’t so sure about my heart.

Avoiding pain had been my personal mission since I was five. My childhood home was dominated by brokenness and heartache, beginning in the early 1970s with my older brother, who was born severely developmentally disabled. He had seizures and threw violent fits and had to be monitored around the clock. My brother couldn’t help who he was, but that didn’t stop my parents from grieving. Back then, having a disabled child was a disease, and my parents didn’t have a cure. They had me, and later, a “normal” son. But we weren’t enough. Dashed hopes had already metastasized into resentment, lies and fury.

Dad eventually moved out.

After that, my mother was on a quest to fill the emptiness in her heart and beat back the depression that was engulfing her (and us). The men she pursued – some married, others womanizers – had no interest in the mother-of-three package deal, especially when it included a special needs kid. Even so young, I knew there was no way for these relationships to end well. My role was to keep the peace, to buffer her pain by shouldering some of the parenting load while she disappeared into the night. When she collapsed on the bathroom floor sobbing after yet another breakup, I was also her therapist. I told her what she wanted to hear, that everything would be all right, that her Prince Charming was still out there, somewhere. Meanwhile, I vowed never to follow in her footsteps. I resolved not to treat my heart so recklessly.

When it came time for me to date, I chose buttoned-up, glowing Southern boys who vowed to keep me chaste until our wedding day. What these conservative gents lacked in passion and adventure, they made up for in piety. I was allured by how steadfast they were as much as by their stable, two-parent upbringings. In so many ways, I was still five years old and pining for a whole and happy family.

When the relationships ended (never dramatically, but more with a cartoonish wah wah wah of unreturned phone calls or it’s not you, it’s me), I was sad, but not heartbroken. A heart can’t break when it’s shuttered away. I was so determined to live in opposition to my mother that I discounted the most important element of romance: attraction.

Now here was Kris. I couldn’t get enough of him, and it terrified me. His voice was infused with passion and kindness and a yearning for life, and I just wanted to be around him and hear him speak more. In the beginning, that’s all we did. We talked, sometimes until three in the morning, sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep with the heat cranked and my legs sweating. Or sprawled on the futon in my apartment after cooking elaborate, messy dinners together – me with my one good arm. We discussed books and travel and movies and music and all that we dreamed of doing, of being.

For all his risk taking, it was weeks before Kris ventured to kiss me. He waited until my arm had healed and we could properly embrace. The moment was like throwing gasoline on a smoldering coal.

It wasn’t long before I started joining him on adventures. We flew to London on a whim one weekend because an airline was selling round-trip tickets for $199. He’d seen the advertisement and said, “I’ve never been. Wanna go?” His optimism and spontaneity were infectious. We went camping in three feet of snow just for the hell of it, and stayed up all night, cocooned in our down sleeping bags. The stars were so thick against the black winter sky, like nothing I’d ever seen before. I gazed up and saw for the first time a future that didn’t have to be defined by my past.

Eventually, we moved into a 150-year-old farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania. The house sat on eight acres and was bordered by an organic farm on one side, a tree farm on another, and a Mennonite family farm across the road. Kris continued to chase his next adrenaline fix – scaling mountains, adventure racing, backpacking — but now he had a home base, with me. We loved to bicycle, and from our front door we could piece together 50-mile undulating loops that toured the patchwork quilt of Dutch Country and never once crossed a busy street. On Sunday mornings, we awoke to the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages, our neighbors heading off to church. We bought eggs, bread, and organic produce from the neighboring farms and cultivated our own salsa garden full of tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro.

Kris loved it because it reminded him of where he’d grown up. I loved it because it was the exact opposite of how I’d grown up. He begged me to sleep with the windows open. His body craved the smell of grass, trees, dirt. But I resisted. My childhood home had been burglarized several times, once in the middle of the night while we were home, cowering under our beds.

“Don’t you know I’ll protect you, city girl?” he asked me with a warm smile as he slid open the rickety old windows and let the cool breeze pour in. I looked into his face, so genuine and loving, and knew he’d do anything to keep me safe. It took a while, but I leaned into this man, and I began to see that risk does not equal recklessness. He took chances in life, but not with my heart.

Kris likened our relationship to a tandem mountain bike ride on a sinuous trail. A journey not without steep climbs and rocky patches. But the smooth parts? The white-knuckle downhill stretches of trail that make you giddy, that take your breath away? Pure bliss.

So it seemed fitting that one day just as I was descending the rockiest trail I’d ever dared to ride, feeling the panic-thrill that comes from suspending caution and reaping the reward, I found Kris at the bottom of the hill by a mountain stream, down on one knee. He was caked in dirt and grinning ear-to-ear. My knight on a silver bicycle.

“You’ve been my adventure partner, my best friend, my anchor,” he said. “I want you to be my wife.”

My heart pounded from exertion and the realization that he was sincere, that I could have it all – safety, adventure, and passion – for the rest of my life. I peeled the sweaty leather glove off my left hand and let him slip a ring onto my finger.

We rode away and never looked back.

Gina DeMillo Wagner began her career as an editor for Rodale Inc. in Emmaus, Penn. She now writes for magazines including Forbes Travel Guide, Backpacker, Outside, Wired, and Experience Life. Her personal essays have appeared in Role/Reboot, Elephant Journal, Mama Moderne, and more. She is at work on a memoir and lives with her husband Kris and their two children in Arizona.

