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It’s not so much that it’s easy to tell the truth to each other. It’s more that we can’t lie to each other. When Connor called this morning and told me she was running late, I knew my sister meant we actually might not make our appointment. Usually if she’s late she says, “On my way,” which we both know means that I have time to get up, shower, brush my hair, apply a layer of cocoa butter to my brown skin, and cook my second favorite breakfast: toast, two poached eggs with no salt or pepper, and buttermilk pancakes with Aunt Jemima’s syrup. It’s the same as my favorite breakfast, but Pea, who died six months ago, made that one. She was diabetic and had hypertension, and so she never added salt to her eggs; nevertheless, she made a sweet exception for the Aunt Jemima’s—her favorite syrup and the only kind she’d buy. With her passing, so too went my favorite breakfast.

Because we can’t lie to each other, today, when Connor said, “Hey I’m late,” we both knew it meant later than “on my way” late. We both knew it also meant that we might miss this tattoo appointment she had set up three months ago. We both knew that I could take my time poaching these eggs, heating this syrup, and whipping up these buttery pancakes.

Pea had taught me how to make poached eggs. She said it was a simple way to impress guests. She didn’t know that my apartment was too small to have guests. It wasn’t bad, given that it was Santa Barbara. But after four years of Pomona roommates, some messy and others just disgusting; and after three years living in Venezuela with six different roommates, some messy and others just disgusting, I needed my own space when I moved here to start my Sociology PhD at UC Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, “own space” in Santa Barbara meant three hundred square feet for $1,800 a month in the Isla Vista apartment complex. “Own space” meant enough room for a twin bed, a standing shower, and a cocktail table that doubled as a shelf for my books. It meant a kitchen with granite countertops and just enough elbow room so that I could spin the boiling water and vinegar mixture with one hand and drop the egg into the pot with the other. Even wall space was limited—I barely had enough room to hang a portrait of Pea over the cocktail table. My apartment resembled a hallway with awkward, stubby offshoots. Not much room for guests. Which I actually found pleasant.

I think about making an extra egg for Connor but decide against it. Connor hated Pea’s “nasty ass eggs,” so she’d likely have a similar distaste for mine. I take a saucepan out and put the syrup on low heat, so it won’t scorch. I place a piece of rye toast in the toaster.

After our parents died four years ago, Pea was all we had left, so her death left Connor and I lost, but together. On the way home from Pea’s funeral in our hometown, Camarillo—which was the last time Connor and I were together before I left for Santa Barbara, and she moved to Denver—I asked Connor how she was feeling. Connor, who from learning homophones in the first grade had started addressing our grandma as “Pee” in her birthday and Mother’s Day cards, said, “It’s Pee. I feel fine.” We both knew that’s not what she meant. The same vigor with which she hated Pea’s “bland ass” cooking, she loved Pea’s support for her. For all her disdain for Pea’s straight-laced lifestyle, I think Connor secretly knew that, in part, she could only dye her hair blonde and wear crop tops above her belly button because of Pea. Pea had established herself in Camarillo as a successful entrepreneur in cosmetics; so by the time Connor came along with her too-tight skirts and her too-loose tongue, her teachers, camp counselors, and employers could just laugh it off. Of course, when she started her freshman year at Wellesley, her professors were less amused by her antics. Pea, a Wellesley grad herself, was overjoyed that Connor matriculated there, and said that the school would shape Connor into a strong and proper woman. Pea was less thrilled when Connor came back from her first year with a nipple ring that was “mad temporary” and a tattoo on her ribcage that was not.

I take a fork and test the egg white. It splits, and bleeds into the water. My phone lights up with a text from Connor that says, “I’m on my way.” I go over to the record player that Pea got me for my twentieth birthday and select Bach from my vinyl rack. I smile at Pea’s portrait hanging over my cocktail-table-bookshelf. Bach was her favorite. I gently place the record on top of the turntable and push the start button. The vinyl begins to spin. “Air From Suite No. 3 For Orchestra In D Major” echoes through my tiny apartment. I sway with the strings. The eggs, swirling in the pot, can boil a little longer.

Just as much as Wellesley shaped Pea into the woman she was to become, so too it shaped Connor. Both Pea and Connor graduated with a self-assured sense of who they were—Pea a crowd-pleasing host, who knew all two hundred people who sent her Christmas, Easter, and Juneteenth cards—and Connor, a twenty-two-year-old guest of honor, entertaining no one but herself and those she held dear, which included me.

I use my skimmer to take out the poached egg. The record player changes to “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 In G Major.” The toaster dings with my rye toast. Connor texts me that she’s sorry—she’s not—and that she’s three minutes away—she’s twelve. I smile to myself, shaking my head, and gingerly lay the egg on top of the toast. Realizing I never mixed the pancake batter, which has to sit for fifteen minutes for the bubbles to settle, I turn off the syrup saucepan. Aunt Jemima will have to wait. I’ll make pancakes for Connor later—she loves sprinkling bananas and walnuts over them.

Connor insists she’s in no way like our grandmother, but we all know they’re similar. Our parents had always said that Pea and Connor are similar because they both so earnestly believe in their respective lifestyles and refuse to acknowledge the other’s. But that’s like saying they’re similar in that they’re so different. I’ve always thought that they have the same laugh. They both laugh like they’ve just heard the funniest joke of the evening at a dinner party. But while Connor always laughed at the joke, I think Pea laughed because that’s what people are supposed to do at dinner parties when funny jokes are told.

I finish my breakfast and check the time. We’re ten minutes late, and with early-morning Saturday traffic we’ll be—I sigh and remind myself that spending time with Connor is what matters most. Besides, we have a day planned that is immune to tardiness. Even if we miss this appointment, we are still going to my favorite food cart, El Pendejo, and picking up some arepas for a beach picnic. Fortunately, arepas rellenas and gentle ocean waves don’t have a time frame we have to fit into.

I hear her horn outside of my apartment, so I unplug Bach and throw the dishes in the sink on my way out.

“You’re late,” I say.

“Oooooh, I see they taught you how to read a clock on your first day of class in your lil program,” she says, waving me into her car. “Let’s go; you’re making me late,” she says.

I consider being mad at her for picking me up late, but then again, neither of us can really stay mad at each other for long. Instead I say, “I haven’t started class yet. Also—that’s all you can say after six months?”

“Um, let me think,” she says, allowing her pupils to roll upward to her eyelid, “Yeah, sorry, all I came up with.” I laugh. “Anyway, you ready for this tattoo?” she asks.

I try to still my breath. “Yes,” I say, which we both know isn’t true.

* * *

I turn the music down because the bass’s vibrations are hurting my neck. Connor had the 1997 Nissan outfitted with 700 watt subwoofers two summers ago to “make that shit go bang,” and right now, 50 Cent’s “Lollipop” was doing just that, rattling the floorboards and making the headrest “go bang” against the nape of my neck. I would move the headrest up, but it’s broken and jammed. I twist the music dial a little bit more to the left.

“Nigga.”

“Mhm?”

“Why you keep playin’ with my music? You ain’t no DJ.”

“It’s just a little bit loud,” I say, drawing out my “i”s so it sounds like the “ea” in pleading. She scoffs. It’s funny. I’m older, but I often forget it. In fact, a lot of people wouldn’t guess it. I think it’s because she just has an air of confidence that draws people to her. My first week of college, I took her to a Pomona dorm room party. I was a bit nervous about bringing a sixteen-year-old to a college function, but I promised Pea, my parents, and myself that I’d look out for her. When we arrived, the room smelled like cheap vodka, sweat, and a bunch of eighteen-year-olds trying too hard to be the person people would whisper about on Monday. I tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her to stick with me. The music was loud, and the walls were vibrating, but she opened her mouth in a laughing shape, so I can only assume that she was amused by my reminder. Sure enough, I turned to introduce her to my week-one best friend only to find she had already disappeared. She soon resurfaced, rum drink in hand, dancing in the crowd that was clapping to the tempo of her hips. My week-one best friend wacked my shoulder and asked if that was my older sister. “Younger,” I said. “She’s dope,” he said. “Yeah,” I said.

“Bro, how are we bout to get tattoos and not bang this shit?” she says as she rolls down the window. She turns the dial to the right. She throws a glance at me to once again remind me that I’m not a DJ. I wind down my window to prevent the throbbing noise that happens when you only have one window open in a Nissan driving twelve miles over the speed limit on the way to get your sister’s name tattooed on your left butt cheek.

“Hey,” she says, tone a bit graver.

“Yes,” I say.

“How have you been? Like with Pee and all?” She winds up her window and turns the dial all the way to the left.

“I’m alright.”

The wind throbs against my window.

“You don’t have to lie,” she says, and then adds, “dang, bro, wind up your window, I can’t hear shit.” The window squeaks as I wind it up. “Anyway, I know you sensitive, and you were close to her and shit.”

“Yeah,” I say, breathing a pause. “Anyway, what about you?”

“I’m aight. I miss her too, I mean you know me and her didn’t always see stuff the same way, but Pee, you know, that was my nigga.” I laugh. “Well,” she continues, “if you ever wanna talk about it…”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, cutting her off. “Hey,” I say, to which she nonchalantly grunts to let me know she’s listening. “It’s nice seeing you. Thanks for making the trip.”

“Bro,” she says as she twists the music dial to the right, “course I made the trip. You know I’ve been wanting us to get this tattoo for the longest minute. Besides, it’ll be a nice send off before you really start the whole school grind.”

The thought of school, and what it brings, rattles my nerves. I turn and look at Connor whose afro continues to bob to the beat. It’s great being with her again—before I enter the graduate student soirees, the cocktail parties, the colleagues’ open houses where I have to smile, wave, and mingle with professors who hope you will impress them. The floorboards vibrate with each beat of the subwoofer. The headrest might just come unjammed.

“Don’t this shit bang?” Connor shouts over “In Da Club” as we turn off the highway and onto the service road to the tattoo parlor. I laugh and rotate my head in sync with hers.

It does.

***

When we walk inside the parlor, I feel as if my skin shrinks. Connor had pushed me for about a year to get this tattoo. She wanted a way to commemorate our relationship. So last year I told her on her birthday that she could pick the spot as long as I could pick the design. I said that I’d get her name tattooed on me and she could get mine. I liked the idea of having her name tattooed because, well, it’s Connor. And she chose our butts, because, well, it’s Connor. I was saving for graduate school so I thought the promise would be an easy and cheap present—which, at the time, held true. Now, as I enter the parlor, greeted by a jeering chorus of needles, I realize that it was going to cost me approximately two hundred dollars, some suppressed tears, and some pain in my left butt cheek.

“Hey,” I say, cautious not to seem cautious.

“What?” Connor says, eyes stretching to let me know that she sees me, cautious.

“I’m going to use the restroom.” I turn so that I can just miss Connor’s smirk. When I enter the empty bathroom, I watch myself in the mirror as I approach the sink. I try and steady myself—but I feel like the walls of the bathroom are compressing with each step I take. When I get to the sink it has a crack at the base of the faucet so when I turn on the water it leaks onto the floor. Connor sure knew which establishment to pick.

***

My alone time is short lived. When the door swings open behind me, a whirring needle beckons my name. I let the lukewarm water run over my shivering fingers and resist the urge to see who walked in through the door. Made of dented tin, when the door shuts, it shakes. Sandals click against the heels of my bathroom friend as he makes his way to the urinal. Gradually, the clicking stops. A steady stream, simple, but rushed, replaces the periodic sandal clicks. Between the rattling tin, and my companion’s pee, I can’t hear the needle calling me back into the parlor. I turn up the water temperature and pressure. Feeling the warm water race the blood in my veins from my wrist to my fingertips, I stretch my fingers outward, pushing the center of my palm toward the drain, admiring my black skin. Peacefully, the hairs on the back of my hand lay down under the water’s flow. I envy them. I wonder if Connor knows I’m hiding right now. She probably does. She knows I’m anxious. I feel anxious not because I don’t want the tattoo; rather, I feel anxious because I do. A marker of Connor and her radiant confidence, forever inscribed on my skin sounds appealing—granted, I could’ve done without the butt placement, but nevertheless, I’m excited for the tattoo. I’m just anxious about the needle.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” my companion says to me, approaching the adjacent sink.

I smile politely neither confirming nor denying.

He gives me a pat on the back that hits a little too hard and I stumble forward. He grabs the bathroom door and yanks it open. I catch it with my foot and step into the dimly lit parlor, greeted by darkness and a chorus of needles that seem to never tire of singing their desire to set my skin ablaze. The parlor is set up with one walkway between the front desk, the exit, and the bathroom. Studio cubicles line each side of the hallway. Inside each cubicle is a cushioned chair, a hunched tattoo artist, and a client, ready for permanency. They’re packed today. I join Connor in the third cubicle on the left.

“Y’all related?” the artist asks as I walk in, his white hands twisting the contact screw on the coil machine. He’s a skinny guy.

“Yeah, she’s my sister,” I respond, nodding in her direction. My sister looks up from her phone. Noticing my return from my fifteen-minute bathroom regrouping session, she shakes her head and kisses her teeth.

The artist’s arms are a technicolored masterpiece of dragons, tigers, and Mandarin characters. I ask him what the characters mean. He says one means “love” and the other means “peace,” but he can’t remember which. His hair is blonde, but I can only tell so by his roots, otherwise each strand is as colorful as his arms and the ink sitting on his workman’s table. His blue eyes dart between Connor and me.

“Who’s older?” he asks.

“I am.” I say, accustomed to that question and the usual next response about how we look alike.

“Man, I tell you what. Y’all look like twins. You sure you older?” he asks. He clicks a tube of black ink into the machine’s clamp. His pupil lights up as he holds the needle’s tip to his eye, activating its whir. He smiles at his toy.

“Yeah,” I say.

The man, chuckling and spinning his needle, gestures at me, “So I guess you’re first then?” The needle is steady in his hand. “So,” he says, flicking his head at me, “you’re getting Connor, tattooed in…” he says, trailing off.

“Brush Script MT,” I say, helping him out, but also trying to look like the older sibling.

“Annd on your butt?”

“Right on dat ass,” my sister says, smirking.

He nods.

As I feign a confident step toward the cushioned bench and pull down my pants and lay down on my stomach, I tell myself that this is what I want—for Connor, and for me. I bury my face into the pillow at the head of the bench, and feel the needle, filled with a venomous black ink, begin singeing “Connor” into my left buttocks. Goosebumps race down my spine, leaving a painful chill in their wake. I gasp for air, but I can’t breathe out the pain, and so I wince as veins pulse through my neck. My skin cringes against the needle’s bite.

***

If my tattoo felt that it lasted longer than an opera, Connor’s lasts about half an intermission. Somehow though, it is long enough for our colorful artist to disgust her. When did she graduate Wellesley? He asks. Last year. Oh really, what has she been up to? She plans weddings and collects paintings. Where does she live? Denver. Is she married? No—Connor grunts at the artist, her voice muffled by the pillow. “Hey, I’m just asking,” he says, defensively holding up his right hand. How old is she? Twenty-four. He blows out his cheeks like a sigh of joy released when a full plate is put before him in a restaurant. He takes a bite. What’s a cute Black girl like her not doing married? Does she know that he loves Black women? She doesn’t know why she’s not married and doesn’t particularly care; she also doesn’t know that he loves Black women and doesn’t particularly care. He squints and smiles, running his tongue between his lips, tasting his imagination. Does she know she can call him anytime she wants?

“Shut the fuck up,” Connor says, turning her face away from the pillow to ensure that her words and their accompanying glare find their mark on the tattoo artist. The artist, shocked by both her words and her movements, pulls his needle into the air—a safe distance from her butt.

“Woah missy, sit still.” He nods in my direction, begging me to admonish her as well. He wipes wisps of colorful hair from his eyes. He clears his throat, gathering himself. The needle shakes in his hand.

“Please,” I say quietly, feeling guilty as I oblige him, “sit still, Connor.” I let the “r” trail off into my shame. I blink. I wait for a response.

Connor doesn’t reply—which hurts more than if she had told me to stop being a pushover like I always am, to stop giving into white people like I always do, or to stop acting like this artist with “love” written on his arms in a language he didn’t speak wasn’t a brute. Her silence stings more than the needle. Eyes darting between me and Connor, the tattoo artist leans forward to resume his work. He clears his throat as if to say something, but falters. The coil machine buzzes against the silence of the room.

“You can get up now,” he says, leaning back in his chair as the needle’s whir slows. He breathes a sigh of relief. He asks if either of us would like a mirror to see if we liked the tattoo. Connor says no. He tells us to treat the tattoo with Bacitracin three times a day for five days, and moisturize for two months. I say okay. I ask him if we pay him directly or if we pay at the front desk. He tells us to pay up front. Connor stands up, zips up her pants, and leaves.

***

We pick up some arepas from El Pendejo and drive over to Goleta Beach for a picnic. The entire ride to the beach, Connor refuses to speak to me. Even when I turn the radio dial all the way to the left, she doesn’t say anything. I decide that she will probably talk when we arrive at the beach—we usually can’t stay mad at each other for long. But when we get to the beach, Connor remains silent. The seagulls are crying against the scorching sun bearing on their backs. I suggest to Connor that we should probably sit on the wet sand because the dry sand looks hot, and my butt still stings from the tattoo. I take her silence as agreement. Before sitting down, we walk across the street to the local convenience store. We pick up some ice, some ginger beer, some sweet plantain chips, and some SPF 100 sunblock and head to where the wet sand is still a dark brown hue.