Letter from the Contest Coordinator

“This story embodies, dramatizes, and transports osmosis and the permeable movement through boundaries and borders formally, in its content, and with its characters. The story is about betwixt and between, and its author handles all of the transgressions, transitions, and transmogrifications with grace and grit.”

The author of the first-place story receives a $2,000 cash prize and publication. Che Yeun will also be honored at an awards dinner, to be held at Rosemont College on Friday, October 11, 2013.

[img_assist|nid=10797|title=Anna|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=75]The second-place winner is Annam Manthiram, who wins for her story ”The Rules of Mending.” Martone says of this story: “I like the ambition here, the sweep of time and place, all figuratively and literally stitched together by the rhetoric of advice and the X-Acto knife of collage.”

You can enjoy both of these winning stories in this issue, thanks to the hard work of our dedicated readers, who evaluated more than 450 stories, our Editorial Director Carla Spataro, who screened the resulting top 50 stories, and our judge, Michael Martone.

I extend my thanks to Christine and Carla for allowing me to serve for another year as Contest Coordinator for a publication that continues to shine the spotlight on rising authors; to every one of our readers who spent their summers reading submissions; to our judge, Michael Martone, for choosing our fabulous winners; and to the McGlinn and Hansma families, who make it all possible year after year—thank you. Cheers also to Marguerite, who brings us together each year to celebrate great writing and the remarkable beauty of the short story.

Nicole Marie Pasquarello-Mancuso
Contest Coordinator

Essay: Ariel in Flames

The fan whirs above our heads. It is strong, but the heat still creeps up our legs as we sit in my room. Ally is sixteen this year. She keeps telling me that I need to treat her like an adult, that I should trust her with the same things I trust Belinda with, we are sisters after all.

She looks at me, begging for something to call her own. A secret that even the almighty Belinda doesn’t know yet. Belinda and I have shared a room and secrets for 19 years; she is only two years younger than me. I dig. I dig deep for something to tell Ally. She has always been so young; I never considered entrusting her with my life. Six years can be a world of difference if you let it.
And I let it. I always thought it would be too difficult to trust both of them. But now, with Belinda gone for the summer, Ally and I have been spending more time together. I want to feel as close to her as I do to Belinda.

The heat is unforgiving. It bangs on the windows outside, reminding us that even in the nighttime we can still sweat.. The fan overhead wobbles from overuse. I’m sweating. Sweat falls in tendrils around my eyes.

My bedroom is full of secrets, most of which Belinda knows. She was a part of most of them. They’re her secrets too. Ally sits on the floor near the door. When she was little, Belinda and I made her sit in the doorway to watch us play pretend. We never let her play. Just watch. From that spot in the doorway. There, but not really there. Somehow she is still on the outside of things.

There, but not really there.

I glance around my room and spot it. The Little Mermaid doll still locked in her plastic prison. I have had that doll since I was thirteen, too old to get a doll as a gift, but too young to realize it. The Ariel doll stares at me, her eyes wide and her hair a fiery mess. I stare back at her. Janine gave me that doll. She handed it to me and said, For my new daughter. I just know we are all going to get along so well. After whispering these words so only I could hear them, Janine walked over to my dad and entwined her fingers into his. A smile crept across her pale face. Her eyes blue as the ocean, blue as Ariel’s, watched me.

The doll is still here; Janine isn’t.

Ally waits. Her legs are crossed and her hands sit in her lap. I clear my throat. The noise sounds awkward as it swims through the thick heat towards Ally.

“Okay, I got one,” I say.

“Well?”

I can tell she is getting impatient. She is not going to sit in my doorway forever, and I don’t blame her.

“See that doll?” I point to Ariel.

“Yep.”

“Janine gave her to me.”

“Why the hell do you still have it?” Ally looks at me, shock and disgust in her eyes. I can hear her thinking, You kept something that nasty woman gave you? The woman who tortured us? The woman who made it a point to hurt us every day?

“Look, I really never thought about it till today. I guess I kept it as a reminder. The day she gave it to me is the day she moved in.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I guess it holds some kind of spell on me. Metaphorically speaking of course.”

I add that last part on fast. The idea of Janine casting a spell on us isn’t so farfetched. For years she kept a shrine in our basement. Pentagrams, candles, strands of people’s hair, knives for sacrifice, and even crystals she claimed healed people’s wounds. Janine didn’t know Belinda and I had found that shrine. Hidden in a cabinet, there but not really there. We didn’t tell anyone until we knew Janine would be out of our lives forever. We were scared that we’d be the next lock of hair, tied neatly in a bow, resting next to the knives.

“It’s been so many years. You haven’t even opened it.”

“I’m afraid.” And there it is; my secret. I’m 22 years old and still scared of Janine.

“Of what?”

“Janine.”

“Me too.”

We sit in silence a while. The heat, choking the words in our throats, makes it hard to talk. Ally stands up and crosses the room. She stops directly in front of Ariel. She grabs the plastic case and holds it towards me.

“Let’s burn her.”

“What?”

“Let’s. Burn. Her.” Ally looks at me, waiting for me to comprehend.

“Al, no…”

“Come on, Jo. It will be our secret.” The emphasis she put on the word our makes me want to burn it. Ally wants to share a secret with me and I want to share one with her. I stand up and search through my purse. It sits dead on my nightstand. I probe it, sliding my fingers across the inside lining until

I feel the smooth, cold plastic of my lighter.