***

Connor is still quiet, and so I entertain myself with the wet sand. It keeps escaping my palm. It’s particularly frustrating because it’s not like dry sand, which you pick up and watch leave, never expecting it to stay. That feels like a massage. This is frustrating because the clumps of seashells and dark brown sand grains are supposed to stick together in my palm. But they won’t. And picking up more clumps doesn’t make them stick any better. They keep slipping.

“Hey,” I say, not expecting a response, but hoping at least to catch Connor’s eye.

“What,” Connor says, her voice flat and barely audible over the smooth waves crashing against the shore.

“I’m—” I begin, looking down at the sand, “I’m sorry.”

Connor has her left hand submerged under the sand. The sand shifts around her wrist as she wiggles her fingers beneath the surface. With her right hand she raises her arepa to her mouth, biting pieces big enough to most certainly take some of its paper wrapping with each chomp. She chews slowly, searching my pupils for sincerity.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” I continue, “I just got nervous because he had the needle, and I didn’t want him to mess up or intentionally—”

“Someone’s always going to have a needle,” she says, taking a break from her lunch.

“Huh?”

“Nigga, someone will always have something over you. There’s always going to be a reason to, what was it you said?” Connor asks, or rather demands, given that we both know the answer.

“Sit still,” I murmur. Connor and I don’t lock eyes but instead watch the water in front of us inch closer. “I’m sorry,” I cast out in front of us into the tide. The frothy water pulls back, and then gently pushes toward us, touching our toes. Gulls and minutes fly over us. After the sixth gull, I feel Connor’s body release next to mine. I feel her nod in acceptance. Connor resumes taking eager bites of her arepa. I resume playing in the sand.

I know Connor is right, but it’s difficult to break the habit—especially because the habit has carried me to where I am today. When my parents passed, Pea was my sole source of guidance. She taught me it was, “Yes, ma’am,” not “yeah.” She taught me that my handshake would tell its recipient everything they’d need to know about my upbringing. She taught me how to smile and laugh politely. She taught me to keep my hair short. She taught me, most of all, that I could not act the same way in every place. I learned this first as a child, at weekly bingo with her coworkers, when I laughed a little too loud and earned a bop on the lips. I learned it again as a teenager, at her monthly tea party with the church ladies, when she pinched me for not smiling and nodding enough at the women’s remarks about my cleanliness. Pea never had to explicitly say it was because the church ladies and her coworkers were white—I knew. While I was grateful for this lesson—in fact, it was likely the only way I could navigate my way through Pomona and into Santa Barbara’s PhD program—I couldn’t help but feel like a piece of me was slipping away in the process.

“You need to quit playin’ in the sand buildin castles and shih like a lil boy and eat yo lunch before the water takes it.” Connor drops more endings and consonants than usual with her mouth full of arepa, pollo asado, and guacamole. I smile. She has a point though. The tide was edging up closer to our evening picnic and threatening to take my arepa rellena, which so far was just missing one small bite. Connor grunts, snorts, takes another bite—dangerously close to the paper—and swallows.

“You know you really shouldn’t eat…” I begin.

“Bro, I’m grown, you really gon tell me how to eat?” she retorts. I shake my head, laughing to myself.

Throwing a piece of her arepa into the water for the gulls, she asks, “When do you start again?” I tell her at the end of summer. “You hype?” I tell her I’m nervous and just kind of waiting on classes to start. The tide comes up closer now such that I have to hold my arepa in my hand so that the ocean doesn’t whisk it away. The cool saltwater feels soothing on my butt that still burns from the tattoo needle.

“Yeah,” I say, allowing my voice to trail, “I’m just worried that this is it.” Connor’s ferocious chewing slows. “What you mean?” she asks.

I tell her that I’ll be twenty-six on my first day at UC Santa Barbara, and I’d be thirty-three on my last day. I tell her that I’m trying to be married by thirty-two and want kids by thirty-four and that I want to be fully dedicated to the three of them and I’ll be sixty-five before the last one leaves the house, and then I’ll look up and think—I didn’t finish this thought but let my mind ebb and flow with the Pacific. I throw a piece of arepa at the gulls. I watch them flock, chasing the crumb against the tide. I smile but my eyes are heavy, trapped in the years to come. “I feel like I’m on this path I’ve set before me, but somehow I’m not in control.”

“Shit, nigga!”

“What?”

Connor yanks her left hand out the sand and pulls out a piece of paper from her mouth.

“Damn near swallowed this paper,” she says, throwing the paper into the water. She glares at the paper as the tide takes it away. I chuckle. “Anyway,” she continues, “you need to relax. You’re just now starting school. Everything will be fine.”

I grab another handful of sand. I spread my fingers so that clumps fall between the cracks until all that remains is the muddied sand sitting on my fingers. Then this leaves too.

“You know how, how Pea taught us to act carefully around—”

“White people.” Connor says, not guessing the end of my sentence as much as stating a fact.

“Yeah. I know it’s in part why I am where I am today, but I’m worried that I’m only good at acting.”

“Like that shit you pulled in the tattoo parlor?”

“Yeah. And in class when I’m afraid to challenge certain, you know, classic authors. Or, in casual conversations when I’m afraid to call something racist. Or at—”

“Look,” Connor says, swallowing her last bite of arepa, balling up its wrapping and tossing it in the El Pendejo sack that doubled as a trash bag. “You acting all fatalistic and shit—you are twenty-five. You need to relax.”

“It’s more than that,” I say, unsure of what “more” actually looks like. “It’s just so easy for you. You step into the room. You captivate everyone. You say what you want. I just—I just,” I stammer, grappling with expressing my desires for a wholeness that I cannot even imagine, “I just wish I could do that. Like you.” I guess that’s what more is.

“Fine. Then change,” she says firmly. “You’re about to enter a new chapter of your life in grad school. Look, I know you love Pee. I love Pee, too. But she wasn’t right about everything.”

I nod, reflecting on her words. The sun’s setting rays bounce off the ocean, glistening in my eyes. I shove my hands into the sand. Connor stares at me intensely, blinks, and then shakes her head like a babysitter who’s tired of the baby spilling applesauce on his lap. She smiles. I try and hide it, but it’s Connor, so I smile. I lift my hands out of the sand and watch the elusive clumps slip between my fingers, slide off my fingertips, and plop off my palm into the tide.

***

That summer went by slowly. I would like to say it was because I was eager for grad school—this new chapter. Or because I turned twenty-six. Or because I started seeing this woman with beach blonde hair whose mediocre jokes made me laugh politely. Or because I stopped seeing this woman with beach blonde hair whose mediocre jokes didn’t warrant my polite laughter. Or because I made poached eggs and buttermilk pancakes with Aunt Jemima’s syrup for breakfast every morning and tired of the repetition. Or because I spent countless days sitting on the beach, spreading SPF 100 sunscreen over my body, mindlessly playing in the sand. But in truth, it was just because the days were long, and the nights were short, so I didn’t sleep much.

After school starts in August, Connor calls me to tell me she is visiting in November.

“How’s school?” she asks.

“It’s fun,” I say, which we both laugh at because we know that’s not the truth. “It’s alright,” I say, which is more accurate.

“What’s your cohort like?”

“They’re cool, there are like fifteen or sixteen kids.”

“Any Black?”

“I’m the only one, but there’s this Korean-American student and this student from Venezuela.”

“You made any friends?” Connor asks. I know what she means—she means actual friends, not friends I placate with my laughter, handshakes, and polite smiles.

“Yeah,” I say, surprised at my voice. It sounds confident, but not in a way that’s forced or performed; it sounded, actually, confident. “I have. Like you said, it’s a new chapter.” It’s true. In late August, I arrived on campus with her cursive name written into my skin, and her firm words written into my mind. I skipped a few haircuts to let my hair grow. I stopped obsessively shaking hands with people. I ensured that there was no limit to my laughter’s decibel or my smile’s width.

“Cool. I’m happy for you,” she says, in a plain voice—though I imagine she smiles on the end of the telephone line. “Anyway, I’m coming in a couple months to visit yo ass,” Connor says, which we know is a lie.

“Why’re you actually coming?” I ask.

“Work trip. The eighteenth. I think it’s a Thursday.”

“Oh, well if you have a moment, that Friday you can come to a little housewarming party I’m having.”

“Nigga, you hate guests,” Connor scoffs. “Besides, you ain’t got a house to warm. You got a hallway. No, you got a closet. No, you got a cabinet. Actually wait, you got a—”

“Connor, I get it. Yeah, my house—”

“Apartment.”

“My apartment,” I continue, my voice feigning irritation, “isn’t big. And of course, I know I hate guests—you don’t have to remind me what I like. It’s just some professors and some of my cohort who I want to get to know better. And maybe you. It’s not a big party or anything.”

Connor grunts to convey her suspicion. She sighs. “Yeah, I’ll be there. What’s the attire?” I tell her everyone will be in casual—jeans and a nice shirt at most. We chat a bit more about her work, my school, and California. I ask her how her tattoo is. She asks me about mine. Neither of us kept up with our Bacitracin treatment. Mine’s the only one that scabbed, though, so she’s the lucky one.

***

It’s windy outside of my party. I’m thinking a lot to myself. People are happy. Bach’s playing. I’m serving coconut-almond cake and white wine. But I’m not thinking about the people here. Or what they’re drinking. Or the wind. I’m mostly thinking about where Connor is. She stayed in her hotel last night and said that she’d come by today around 7:00 pm to meet my classmates. She said she couldn’t stay long because one of her Wellesley classmates was having an event over at Wildcats on Ortega. But it was 7:30 and she was late, again.

“I love this music selection you’ve put together!”

It’s Jack. He graduated from Williams last year, and today, is one of the first days I’m seeing him without his usual attire—creased khakis, a blue blazer, and a knit skinny tie. A great-grandchild of German immigrants, he had confessed his love of Bach to me on the third day of class.

“Thanks, it was my grandmother’s favorite.”

He tips his wine glass toward me in her memory. “Well, she had good taste,” he says. I know Pea would’ve smiled at his compliment.

“Good turnout, by the way!” Jack says. More had shown up than I anticipated. Around six of my colleagues and three of my professors mill around my cocktail table and sit in my bedroom. I normally wouldn’t open up my personal bedroom space, but after the eighth person came, I figured I’d have to make everyone comfortable.

“Thanks, Jack,” I say. I smile. “Komm Du Susse Todesstunde” begins playing. I hear an aggressive banging on the door.

“Who’s that?” Jack asks, shriveling his nose at the new guest’s brazen greeting, “They didn’t ring the doorbell or anything.”

I excitedly excuse myself to go and let Connor in.

Connor walks in bringing a gust of cold air with her. The breeze bounces off Connor’s red cocktail dress, and shoots straight through my hallway of an apartment, chilling the room. My professors and colleagues turn their head to see where the breeze came from.

“Aye, what’s up,” Connor says. A neck sticks out to see who it is. Rolling my eyes in playful irritation, I reach for her bag, which she jerks back from me. I flick my head, motioning Connor to follow me to the kitchen.

“Why are you so late?” I ask when we step away from the crowd. “And what’s with the red dress?”

“Okay one, this dress is sexy. Two, you gonna get in your feelings or be grateful I showed up at your wack ass party when I have to be at Wildcats in an hour?” Using her shoulder and some momentum she heaves her bag onto the kitchen counter. It clinks when it lands on top of the granite. Before I can raise my eyebrows, she pulls out a handle of rum. “Also,” she says, reaching into my cabinet and grabbing one of my wine glasses, “there was traffic.” She pours the brown liquor about halfway to the brim. She takes a sip, closes her eyes in faux bliss, and purses her lips.

I laugh at her absurdity. “You’re drinking it like it’s juice, Connor,” I say pulling the handle away from her.

“Nigga, relax. I’m sippin on it. Besides,” she says swooping her right hand around the kitchen gesturing toward the white people crowded in my apartment eating coconut-almond cake and sipping wine, “it’s a bit stuffy in here, isn’t it?” I smile. “Also, bro, what’s going on with your hair?” She winces as she swallows the rum.

“New chapter. Remember?” I say, running my left hand through my mini-fro and grabbing a tumbler with my right. I pour a splash of rum. I clink my glass with hers.

“Hello!” a voice calls from the threshold of the door. “So, who is this new guest?” The end of her sentence hits a crescendo. I curve my neck around Connor and see Janice, or rather, Professor Christianson, as she insisted we call her, walking from the doorway into the kitchen. She wears a purple bowtie around her neck that contrasts her pale skin. Her brown hair curls around her narrow shoulders. She still has on her cropped slate blazer. She enters with her palms open, eyes beaming. I down my dreg of rum quickly, embarrassed. Jack and three of our classmates walk in behind her.

“Hello, Professor Christianson, this is my little sister, Connor.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Younger?” she asks, surprised.

“Younger,” I say, unsurprised at her surprise.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she says.

Mid-sip, Connor tips her tumbler in Professor Christianson’s direction to greet her.

“And Connor, these are some of my colleagues,” I say, gesturing behind Professor Christianson.

“Nice to meet you all,” Connor says, swallowing and grimacing as the rum rolls down her throat.

My professor, captivated by Connor, asks her about her work, how she likes Denver, and how her trip to Santa Barbara has been thus far. Jack, less interested in Connor, chats with me about my studies and how I’m liking our course together, Social Policy and Culture, which we have with Professor Christianson. I tell him I’m enjoying it, but I feel like some narratives are missing. He says, “Like what?” Connor catches Jack’s question and my eye.

“I just, you know, feel like we focus a lot on Marx, without really analyzing how his work can overlook race.”

I feel Connor’s smile.

“What was that?” Professor Christianson interjects, catching the last of bit of my critique.

“Oh, we were just talking about your course Professor,” I say innocently.

“What about it?” Professor Christianson murmurs into the brim of her white wine glass as she lifts it to her lips.

I hesitate for a second. It’s short. But it’s long enough for my doubts to creep in. It’s long enough for my fear of what I’m actually thinking to creep in. It’s long enough to for Jack to say, “We were just talking about—”

“What we have learned so far,” I say, finishing Jack’s sentence. Connor avoids my eye contact.

Our professor smiles clearly pleased that her classroom discourse has made it into the cramped spaces of the Isla Vista apartment complex. “Yes,” she says, taking a long drag of white wine. “Next week we’ll be focused on the intersection of capitalism and political propaganda, ranging from Pear’s Soap to Pop Chips, to Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Syrup, which, I might add, is the only modern-day representation of the docile Black mammy-slave caricature.” She smiles with her eyes to congratulate herself.

“We’re looking forward to it,” chimes the chorus of students standing behind her. I nod.

Professor Christianson chuckles. “I actually hate to admit it, but I was raised on that syrup when I was little. It’s hard for me to let it go. I still douse my buttermilk pancakes in it!” The students chuckle. I hear myself join in their laughter.

“My grandmother, Pea, she loved that syrup too,” I offer, shivering at my guilt.

“Now!” my professor exclaims, “Is that whose picture is over your cocktail table?”

“Yes, Professor, it is.”

“I’ll tell you what, when I first set my cake down on that table, I saw that picture and I was like, ‘Man she looks just like my favorite syrup!’” The chorus of students chuckle behind her.

My skin cringes against the bite of my professor’s words. I feel Connor wince. I cannot exhale. Pea, our grandmother, compared to a helpless mammy. I want to speak up. I want to say that she looks nothing like Jemima, and that even when she would serve the syrup to us, she always warned us about both its sugar and image content. I want to stop handshaking, nodding, “yes ma’aming,” and acting—but Pea’s bop, her pinch, and her scorn echo in my head like Bach. I cannot escape them, even when it’s Pea’s own memory at stake.

I feel my lips curl upwards into a smile. I hear a chuckle escape them. It escapes because that’s what chuckles do at house parties when a funny joke is told, even if the joke isn’t funny.

Connor throws her glass in the sink, chipping its brim. Leaving her bag, she pushes past my colleagues at the kitchen door, and storms outside. She moved so quickly that her absence is only felt when the breeze creeps in after her departure. I politely excuse myself and follow her outside.

“Connor!” I yell against the wind.

“What!” she snaps, “How are you different? First me with the artist, and now Pee with your,” she pauses and mimics the tightening of a bowtie before spitting, “Professor. She called Pee a mammy. A fuckin mammy.”

“I’m, I’m sorry,” I stammer back. “I’ve been doing this my whole life. As much as I try, as much as I want to, I can’t just break…” The wind carries away my voice.

“Let me tell you something,” Connor says, stepping closer to beat the wind and ensure her words hit their mark. “It has nothing to do with how long your hair is. Or how many philosophers you can bring up in class. Or whether you can stomach a tattoo. It has nothing to do with your ability to smile at your colleagues when they say some racist shit or laugh when they tell a wack joke.”

She pauses. I wait while the wind howls.

She continues, “It has to do with how much you care about the needle over you. And let me tell you, someone, someone will always have a needle.”

“Connor!” I say, shouting in protest against her and the wind’s threat to drown out my words. “You don’t know what’s at stake! That’s my professor…” My voice fades into the prospective horror.

Connor, squinting against the wind, stares into my eyes.