“Okay, don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.” I emphasize the word our just like she did and smile. The idea of setting fire to something Janine gave me makes my stomach flop. It is the kind of flop you get before doing something exciting, but terrifying.

“It will be like we’re burning Janine out of our lives. Like we’re burning her soul.” Ally’s eyes narrow and for a second I’m scared of her, too. “If she even had a soul,” she finishes the thought.

I laugh. I think Ally’s making a joke, but I can see that she truly believes that Janine is at least part-devil. And again, I don’t blame her. Janine shaved off all Ally’s hair when she was nine years old. She told Ally that she was ugly. I tried to stop it, but Janine was more powerful. She’d also cast her spell over my father.

We tip-toe down the hallway. Dad is snoring into his pillows, so we close the door quietly behind us. The night sky is clear, the air heavy. The moon hovers over us as we grab lighter fluid from next to Dad’s grill.

I drop the doll onto the grass. Even in the dark you can see the decaying brownness of the blades, the unforgiving heat. Ally grabs the doll back up and begins to tear her out of the package.

“What are you doing?”

“What she did to me.”

Now I see the scissors poking out of Ally’s back pocket. They glisten in the white moonlight. She grabs Ariel and cuts the doll’s red hair. It falls to the ground in clumps. When she’s done, she throws down the doll. Ariel lands upon her cut off hair as if it is a bed.
I douse the doll in lighter fluid. I see her drown in it. Ally hands me a piece of paper. Janine, is scrawled across it. I light it and the flames start to spread from the bottom corner. I drop the paper onto the doll. We watch ashes float up toward the sky.
The smell of burning plastic surrounds us. We cover our noses, but we don’t move.

Ariel’s face begins to melt. It is barely a face now. No more blue eyes, no more red hair, no more Ariel. The Little Mermaid has drowned in flames that dance around the pool of plastic. Elated at being freed into the night, the flames slither across the lawn, turning brown whatever green grass we had left.

Ally grabs my hand.

She is smiling.

I hug her as the heat of the fire pokes at our legs.

Jorie Rao is a graduate student at Rowan University in the Writing Arts Master’s Program, where she wrote this memoir. The story takes place in her father’s backyard about two years ago. Janine is not her stepmother’s real name.

Liberty

I was Bonnie Blair, the Olympic speed skater. I skated, head down, torso forward, right hand tucked behind my back, left hand gracefully sweeping my long, sloping driveway, back and forth. The rapid steady rhythm of my roller skates hitting the asphalt punctuated the freedom I felt when I skated, the same freedom whenever I played outside, no matter what I did. Freedom from homework, my older sister’s right hook, or my mom’s torturous math drills. As I imagined myself racing against Olympic skaters, my fingertips tingling as I gained speed, I forgot about being the only brown girl at an almost all white school. Instead, I felt the freedom to be me: a sixth-grade girl with unabashed glee sporting a Dorothy Hamill haircut far longer than any Indian girl with coarse curly hair should have. No medals to win, no records to break.

When I didn’t roller skate, I swung on the rope swing that hung from the tulip tree branches that leaned precariously over the road. My friends and I took turns doing stupid stunts, feeling the thrill swell in our bellies as we pushed off the ground and teetered above the street. Or, I rode my yellow banana seat bike on the 2.5-mile loop around my neighborhood, hands-and-helmet-free. As the wind whipped my face and my not-so-white tassels fluttered from the handlebars, free of my little sister’s whining, my thoughts centered on when I would get to ride my older sister’s red-three-speed.

***

The Dorothy Hamill haircut, gone. Roller skates, thrown away. The banana-seat bike, donated. A different kind of freedom flourished in college. Between lectures on Chemistry and Calculus and lounging on dingy sectionals with friends, I searched for an identity, far different from whom I’d been at home and the person my parents wanted me to be. Packs of students shuffled to class, sure of their journeys, while I faltered on my path to becoming a doctor, cherishing literature and composition instead. On sunny days, the outside beckoned me away from homework with the promise that a quick run around the short loop that circled the campus would clear my mind. The exercise offered freedom from decisions about careers, from finicky roommates, and from the nagging fear of spending the rest of my life as a spinster.

***

Newly wed and harboring an insatiable lust for a non-coin-operated washer and dryer, my husband and I settled in a leafy section of Baltimore in a boring cookie-cutter apartment. I didn’t want “old bones,” otherwise known as drafty windows and poor heating. I wanted central air and same-day service for a broken water heater. Among the large trees that shaded the streets of our neighborhood and threatened to uproot the sidewalks with every violent storm, I ran and trained for various races, most often too focused on timing to feel again that long-forgotten freedom. Occasionally, I let go and enjoyed the staccato of running on pavement as I bounded over a curb, feeling free, if only for a minute. Freedom from laminate desks and metal file cabinets, freedom from reams of paper and proofreading, meetings about nothing, management and managing. Freedom from rent and bills.

***

My husband’s new job in Philadelphia prompted a welcome change of scenery. I left my office job for the freedom or fetter of freelance writing. We traded rent for the shackles of a 30-year mortgage and home ownership. Walking or running the path along Kelly Drive-an escape from our tiny twin in East Falls-rendered me member of a sorority of inner-city athletes determined to find recreational release along the Schuylkill. There, between the shadows cast by the bridges that spanned the river, I fought to clear my mind and allow those elusive endorphins to work their magic. Instead, as my feet pounded the pavement, I yearned for freedom. Freedom from the engines roaring along Kelly. Freedom from the “Heard of sharing the path?” and “Don’t bother moving for us!” sarcastic remarks spewed by passing cyclists at every pedestrian. Freedom from mortgage payments. Freedom from paint chips and long lists of repairs. Freedom from months of ovulation calendars, basal thermometer charting, and fertility testing. Freedom from websites of forlorn-looking children in distant lands waiting to be adopted.