“No,” she says, pointing her words, almost spitting them, “You don’t know what’s at stake. But you’ll see. You’ll see when you’re sixty-five-years-old, travelling on a path you set, walking with feet you can’t control.”

I open my mouth. I find out I have nothing to say. I close my mouth and drop my head.

“I’m late for Wildcats,” Connor says, not bothering to look at any time piece.

“There’s still a half hour left of the party. Can’t you stay?” I find some words to cling to.

“There’s traffic. And I have to call a cab.”

I open my mouth, but she cuts me off, “No. I don’t want to wait inside.”

I nod, hoping that she won’t stay mad for long, but knowing that this time she will.

Her red dress turns and walks away. As her afro, unfazed by the wind, descends the stairs, goosebumps race down my spine.

***

The rest of the party lasts for about thirty uneasy minutes and forty-six seconds. When I come back inside, Jack and Professor Christianson ask me why Connor left so abruptly. I tell them she had a friend’s party to get to. They raise their eyebrows. I’m aware that this explanation is inadequate for them. But I’m too tired to offer another one. I’m tired because for the remaining thirty minutes, I’m thinking to myself. I’m thinking about whether Connor is right. I’m thinking whether my efforts to be more like Connor are insufficient so long as I still care about what my professors and colleagues will think—so long as I still care about the needle hanging over my skin. When I offer Professor Christianson this inadequate response, she asks if Connor is okay. But I think she’s not asking about Connor’s wellbeing as much as telling me something is wrong with her.

“Yeah. She’s okay,” I say. I hope she is okay. I wish I could say I knew, but I don’t know. And I’ve always known how she felt. That’s what makes my skin shrink. It’s what makes me uneasy. It’s what makes me feel as if my hallway of an apartment somehow found room to split down the middle and I’m doing my very best not to slip into the divide.

“Well thank you so much for, you know, opening your house and welcoming us all,” Professor Christianson says, changing the subject. “You’ve been just so, accommodating.”

Connor would balk at this compliment. But I’m not Connor, so I say thank you and smile. Part of me smiles to cover up the fact that goosebumps still line my spine although the wind no longer wails around me. Part of me smiles because I think that Professor Christianson likes me, which will help me in the program. Part of me smiles because I think Connor is wrong.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you in class on Monday,” she says, shaking my hand. I tell her that I, too, am looking forward to it.

After these thirty minutes and forty-six seconds shrink out, my guests too, make their way to the door. On their way out, they shake my hand and tell me how great of a time they had at my party. I thank them for coming and wish them a safe trip home. When the guests are gone, and my house is empty and pleasant, and the wind has rested for the evening, I sit at my cocktail table. Right under Pea’s portrait. I wonder if Connor is having a good time at Wildcats. I hope she is. I pour myself some of the rum Connor left in the kitchen into a wine glass. I sip it slowly and silently as the four voices of Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor” echo through my apartment. I wince as the record needle scratches behind me.

Lincoln Mitchell moved to Philadelphia in 2019 to begin his career as an attorney at the Public Defender Association of Philadelphia. He originally is from Oklahoma and is the son of a Jamaican immigrant and a Black American. He has a younger sister/best friend, Logan, who recently gave birth to his cherished niece, Zaria. In 2021, he too became a parent to his adored toy poodle, Lacienega Poodlevardes, whom he fondly calls Lala or Miss Mommas. In his spare time he enjoys developing specialty lattes, exploring cultures through their cuisines, and going to the gym to listen to UK rap while texting his homeboys. He strongly believes that prisons should be abolished, everyone deserves grace and forgiveness, and that proof of God’s presence on earth is in mangoes and a bent-over laughing fit.

My grandmother fancied herself a glamorous woman, an old-fashioned movie star, but in fact she weighed seventy-nine pounds and had ropes of veins running up her arms.  She rarely changed out of her front-zip housecoat with crumpled, used tissues in one pocket and a pack of Pall Malls in the other. Her hearing aid squealed on and off as she neared various electric household appliances and she’d grimace as she screwed her fingers into her ear to shift the broadcast channel.

The vestigial efforts she made at grooming were rudimentary.  Each day she brushed her teeth with Comet cleanser to scour the tea stains and cigarette tar off of her teeth.  She wore shiny gold bedroom slippers that slapped her cracked heels when she walked like flip-flops, and she tucked the badly dyed wisps of her hair under a crooked wig.  Her fingernails, though thick and ridged, were always neatly painted.  By me.

I loved her.

My grandmother had terminal pancreatic cancer and was taking longer to die than the doctors had expected. Every day after school and on weekend nights I got to stay with her to make sure she drank her prescribed Brompton’s Mixture and no more. Brompton’s Mixture was a combination of potable morphine, cocaine, whiskey, and honey, invented at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London for the most ill of patients. I had a key to the fridge where it was kept in Dixie cups, and I knew it was important that I kept the key on a string around my neck. I did not know that she had become a morphine addict.

She and I slept in her room in two twin beds, her close to the hallway, and I in the bed by the window.  I was a light sleeper, so I woke when she roused to have a cigarette or to walk the house in the night.  By the time she switched on the bedside table light, grabbed her Pall Malls, smacked the pack against her palm, placed a cigarette between her dried lips and flicked open the metal lighter lid, I was sitting up.

“Go back to bed,” she said, her voice dusky.

“I’m up anyway.”

“You’re too young.  Go back to bed.”  She pulled the flame to the tip of her cigarette, illuminating her face while she drew a deep breath.

“You shouldn’t smoke in bed,” I said, sitting across from her, our pale knees touching in the narrow aisle.  She finished her inhale and held it for a moment, then blew it forcefully to the side, away from me.

“I know.”  Then leveling her gaze, “Don’t you ever let me catch you smoking.”

We had our most peaceful conversations in the middle of the night while she smoked, nylon nightgown hanging off of her bony shoulders, heels tucked up under her.

“You know, I would have slept with Jack Kennedy if he had asked me.”

“Who is Jack Kennedy?” I asked, lying down because she made me.

“Oh, for goodness sake!  What do they teach you in school?” Tap, tap, the ash dropped into the glass ashtray.

“Nothing about a guy called Jack.  Who was he?”

“The president who put the man on the moon.  Honestly.”

“That was John Kennedy,” I said, emphasis on the John.

“Not to me, he wasn’t.” And then as if to herself, “Not to me.”

On some nights, I could get her to tell me a story.

“Tell me the story about the Green Dress.”

“I don’t want to tell that story.”

“Tell it.”

“I’ve told you that a million times.”

“Tell me again.”

“Well.”  A pause.  A gathering.   “My mother. Your Great Grandma Crick.  She was a cruel woman.  She made me work in the bakery from four in the morning until four in the afternoon when I was a young girl.  Younger than you.  And she made me sell eggs in the street like we were poor.  And we weren’t poor.  And the boys would tease me and chase me, so I ran.”

She crushed her cigarette, turned out the light and lay down on her side facing me, sliding her hands between her knees.

“Then what happened?” My whisper seemed loud in the stillness of the dark.

“I could run.  You know, like you can run, like the wind.  And I could dance.  All the boys wanted to dance with me.  So one Saturday, there was going to be the big dance.  I kept some of the money I’d earned from the bakery and bought a green dress.  Made with a bodice.  You know.  And silk.  So I laid it out on my bed that morning before I went to the bakery.”  I could hear her breathe.  Slow and even.  Her small body looked like a child’s in the dark.  “When I came home, Great Grandma Crick had taken scissors and cut my dress into a million pieces.”

“Did you go?  To the dance?”  I knew the answer.

“I’ll tell you where I went,” she said.  “I went over to Aunt Rhoda’s house and lived with her.”  She sighed and rolled on her back. “Aunt Rhoda didn’t cut up people’s dresses.”

We had some of our most expansive silences as she sat up in bed, left hand pressed into the mattress to support her, right hand holding her cigarette.  I listened for the little bah sound of her lips letting go of the filter, the weighty pause as she held onto the smoke, and the long fffff of her exhale.  Sometimes she stalled, gazing softly into the distance while her ash grew longer and longer, finally dropping unnoticed onto the carpet.

One night the pain struck violently. I was sleeping and I heard her yelling. “Oh-oh!”  She was in her bed in a ball on her side.  She yelled, “Oh!”  Both arms, crossed over her belly, knees up to her nose.  She rocked and yelled.

“Nana!”

“Oh!  Oh!”

“What’s wrong?”  I leaned over her in the dark. She flailed her arms like a blind woman, hitting me in the side of the face.  I ducked and put my hand on her side to reassure.  She grabbed my fingers, grinding bone on bone. Though tiny, she was strong, made of piano wire and gristle. “I am here,” I whispered.  Her eyes were wild and unfocused. She shook her head back and forth. I said, “My hand,” and she let go and rolled onto her side, groaning.

After enough time had passed that I thought she had fallen back to sleep, she got up and ran, doubled over.  I chased her down the three quick steps into the sunken living room and hugged her to the floor.

“I can’t hear!” she shouted.  “Get me my hearing aid!  Get me my hearing aid!!!!”

I told her, “There’s nothing to hear.”

“Get me my hearing aid,” she yelled, so I ran to her bedside, yanked the drawer, snatched the hearing aid and ran back.

She put it in.  It whined.  She jammed it deeper.  I shouted, “Let me do it,” and grabbed her wrist, forcing her arm away from her ear.  We stayed like that, a stalemate, an accidental arm wrestle until I felt the fear and strength drain from her and found myself holding her limp arm aloft, the loose skin gathered around my too firm grasp, her pulse pounding louder beneath my clenched fingertips. I softened my grip and guided her hand to her lap. “I’m going to take it out and fix it,” I told her, breathless, and she turned her face slowly, as though watching a distant bird fly along the horizon, and I realized she was offering me her ear.  I removed the flesh-colored aid and flicked the miniature button to off. “There.” I replaced it. “Better?”  She nodded, pushing it deeper with her fingers.  Breathing heavily, I hugged her to me, pressing my forehead into hers.

I had been staying at my grandparents’ home my whole life. My parents had had four children born close together, boom boom boom boom, so my grandparents had moved up the street to help out while my father put himself through night school.  On the weekends, my older brother Drew and I went over to my grandparents’ house so my mother could focus on the babies.  My grandfather, Da, was alive back then, walking around in a pressed white T-shirt, grey Sears trousers with the permanent seam down each leg, and a worn leather belt.  He was a fix-it man when he wasn’t working at the Mill, so he and Drew built and dismantled things with tools while I spent my time with Nana.

My grandmother was bewitching back then, thin when other people’s grandmothers were heavy, modern when other grandmothers were dowdy.  She decorated her house in gold-painted furniture and dressed up every day.  In her bedroom bureau, she had a drawer exclusively for belts and another exclusively for scarves.  Her foot was a size five, which, according to her, was a sign of a delicate and glamorous nature, so her closet held little high-heeled shoes I outgrew in third grade.

I didn’t care that she rarely left the house except for bowling night, or that she only had an eighth-grade education and didn’t like to read.  All I knew was this:  When she asked me what made me happy, I would tell her lots of presents on birthdays and Christmas.  When I asked her what made her happy, she would say, “I’m happy when you’re happy,” and I knew it, in my young heart, to be the truth.

The living room clock in my grandmother’s house was imitation gilded gold and rococo, consistent with her fancy but inexpensive taste.  At night, the outside light from the lamppost illuminated the clock face through the large picture window.  On the bad nights, the clock reminded us how long we had to wait until her next dose.

“Well?” my grandmother asked once she stopped worrying her hearing aid.

“An hour and twenty minutes,” I told her as we collected ourselves from the living room floor.  We moved the short distance to the lounge chair that faced the window.  I had inherited her narrow hips so we could sit, side by side, between the cushioned arms.

She reached for her cigarettes and slid the lighter out of the cellophane wrapper.  Her lower leg bounced nervously.

“Are you cold?” I asked.  “Do you need your house coat?”  She flicked the lighter and leaned toward the flame.

“No,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.  A car drove by under the streetlight outside and we both watched its red tail-lights disappear around the curve. “You know,” she said, snapping her lighter shut, “I wanted you to be the flower girl in Debbie’s wedding.”  She dropped her head to the palm of her free hand and began to weep.  “Aunt Ida told me you would be the flower girl.”  Aunt Ida was not my aunt and Debbie was not my cousin, but we always referred to them that way.  Debbie had gotten married nine years earlier.  “She told me you would be.  She said you would be the flower girl.”

“But Nana, you know I never wanted to.” I stroked her bony back, trying to rub the ancient regret away.

“Don’t be silly, every girl wants to be a flower girl.”  She looked at me with watery eyes.

“Not me,” I said.  “Flower girls have to wear dresses,” and she registered the truth, at least for that moment, and looked down.  Digging under her seat cushion, she pulled out some old, crumpled tissues and wiped her eyes.

“You always were such a tomboy,” she said, blowing her nose.  “You know your mother had to write to the school about that.”

“I know.”

“They didn’t like that you wouldn’t wear the dresses, but your mother said, ‘You’re either going to let her wear the pants, or you’re going to see her underwear because she’s always upside down.’”  She elbowed me and smiled through her tears.  “On the monkey bars.  You know.”   She chuckled to herself and looked out the window.  “I wonder what they thought of that note.  Stupid men.”

The living room clock ticked loudly.  I glanced at it.

After a while, she looked down at her diamond rings, heavy, swinging around her bony fingers.  “You know these were Great Grandma Crick’s.”  She twisted one off and handed it to me.  “They bought this one in Atlantic City.  Did I ever tell you that?”

“No,” I said, but I had heard it as well.

“This was the one she got after he beat her up.  Black and blue.  He took her to Atlantic City to make it up to her and bought a cheap diamond ring.  And she took it.”  I tried it on for a moment and felt its uncomfortable heft, then handed it back, placing it in her warm palm.  “That’s right.  Don’t let it touch your skin.  It might burn you.”

I smiled.  She took a drag on her cigarette.  “Horrible woman.”

We both looked at the ticking clock.

Over the next forty-five minutes I watched my grandmother slowly deflate.  Though she had been leaning on me before, I could feel her weight, heavy now, begin to sag and it became an effort to hold myself upright.  Her shoulder jabbed into my ribs and her head rested on my upper arm.  Her fingers hung so loose around her cigarette I worried the butt would drop onto the floor.  My grandmother, wrestling just an hour before, became limp, boneless.  Sleeping, but not.  A glistening strand of saliva stretched from her lower lip to her lap and I snapped it with my finger.

“Let’s go to bed,” I said, kissing her forehead and working my way to face her.  Heaving her up, I tucked my arm under her knees and lifted.  She drooped and slid, light for a person but heavy for her size, her dead weight folding her in half.  I had to stop twice on the short trip to bolster her with my thigh.

She poured off me as I lay her down, immediately curling into a ball, a pill bug.  After covering her with the bedspread, I set my digital watch alarm for 6:30 a.m., her next dose, and lay on my side, facing her.   I slid my hands between my knees and watched as her back rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell.

“Toast?” I asked her, as she padded into the kitchen only twenty minutes after her Brompton’s, ready for the day in her housecoat, her lips red with lipstick and her wig on straight. I grabbed the bread out of the breadbox and put two slices of Wonder into the toaster.

“Thank you,” she said, leaning to the side to reach for her Pall Malls. She sat in one of the two chrome chairs around the little table. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“I did. Did you?”  The casual morning banter.

“Yes,” she explained with a cigarette pinched in one corner of her mouth while she fished in her other pocket for her lighter.

The toast popped and the acrid smell of blackened bread filled the air. I took the stick of butter from the large refrigerator and cut off a chunk.  I never liked the buttering of my grandmother’s toast: pressing cold, hard butter onto crumbling burnt toast.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked as I placed the toast in front of her.

“Hang out with you.”

“Oh, honey.  Don’t waste your time,” she said, “What about a boyfriend?”

“Uch,” I grunted, getting my Cheerios and bowl out of the cupboard.

“Don’t ‘uch’ me.  You’re a beautiful girl.  It’s the only thing I ever wanted; to live to see you married.”   I turned on her.  She waved me away before I could get started.  “It’s wonderful to fall in love.  You deserve that in your life.”  She looked off to the side and sucked on her cigarette, drawing in her cheeks and filling her lungs with smoke to make her point.

The kettle whistled and I filled her teacup, adding a Lipton tea bag and watching the tannin-colored smoke bleed into the water.

“Dad tells me Great Grandpa Crick was no better than Great Grandma Crick.”

“He was a drunk,” she conceded, placing her cigarette in the ashtray between us.  A single plume of white smoke rose straight up then swirled in an invisible air current.  “But he wasn’t cruel like she was.  Your Great Grandma Crick, she was a jealous woman.   If your grandfather hadn’t come along to take me away, I’d probably still be scrubbing pots in the bakery basement.”

“Because you were beautiful.”

“Because I was beautiful,” she agreed.  Old Great Grandma Crick with her bulbous hernia from a lifetime of lifting copper pots, knuckles the size of horse chestnuts and lower eyelids that peeled away from her eyeballs to reveal their pink interior in a way that made me feel as though I were looking at someone’s insides.  She was so ugly.  No wonder there was strife.

“Dad says Great Grandma Crick chased Great Grandpa Crick around the dining room table with a butcher knife,” I announced, angling for some information about family lore I’d heard at home.