***

With a Bjorn baby carrier in front, then a double jogging stroller, and finally, a double jogging stroller and Bjorn, I persisted running or walking on cold days, my baby’s tiny fingers and toes safely bundled from the whistling wind, sippy cups safely stowed in the upright position. On some days, the river’s stench overpowered any thought except how-to-clean-the-house-after-the-last-fort-building-fiasco and the next carefully choreographed tango between music, tumbling, dance, art, or other brain-boosting activities and the sacred naptime. Enviously I watched the rowers moving smoothly along the Schuylkill’s surface, their rhythm belted out by the coxswain. Nothing on my postpartum body moved that smoothly anymore. I pretended I sat cradled in the boat with them, rowing in cadence, marking our movements in unison. Maybe in a boat in the middle of the river, I would feel freedom from the mean mommy cliques, freedom from Fakebook friends’ status updates, freedom from another parenting article about tantrum-free children.

***

My helmet too snug with my ponytail, I bike the streets of Swarthmore with my young sons riding next to me. They negotiate each turn, wobbling without training wheels on uneven sidewalks or sticks in the road, passing the town library and their friends’ houses. My thoughts race from how they will clear the next street, with cars parked on both sides, without snagging a side view mirror, to which of them I should let cross the busy street first while I block oncoming traffic. We have one hour of freedom between soccer practices, play dates, and bouncy birthday parties, but this hour is ours. We climb a hill, then start to coast down, not a car in sight. I take a deep breath and watch my sons relax their hands on their brakes. That old feeling of freedom resurfaces. Their gap-toothed smiles and dimples reveal unabashed glee on their first bike ride with me.

Sonia Elabd grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland and now lives in Swarthmore with her husband and three children. She received her MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and works as a medical writer. Her essays have appeared in several smaller publications and online. She is currently working on a young adult novel.

My Face Before I Was Born

The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.

My father would say that, and my mother would glance at him sideways, and then down, with a smile that suggested she had some kind of secret.

The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.

It was the kind of fact my mother learned from TV quiz shows and wrote down on little slips of paper. I’d find them tucked into the Reader’s Digest or wedged between the cushion and the arm of her nubby blue chair. She had a diploma from a small town high school in the coal regions, and a certificate from a music school in Pottsville. She was a first-rate private secretary and an accomplished violinist, but she did not possess a college degree. She felt that lack all of her life, especially when she met my father, whose master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania must have both impressed and intimidated her.

Who fought in the Battle of Hastings?

Such a question could send my parents into peals of laughter. I looked it up once, in the Encyclopedia Americana that was in a bookcase in the back bedroom. The battle had involved the French and the English. We were Irish and Russian. And it was 900 years ago. Probably nobody we knew had been there.

Once on a family vacation we drove past a sign for a town called Hastings.

"Is that where the battle was fought?" I asked.

"My goodness no!" my father said. "The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066!"

"Everybody knows that," my mother said. She gave my father a poke, and then that smile again.

As I grew up, I would encounter random references to the Battle of Hastings. In history class, the chapter heading “The Battle of Hastings” would elicit in my mind “was fought in 1066” as surely as Dominus vobiscum would call forth et cum spiritu tuo. Studying linguistics, I learned about the importance of the Battle of Hastings in shaping the English language. That the battle was fought in 1066 seemed only to be a side note.

In adulthood, I developed an interest in crewel embroidery, and studied the Bayeux Tapestry. “It depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings,” said a lecturer one night. I finished her sentence under my breath: which was fought in 1066.

My father died in 1985, the day before my parents’ thirty-ninth wedding anniversary. My mother gave away or sold his clothes, his books, their house in Florida, their furniture, and drove their almost new Crown Victoria back to Pennsylvania, where she lived her remaining eight years in the spare bedroom of her sister’s house. It fell to me then to sort and arrange the few things she had kept.

Among them was the wedding snapshot that had always stood on her bureau. It shows my parents on the lawn of the house my mother lived in then, the house I would be carried to nine months later. The train of her white satin gown trails off to the left, and a breeze seems to be lifting the dangling ribbons of her bouquet. Her face is framed by her fingertip veil and the candlelight pearls my father has given her. My father beside her looks not at the camera, but at her.

The silver plate frame that had held it for so many years was bent and corroded, and the glass had cracked long ago. I got a new frame for it, and as I removed the velvet back of the old frame I found, tucked between the photo and the cardboard spacers, a receipt from the Taft Hotel in New York City. It showed that my parents had spent their wedding night and four nights more there.

They had occupied Room 1066.

What face did you have before you were born? a Zen master might ask. I look at this picture and know that I am there. In my mother’s womb on this fine June morning the egg that is half of me waits, and somewhere in my father the other half waits too.

The Battle of Hastings is about to begin.

Margaret DeAngelis is working on a novel set in Schuykill County. She has been awarded fellowships to the Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming and the Vermont Studio Center and has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Atop the Camel’s Hump

Island is a word that calls to mind countless pictures. Common images, ones we all share through vacations, photographs, or what we see on television: azure waves, pristine white beaches, palm fronds sighing in a humid breeze. Islands are places of peace, sanctums of serenity.