“It was a paring knife,” she confirmed, carefully pulling her red lips away from her teeth to take a bite of toast. “But he’s right.  She did.”

“No way.”

“It’s true.”  She set her toast down.

“But why?”  I had been certain the knife story was myth.

“He was an embarrassment,” she said, as though this were obvious. “After he’d get the early morning baking done, he’d go to the bar and get himself drunk.  Then he’d stagger up the street from pole to pole in the middle of the day.  She didn’t like that.”  She zigzagged her hand back and forth, pole-to-pole, pole-to-pole.

“I don’t think I’d like that either,” I said, tipping my bowl to my mouth to drink the milk.

“Oh, she didn’t care that he was drunk.” She flashed disapproval; Nana wasn’t one for bad table manners.  “She just didn’t like that he did it out in the open in the middle of the day.  Great Grandma Crick said it didn’t look good.  She said people would buy their bread from someone whose husband didn’t stagger up the street in broad daylight.  She always worried about appearances.  She always worried about the money.”

“I remember her and her money,” I said, standing. “She had a penny jar in her kitchen cabinet behind the doily drapes. Whenever we went to visit, she would show it to me and say, ‘I’m saving all this for you. It’s our little secret.’”

“Well?” Nana smirked.

“Well what?” I asked.

“Did she ever give it to you?”

“No.”

“There you go,” she said as she stood, stubbing out a perfectly good cigarette.

We sat. We talked. We laughed without a care or a glance to the Brompton’s fridge.  After a while, though, she became fatigued and walked to her room, stooped and holding her arm in front of her abdomen as though protecting it.  I followed.

There, I helped her remove her housecoat and sat her on the bed.  She paused to catch her breath, then lay down on her side.  I gently pulled her wig from her head, careful not to pull her hair, and set it on the skull-shaped Styrofoam stand on her dresser, stabbing a single straight pin through the top to keep it in place. I filled her water glass and placed her cigarettes on the night table.  Because it was time, I walked back in the kitchen and removed the string from around my neck, careful not to catch the key in my hair.

The smell was overwhelming to me when I opened the refrigerator.  Brompton’s mixture was musky, strongly alcoholic, viscous, and dark amber in color.  The Dixie cups in which each dose was kept had softened a bit where the liquid had been, as if the contents had been eating away at the internal structure.

I gently grabbed a single cup and closed the door, locking it.  I walked carefully to Nana’s room, holding the cup out in front of me, as though it was precious and toxic, because it was.  When I got to her room, she was cramped up, eyes closed and moaning quietly.   I sat on the edge of her bed and placed my hand on her shoulder.  Her flesh was loose on her bones, warm and familiar.

“I have it,” I said.  She opened her eyes slightly and began to push herself up.  I put the cup on the night table.

“Let me help you,” I said as I reached around her to pull her up to sitting.

“Oh, honey,” she apologized, forehead on my shoulder to prop herself.
“Shhh.”

I took the cup and held it out to her.  She steadied herself on the edge of the bed and then reached.

She tossed it back quickly both because it was vile and because she had learned that it would bring her relief within minutes.  My grandmother, who casually chewed Excedrin, shuddered with revulsion at its unmatched bitterness.  She crushed the cup and kept it in her hand as she lay back down, her nightgown twisting around her as she rolled to face away from me.

“Want some water?” I suggested. “It won’t be so nasty.”  She waved it away with the slightest gesture of her hand, so I sat and rubbed her back in circles, waiting quietly for the medicine to numb her body.

Over a period of twenty minutes, she unfurled so slowly that you might not have noticed it if you stared only at her.  But if you looked away for a while, then looked back, you would see that eventually she lay on her back, ringed hand resting gently on her stomach.  I waited until she was still for quite some time before reaching across her for the crumpled Dixie cup that had fallen from her hand onto the mattress. I dropped it into the plastic wastebasket filled with tissues and crushed cups.  I tidied her covers and switched off the light.

I bent to kiss her soft, lined forehead, moments earlier so furrowed in pain, and smelled a rotting whiff of the Brompton’s on her breath.  I grabbed her free hand and kissed the back of it, then rubbed my own kiss off.  Her nails looked good.  I was getting better at the polishing. Her eyes opened just a bit.

“Hey,” I said.  She smiled ever so slightly at me, but she was no longer very present.

“I’ll be back in a bit.  Go to sleep now.”  Her eyes began to fill with water.  I reached across and took a fresh tissue from the box.

“You’re good now,” I said, dabbing.  She reached up and grabbed my arm, squeezing me toward her with a strength I could not believe.

“I love you most of all,” she mouthed.

“I love you most of all,” I said, and watched her eyes slowly close.

And I waited with her there, until her grip loosened completely.

Kathy Smith grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania and earned B.S. in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. She went on to earn an MBA from University of California at Berkeley. Though she still dabbles in finance, her greatest joy is being a mom of three, followed by writing. Her work has appeared in Apiary, and she has won two honorable mention awards from Glimmer Train. She resides in Bryn Mawr with her beloved husband and snoring bulldogs.

There was a man in the ballroom of the Sheraton wearing a skirt.

Mr. Salameh watched the man approach the buffet. He still couldn’t believe he was at a wedding—his son’s wedding—where you had to stand in line and fetch your own food. So many insults, so many things wrong with this wedding.  A daughter-in-law who couldn’t pronounce her new husband’s name. A wedding that cost a year’s salary. A fight with his wife. A DJ who played American music that sounded like a video game. A celebration less than forty days after they’d buried his mother. The mass for her soul hadn’t even been said, and here was her only grandson, dancing a strange dance with his skinny wife, flapping their arms like terrified birds.

And now, this man.

A man with a red beard and bare legs, at his son’s wedding, eating pork on a stick istaghfurallah.

“Meghan’s family is proud of their culture, just like we are,” Raed had argued. “You have to respect that.”

But they had a culture too. He’d asked Raed for Arabic music, and that’s when his future daughter-in-law revealed her dark side. “My aunt is a harpist and she’s playing a special song,” she insisted, her blue eyes staring boldly at Mr. Salameh, momentarily breaking her sweet  act. Mr. Salameh wasn’t stupid. He’d been in America for thirty years. He knew the elusiveness of delicate white women, how they drew Arab boys to them like planets to a fiery star, how they turned their young men into blushing, stammering fools. He saw how Meghan, with her pink nails, her slim wrists, her tiny waist, transformed Raed, his football-playing, lawyer son, his only son—the child he’d poured all his energy and love into, the child he’d prayed—well, no matter all that now because like a witch, she changed him from a proud racehorse into a mule that lowers itself to the ground for its back to be loaded. And while she was controlling him with her glossy smiles, she’d say, “Culture isn’t everything. Ray and I are both Leos,” like it was such a big fucking deal. One-twelfth of the world are Leos, Mr. Salameh wanted to shout at her every time she said it.

All around him, people talked lightly, and laughed. My mother is dead, he wanted to shout. Stop clinking your glasses. But they continued talking about the tall, dark, handsome groom and the bride who looked like a model. The man in the skirt was back in the buffet line, piling his plate with so much chicken, steak, and pork—so much meat, these Americans, and then they wonder why they’re always so tired. Mr. Salameh thought Raed should count him as four guests, not one.

Mrs. Salameh approached, looking angelic, even though he knew she was still upset. His beautiful wife, in a sky-blue satin dress. You’ll be overdressed, he’d warned her. They’ll all be wearing jeans probably. She didn’t care. He’s my only son, she’d said. And I’m going to look like the mother of the groom, she’d declared.

“Are you going to eat?” his wife asked, slipping her hand into his as he strolled to the bar and ordered another drink. It felt nice to speak to someone in Arabic.

“Are you still angry?” he asked her.

“You need to eat,” she replied, wearing her patient smile. She indulged him a lot and he was grateful to her.

“This whole thing…everything is so rushed.”

“They had to marry before Lent,” his wife said calmly. “You know that. It was bad timing about your mother.”

“She’s only been dead three weeks,” he said, shaking his head. “And by the way….There is a man here wearing a dress.”

“Allah yerhamha,” she said. “I miss your mother too.”

“They should have waited. It’s not even been forty days.”

“If they waited, it would be Lent. No weddings during Lent.” That was the voice she used when she was annoyed with him, and it was his signal to stop. Sometimes he wanted her to drop the serene veil she always wore. For her to be as angry as he was.

“The living,” he continued, “used to pause for the dead. Out of respect.”

“Let me put you a plate. You should eat something. How many drinks have you had?”

“I’m not eating.” Something caught his attention. “Look…there he is. Do you see him?”

She ignored his question. “People are watching. You’re the father of the groom.”

“Do you see what that man is doing?”

She finally turned and looked. “I saw him. He’s very nice. His wife is the aunt. The harpist. We haven’t met her yet.”