Well, not my island.

My island is ugly. Bare and bleak. It rises from the earth, fifteen feet high and dimpled like a camel’s hump, ringed by acres and acres of corn; an ocean of sweet Indian gold. Its muddy slopes are sharp and steep, treacherous in the rain. No soft carpet of grass adorns my island, no bed of furry moss. Instead, jagged thorns tear at flesh and snag on clothes. The island’s only thriving flora, an ancient white oak, watches the world and casts a long black shadow.

It is a truly unwelcoming place, and not very lovely to behold.

Yet I love it.

The Camel’s Hump I named it, upon staking my claim, believing I was the one person in the world to acknowledge this little plot of land, this poor wretched isle.

In the summer, when the country steams and sweats, the corn circling the Camel’s Hump grows tall enough to scratch the sky. Miles of corn, all green and gold in the haze of morning, the stalks glittering like diamonds under a layer of dew. Mice feast on kernels until they are too fat to flee the foxes, and foxes feast on mice until they are nearly too fat to flee the farmer. (I think he lets them get away.)

Several signs along the road that divides the farm and the adjacent neighborhood, read “No Trespassing” but for the moment I am blissfully illiterate. I’m only visiting, after all. The farmer will not fault one girl just for exploring. Corn swallows me like a gaping yellow maw. I run through it eagerly, losing myself among the stalks, the blonde hairs of the corn tangling with my brown hair. There is no north or south, no east or west; only corn, yellow and bright, rising up against a blue sky.

The earth trembles.

From somewhere out of sight comes a roar, followed by a great mechanical groan. The harvester coughing to life. For a moment I see myself racing through rows and rows of corn, desperate to find the road, but I am lost in the maze and the farmer’s tractor hunts me down before I can escape. My bones are ground to dust, my blood and organs and sinew squeezed out of me as out of a tube of toothpaste as the farmer drives on, oblivious that his bountiful summer harvest is now two ears richer… and two eyes richer, and ten toes richer, and a nose richer, too.

But then I see my island. The Camel’s Hump.

I can just make out the peak; the rest is obscured by towering stalks. The old oak stands sure and still, my lighthouse in the yellow sea. Its bark is ash-gray and splintered, its leaves fiercely green. I make it my target, throwing myself up the island’s steep banks, clinging to roots and rocks while the tractor wheezes by, flattening the yellow sea in its wake. Well, thank God I’m not down there.

I am the tallest girl on the planet—emerald meadows and farms and dusty roads unfold before me. I am in the heart of the Garden State. I wait for the farmer to finish reaping his field, with only the splintered old oak for company. Its roots, as thick around as one of my thighs, erupt from the dirt as though the tree tried to break free of the earth and walk the world. Ants travel up and down its bark, which is scarred by time’s passing. The lowest hanging branches are still too high for a girl to climb, but the birds make good use of them. A red-tailed hawk, sharp of eye and sharper of talon, scrutinizes me from the safety of his perch. His tongue flutters from his beak like a trembling pink worm.

“It’s hot today,” I agree, and the hawk wheels away toward the summer sun. I wonder, when the black canvas of night descends, will he return to the oak? Or will some slow-witted owl claim the tree in his absence?

Around me, the earth rumbles.

Puffy white clouds fashion the shapes of fantastic creatures, dragons and dwarves and dinosaurs.

I love this place. Despite the rocky soil and vicious brambles (and my near brush with death) I am at peace, sheltered by the old oak. No one knows I’m here. Not the farmer or the drivers racing past on the nearby road. Only the red-tailed hawk—and who would he tell?

When the tractor sputters to a stop, spewing oily black smoke from its rusty exhaust pipe, I bid farewell to my island, carefully slide down to solid ground, and cross the flattened field of corn. Crushed vegetation cushions my feet and softens my footsteps. I feel exposed and naked—the wonder of the yellow sea trampled to a bitter green pulp. There’s a shout behind me, likely the farmer, and I’m spurred to a sprint.

Over the field, across the road, and into my car.

The Camel’s Hump looks bigger when not flanked by so much corn, yet somehow more vulnerable, a secret revealed.

It is winter before I visit again.

Snow powders the earth and cruel winds sweep across the land. Branches, weakened by frost, splinter and snap, loud as a bullwhip in the eerie stillness of December. The animals have all gone: birds to warmer southern states, rabbits to their warrens. Humans venture into the world only once properly bundled up against the elements.

The oak looms in silent vigil, its naked arms reaching toward the blue-gray sky. The corn is a summer dream, but the Camel’s Hump remains.

Before I cross the snowy field I wonder how many winters the old white oak has seen. Twenty? Fifty? Has it ever seen a winter free of people? A winter before Hartford Road trundled along its left or Centerton Road to its right? A winter before the homes and farms and businesses? A winter before time? What ancient wonders, I meditate. What stories it could tell had the little seedling sprouted a mouth instead of roots.

I study the island from across the road. It looks as though an enormous camel fell asleep in the middle of a snowstorm.

Every season has its scents, I reflect, trampling across the unbroken snow. Spring smells like wet earth, summer like salty surf. Autumn has pumpkins and spices and rotten leaves. But winter freezes in your nostrils until your snot dribbles down your chin.

The old oak looks bigger. A handful of stubborn red leaves still cling to its branches, and a few are tugged free in the frigid winter gusts.

Carefully I make my ascent, pulling myself upward with one of the oak’s massive roots.

There are a few animal droppings here, but otherwise the Camel’s Hump has been left undisturbed. White snow, frozen earth. The gunmetal superstructure of the Cornfield Cruiser, an old US Air Force Space Command site, is visible from atop the island. The building belches steam, hot steam. Suddenly I’m aware of shivers rocking my body. My skin is raw and red, my lips split.

I have to do this quickly.

I take the Swiss Army knife from my pocket, a relic of the days when my brother and I were kids. Where once the blade had flashed polished steel, it now glinted dully, the victim of rust and mud and many gutted fish. Yet it would serve my purpose.

Normally I am not one for defacing nature, but this oak struck something in me. I want this tree to be mine. The sharpest edge of the Swiss Army Knife hacks through the bark with all the grace of a poacher chopping his way through the Amazon. Small slivers of wood peel away under the blade, pepper the ground.

In minutes I’m done. On one of the white oak’s roots I’ve carved my name: CASEY 2008. The letters are shallow on the root’s girth, a root like an anaconda with a tiny tattoo.

As I make the short walk back to my car, I wonder who would come along after me. Two lovers, perhaps, drawn by the solitude. Children who dream of monsters and adventures. Who would see my name? Would someone add his or her own? And in fifty years, when the world is all sterile and steel, will the white oak with my name still live?

So many will hurry by without a second glance. Who could be bothered to marvel at a gnarled old tree and an ugly hill plagued by thorns? Not many, truly. An island in the Bahamas would better serve them. But someday, someone will see the world as I did: from atop the Camel’s Hump.

Casey Otto just graduated from Rowan University with a degree in Writing Arts. She is a science fiction and fantasy enthusiast with a passion for writing about our natural world, specifically locations around New Jersey that have made a huge impact on her life. This story won Rowan’s 2012 Denise Gess Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction at Rowan.

Hate Island

Shannon tapped her pencil on the desk, trying to command my attention. Everything about her annoyed me—the way she sat, the way her hair fell into tangled strands across her face, and the way she incessantly tapped that goddamn pencil against the kidney bean-shaped desk in our sixth-grade classroom. We’d been assigned to work together by the teacher; it was not by choice. We kept as much distance from each other as possible, I at the tip of the bean, she on the outer curve.

Finally, when I was on the verge of ripping the pencil from her hand, I glared at her. With immense satisfaction, she tapped once more and shot her tongue out at me. Despite being the weird new girl, Shannon had a knack for playing offense, but she didn’t yet know my specialty in basketball was blocking. I was a defensive all-star. In retaliation, I wrote on my paper and turned it so she could see: Shannon sucks. I looked at her with told-you-so eyes, sure my message would be enough to erase her stupid smirk. It wasn’t. She squinted back at me. Then she wrote the horror beyond all horrors on her notebook and nudged it across the kidney bean close enough for me to see: Gavin is ugly.

Gavin. As in my Gavin. Gavin Rossdale. The lead singer of the alternative-rock band Bush. Gavin. Whose poster I kissed every night before bed. Gavin. Whose face was printed on my t-shirt. Gavin. The recipient of my perfume-drenched love letters. Gavin. The epitome of all things lovely and good to adolescent girls everywhere with a disposition for head-banging to grunge music (behind the safety of closed bedroom doors). My face flushed and contorted with rage. She raised her eyebrows to ask if I had any other moves in my arsenal. Nope, my game was shot. I couldn’t block that one. She won The Battle on the Bean, but from that day forward, I started sharpening sticks and recruiting allies.

Earlier that year, Shannon had joined our class of eleven students in the small town of Port Republic, NJ. Her prospects for fitting in seemed bleak: thin, mouse-like demeanor, baggy clothes, pursed lips, and a small vocabulary. Her stupid purple sunglasses seemed to be her most prized possession. She didn’t talk much at first. When she finally did speak, it sounded like she was trapped inside a plastic tube. The words could barely escape her tiny mouth. Shannon’s speech impediment meant she had to get extra help with her school work, so she was automatically lumped into that group—you know, the “dummies,” the kids who dreaded report cards and parent-teacher conferences. With only twelve kids in our grade, the division between the “dummies” and the “smarties” was exacerbated twelve-fold.

I was a smarty: one of those know-it-all elitists whose worst nightmare involved a B+. Before the final bell had rung on her first day at our school, we smarties had already agreed upon Shannon’s status. She was definitely not one of us.

Shannon was an ‘army brat,’ and her perpetual new-girl status had provided her a strong offensive game, but even that couldn’t have prepared her for the vengeance I plotted. In the name of Gavin Rossdale, Shannon had become enemy number one. Did she actually imagine that she was ever going to fit in? If you asked Shannon, probably not. She’d tell you that our class was Lord of the Flies, and I was Jack Merridew—the tyrant leader of the cruelest kind of soldiers: a pack of sixth-grade girls.

Soon after the Gavin incident, I appointed myself president the We Hate Shannon Club. Every day at recess, all of the sixth-grade girls except for Shannon met by a set of double doors at the far end of the school. No one ever used those doors, not even the teachers. A two-foot overhang and brick walls formed a small cave—where we hunted for wild pigs—where I became Jack Merridew, rallying the wildlings.

We carved and scribbled our unoriginal insults into the bricks and on the doors. Shannon sucks. We hate Shannon. Whoever thought of the best Shannon-hate slogan was crowned winner for the day. The better the insult, the greater the reward—distributed in superficial flattery and cackles from the pack.

After several weeks in the cave, I hatched a more devious plan. At lunch, communicating only in whispers and hushed giggles, we waited for the right moment. Each morsel Shannon ate lasted an eternity. Finally, she stood up from the lunch table to buy ice cream. Casually, I stood up as well, walked to Shannon’s empty seat, snatched her beloved purple sunglasses, stuffed them in my pocket, and took my place behind Shannon in the line for ice cream.

The pack watched from the table as I smiled, triumphant. Shannon stood in front of me, buying her ice cream, not yet knowing what I’d done. Taking her seat, however, she realized immediately that her sunglasses were gone, her sunglasses, the mask that hid her reactions to our persecution and the wetness in her eyes. She got up and told the teacher on duty. Then I had no choice. I had to dispose of them.

During recess, out of sight of teachers and other kids, we, the pack, tossed the purple sunglasses around in a circle until they landed back in my hands. I threw them on the ground and stomped on them, cracking both the lenses and frames. Dust rose as I ground my foot into the glasses, thinking of my love for Gavin, which was then surpassed by my hate for Shannon, hate for things I didn’t understand, and most of all, hate for myself.

The other girls began stomping out their secrets too: divorces, illness, abuse, and other unspoken forms of hate that we’d filtered into Shannon. We hid our rage behind laughter, the way Shannon had hidden her tears behind the sunglasses.

We destroyed Shannon’s sunglasses, but the hate within us only grew stronger. We left the glasses in a drainage hole, but a pang of fear told me I couldn’t leave them there. Once the last bell rang, I snuck back into the school yard, found the glasses, and threw them into the woods behind my house. I smiled to myself, another smile of triumph, without a single feeling of regret or shame.

Later, when our principal questioned me about Shannon’s missing glasses, I knew he knew I had done it, but I also knew he had no proof. I played the clueless honors student who couldn’t fathom such a vicious crime. Only the beating of my heart could have given me away. He had nothing, and, with an unhappy sigh, he released me to return to class.

Shannon was no dummy. She knew I had taken her sunglasses. She even tried to fight back, but the pack swarmed her like bees when their hive is threatened. She cried until her eyes were red and swollen from our stings. She cried without the protection of her sunglasses, but this only made us torment her more.

One day, at last, Mrs. Smith, our language arts teacher, asked all the girls in our class but Shannon to skip recess and return to her classroom. I felt another pang of fear, a stronger one. Sitting at our desks, we exchanged anxious looks. Did she know about the glasses? The cave? Would she tell our parents? Would we never be allowed to go to recess again? When Mrs. Smith entered the room the tension thickened. She had something to say:

“What I saw over there, outside by the double doors, made me sick to my stomach.”

Something deeper than anger emanated from her words. She repeated what we’d written in the cave, “We hate Shannon. Shannon sucks. Shannon is dumb. Die Shannon die.” Each word spread venomous gas around us. We couldn’t look at each other.

“Do you know what that reminded me of?”

No one spoke. We couldn’t. We waited for an angry speech. Instead, Mrs. Smith said only two words:

“The Holocaust.”

The wildlings in the seats around her, me included, began to disappear and human beings, adolescent girls, my friends, took their places. I felt sick. Anger and hatred morphed into nausea, a knot hardening in my gut.

“Yes, the holocaust,” Mrs. Smith repeated. We, the pack, the sixth-grade girls, stared down at our desks. “This is where it starts,” Mrs. Smith continued as I began to recognize the truth of what we’d done. What I had done. “This kind of disgusting, unwarranted hate is where it starts.”

Mrs. Smith stood in front of us, a mirror of truth, forcing us to see through our distortions, our anger, our intolerance. The flies of Hate Island swarmed over me. Yes, I’d been Jack Merridew. I had sharpened the sticks and set out to hunt. I’d held the flag of victory after each slaughtering. And none of it could be undone.

Looking back, I realize Mrs. Smith reached us before our sacrificial rites escalated from plastic sunglasses to the physical self; before the fire on top of the mountain went out. Although, if you ask Shannon, she would probably not agree.

*Editors note: The names of some of these people have been changed.

Samantha Brown was born in Atlantic City and grew up in the small town of Port Republic, NJ. She is a recent graduate of Rowan University and holds an M.A. in Writing. "Hate Island" tells the true story of an experience she had in middle school. Samantha also writes fiction and her award-winning poetry has been published in several smaller venues. Her poem "House on Moss Mill Road" was featured in Lines + Stars Winter 2012 issue. She lives in Clementon, NJ, with her husband and is writing a middle grade fantasy novel.

The Do’s (and Some Don’ts) of a Successful Speed Date

I’ve been on both sides of the speed-dating table at Push to Publish. As many of you begin to prepare for your own special ten-minute talk with an agent or editor, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned to do and what to avoid in order to get the most out of your ten minutes.

1. Do come prepared. As an editor, I had ten minutes to read an author’s writing sample and offer suggestions. I couldn’t read a fifteen-page story and give feedback. Come with three pages of your short story. If you have a novel, have an elevator pitch (a one-minute description of the novel) and a few pages of the work. You want your work read, but you really want the discussion. Make sure the bulk of your ten minutes is devoted to talking to the editor or agent.

2. Research the editors/agents coming to the event. As a literary fiction editor for a magazine that does not accept genre, I had someone hand me a sci-fi fantasy piece. Again, you have ten minutes with this person. You want to make sure you are sitting across from someone who really can advise you. Keep in mind, you are signing up for these editors/agents at registration. Do your homework to choose the best editor or agent for your work, and make sure to have a couple of back-up people just in case that person’s time slots get filled. All of the bios are posted on the website well in advance of the conference.

3. Do not request a speed date with an agent if you are not ready. I know this is hard to hear. Most attendees want to meet with agents. However, during the speed dates, agents want to meet with authors who have polished, edited, revised material ready to pitch to a publishing house. Agents do not want to spend this time listening to ideas for novels or reading unfinished material.

This does not mean agents don’t want to meet you or hear your ideas—just not during the speed date session. Agents will be there most of the day, and they DO want to make connections with talented writers. Introduce yourself at lunch or say hello after the afternoon “Meet the Editors and Agents” panel. Get business cards. Follow up as appropriate. Review all agent bios and make a connection with someone you think might be a good connection when you are ready. Make a good impression by making the most of both of your time.

Also, consider attending Friday’s “Spend the Day with an Agent” workshop. Agent Sheree Bykofsky offers insider tips for how to find an agent, and provides the opportunity to review individual query letters.

4. Come with specific questions you want the editor/agent to answer for you. As an editor, I tried to make sure I left time for the person to ask me any additional questions. During this additional time, all of my speed date authors looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my nose. I was surprised no one thought to ask me anything else. While, yes, it is your time to discuss your work, you have an agent/editor sitting right there giving you her attention. Pick her brain. The goal is to help you feel ready to get your work published. Be your own advocate.

5. Put your best foot forward. Have your work printed, held in a folder, typed, Times New Roam 12 point font, and double spaced. Anything else will be very hard for your editor/agent to read. One of the authors I met with handed me a handwritten story. I wasted most of our ten minutes just trying to read the author’s handwriting, and the writer lost valuable time.

6. Smile, and relax. Remember, the editor or agent in front of you is a person. As an editor, I was initially nervous when I had my first few “dates.” As a writer, I was also freaking out at first. Then, I smiled and cracked a joke. The tension dissipated, and we had a great conversation about my poem and my ability to be a poet. Basically, be yourself.

The bottom line is this: you are coming to this event to push yourself and your work into the publishing world. I have yet to meet a kinder and more welcoming community than at the Push to Publish conference each year. Relax and be prepared.

MM Wittle is a professor of writing with an MFA from Rosemont College in Creative Writing. MM’s work has appeared in Nailpolish Stories, Transient, The Bond Street Review, and is forthcoming in The Fox Chase Review, and Free Flash Fiction. For the past seven years, MM has been a fiction board member of Philadelphia Stories and is now a PS Books Poetry and Creative Nonfiction editor.

Naked and Hungry

The first time you saw me naked, I was standing in front of the refrigerator. I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to get something to eat. It was pitch black except for the refrigerator light glaring out at me, illuminating my naked body as I hunched into the fridge to see what was inside. It was that tiny kitchen in West Philadelphia, with the cracked linoleum floors and the tin-topped kitchen table.

I thought you were sleeping, so I didn’t bother putting my clothes back on. Sure, we’d already had sex, but not so many times that I’d let you get a good look at me. Always, there’d been partial clothing or sheets or fast getaways. You, on the other hand, you couldn’t wait to be naked in front of me. I remember you stood next to our first pre-coital bed and tore off your underwear as you asked, “Is this okay?” You were naked and lying next me before I could answer.

This was back when I still went to your apartment with legs and armpits clean-shaven. I still surveyed the six or so moles on my body that grow very long hairs and dutifully kept them plucked clean for you. I protected you from my sulfurous morning breath and always darted to the bathroom to brush my teeth before we’d go again.

This was back when you were a bachelor whose bathroom window was a broken pane of glass. Your front door wouldn’t shut, much less lock. You dried oranges and other fruits in papers bags all around the apartment because there was no one there to object to the strangeness of it or the potential for mold.

When I heard your footsteps on that old wood floor in the hallway, I considered hiding behind the refrigerator door, but it seemed childish, and there wasn’t enough time anyway. Suddenly you were there, leaning against the door jamb, watching me.

I tried to pretend I was not at all bothered by your seeing me this way, and I went about my business as if there was nothing at all wrong with midnight snacking. (The idea of hiding my body or my eating habits from you seems ridiculous to me now. My body has performed most of its basest functions in your presence. I have retched out sobs and vomit at your feet.) But then, you looked at my naked body, its unruly ripples, my bulbous inner thighs. You looked at me, naked and holding a carton of milk, scavenging in the darkness for a bite of old cheese or a jar of peanut butter I could dip a finger into. You looked at this thing, my body, lit strangely by a small, dirty light bulb, and you began to smile that upside down smile of yours, where the corners of your mouth are turning down, but somehow it’s a smile anyway.

You looked at me as if I were the Pacific Ocean, or a newborn baby, or the goddamned pyramids in Egypt.

“You’re such a pretty girl,” you said. Like you could hardly believe it. Like you were somehow proud and thankful all at once to God and me and refrigerator lights.

I stood up straight to meet your eyes. And suddenly, I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Kelly George is a
doctoral candidate at the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University.
She is now married to the man who appeared unexpectedly to watch as she
rummaged, nude, through his refrigerator.