“Why do we have to have their music but not our music?” Mr. Salameh asked.

“Everyone can tell that you’re not happy.”

“I’m not happy. You can see the bride’s tits right down the front of her damn dress. I’m scared to stand next to her in case something falls out—”

“Khalas.” Her voice was firm, so he snapped his mouth shut. She put her arm through his. “I’m going to fix you a plate. And then we’re going to chat with Raed and maybe take some pictures. And then we’re going to smile and shake hands with everyone. We will mingle. You will look happy.”

“There’s nobody here whose hand I want to shake.”

“Your nephew Marcus came. We should say hello to him. I’m glad he did, even though you wouldn’t let me invite his sister.”

“Her own father doesn’t talk to her. Why would I invite her?”

Mrs. Salameh muttered Allah give me patience, dropped his arm, and headed towards the buffet line. As he watched her walk away, he noticed Meghan’s father approaching. Raed’s father-in-law. It was too late to escape, so he drained his glass as the man trudged towards him. His hair was white and stuck out at all angles on his head, and his glasses slipped down his bulbous nose. He looked like a white Husni from the Ghawar movies—a man nobody could take seriously, no matter how dressed up he got.

“I think they need us at the front for more photos, Wah-leed.”

“Ok. Ok. I go get my wife.”

“Just the fathers now, I think.” He clapped Mr. Salameh on the back and pulled him toward the head table, where Raed and Meghan stood. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes.”

“It’s ok that we had alcohol, right?”

“Yes, of course.” He held up his own glass. “I tell you before we are Christians, not Muslims.” As if to make a point, he beckoned to a waiter, handed over his empty glass, and took a fresh one off the tray.

“Gotta always ask, you know. This way the culture doesn’t become a problem.” He was only half-listening to Mr. Salameh anyway, waving at other guests. Before they reached the front of the room, the man stopped and waved his hand around. “Like some of your guests here, they’re wearing head scarves. That’s not gonna be something Raed surprises my Meghan with, right? In a few years?”

“We are not Muslims.” Mr. Salameh’s head started to hurt. “These are our friends.”

“Right.”

“But our guests—they are not forced to wear.” He nodded towards Mrs. Hamdi, who stood to the side with her husband. “That lady right there, she is pediatrician. She run the whole clinic at Bayview. Their daughter, she is soccer player. She play for big Maryland team.”

“She wears that thing while she plays?”

“Yes.”

“Some things are ok. Some things…I gotta ask.” Meghan’s father shrugged. “This country is changing. Not all the new people coming in are like you, you know.”

Mr. Salameh thought about his mother, who was so kind and sweet and would have still looked at this man and muttered, “Kalb ibn kalb.” He glanced up at his son Raed, who stood tall besides his elf-wife and wondered, how could he do this to me?

They took the damn picture. The mothers came too. There were more pictures. He drank another glass but saw his wife’s glare and declined another one. More and more people joined the picture: Raed and Meghan’s coworkers, cousins, friends. He wondered who would see this picture in ten years, twenty years. Maybe his grandchildren? In forty years, his great-grandchildren? He wanted them to see him smiling, but not too broadly. He was going to lose his son. He’d already lost him. And if his grandchildren grew up feeling lost in the world, unattached to anything, he wanted them to know that, even before their birth, he had anticipated this, and he had been sad.

“I wish Sitti Fayrouz were here,” Raed told him somberly, as they posed for a father-son picture.

“Is that your grandmother?” his tiny wife asked.

Raed nodded sadly, and everyone made a sympathetic sound, like a rush of emotion, even though they had been dancing something called a curly shuffle a few minutes before.

He wished his son hadn’t said that.

Because now, he was sinking into his memory of those final days in the hospice when she was gasping for breath. He’d sat many long hours in that room with her, just the two of them sheltering from the rest of the world. Over the beeping of her machines, she’d mumbled to him, when she’d thought he was his dead brother, and talked to him so lovingly in her delirium. “I missed you, Michel. Where have you been?” And in his own desperation to comfort her, he’d lied. He’d pretended to be Michel, who could make everyone smile just by walking into a room and who should have been the one to live anyway.

And that’s why, now, Mr. Salameh couldn’t stop himself from replying to his son, “You should have respected her memory, then.”

“Stop, Baba.” Raed said firmly.

“You’re disrespecting her memory. And I don’t even know why I came for this.”

“Waleed.” That was his wife.

“I’m telling you all,” he shouted in Arabic, “that I don’t even know why I am here. There is nothing for me at this wedding.”

Several people tried to calm him. Then he heard, “Uncle Waleed.” That was his nephew, Marcus, who barely talked to them anymore. “Let’s take this somewhere else.”

“Why are you always bossing people around?” he asked Marcus, who gave him a dry look like he wanted to pick him up and throw him. He could too, the beast, he was taller than Raed and even wider and more muscular.

“This isn’t the time.”

“I guess we should be glad you’re even here,” Mr. Salameh shouted.

“I’ll give you one warning.”

“Or what? One warning? For what?”

Raed whispered something hurriedly to his fairy wife, who walked away with her father, clutching his arm as if she couldn’t stand on her own skinny legs.

“Are you drunk?” Raed asked him.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Salameh. “I am as drunk as Peter at the Last Supper.” He yelled towards Raed’s father-in-law. “Peter, you hear? Not Mohammad! Peter!”

Marcus rolled his eyes.

“You’re mad at us because we don’t talk to your sister? Isn’t that it?”

Marcus became very quiet.

“Nobody talks to her.” Mr. Salameh had him now. What could he say? “Why would we? She’s not welcome here. She’s shacking up with her boyfriend…” he shouted, getting close to his nephew.

The punch hit him in the stomach. Later, his wife would say Marcus had spared him his face. All he knew in the moment was that he was suddenly lying on the floor of the ballroom. When he registered the gasps and felt the pain shoot through his abdomen, he understood: Marcus had knocked him flat on his ass.

Within minutes, there was a stampede of people to the front of the hall. Some lifted him, others squawked nervously like chickens. “What happened?” “Why did the big guy hit the groom’s father?” “Should we call the police?”

“No bolice. No bolice,” he heard his wife imploring someone. “Everything eez ok.”

“We’re ok, everybody,” Raed said. “Not a fight. Just an accident. My father tripped.”

The muttering changed as people who had not really seen the punch began to absorb and repeat the new story.

And that was it. Marcus, who was heading out the door, was no longer the aggressor. The story morphed quickly: he, Mr. Salameh, was a drunk fool who’d embarrassed himself at his only son’s wedding.

“I’m leaving,” he announced, standing up. “This is not right. This hasn’t been right from the beginning.” He walked out slowly; his hand pressed to his side. It hurt to breathe.

Raed didn’t follow him out.

When he turned back to look, he saw Raed at the front, looking angry and disappointed, his arm around his wife to comfort her.

His wife and a few others did follow him. He told them, after a few minutes, that he was fine. They wandered off, including Mrs. Salameh, who said, “I’m going to check on Raed.” Alone, he trudged through the Sheraton’s carpeted hallways until he found himself in an empty lounge room. He stood under a large chandelier, assembled from thousands of glass beads, each one reflecting the light to look bigger and more important than it really was. The chandelier cascaded down into a cone shape, like a big light ready to beam him up to heaven. Maybe that wasn’t where he’d end up, he thought, looking around at the ornate room, lined with tall vases of flowers, plush carpeting, rich sofas and chairs. He slumped onto one couch and stared up at that conical chandelier, which seemed to be pointed down, cocked, and aimed right at his heart.

It was a few seconds later when he heard the music. A soft, rippling sound, like a qanoun. He shook his head, but it was still there. He looked around the lounge, he was alone, but he realized it was coming from a side room. He stood up and lurched unsteadily toward what looked like a break room for employees. Inside, a group of servers, wearing black vests and pants with white shirts, stood listening reverently to a woman sitting behind a large harp, hugging it as if it were a child.

He didn’t know the song she was playing and humming, but it soothed him. And then she looked up, stared into his eyes, and he gasped loudly.

“You,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Hello,” she said quietly, tilting her head to the side just as she used to do before. “What a coincidence.”

“My God. I thought I will never see you again.”

“I do see patients’ families sometimes. It’s always nice to reconnect.” She spoke softly, stood up and held out her hands.

He gripped them and remembered how warm they’d felt, rubbing his back, holding the prayer beads on his rosary for him when he’d collapsed into sobs. They were not smooth hands, even though her face looked young. Her hands were worn, like supple leather that has been broken. They’d held his mother’s hands during an injection, they’d lifted his mother by the arms, held a stethoscope to her lungs, to her back. They’d dipped a sponge into a shallow bucket to clean his mother’s legs and feet, and they’d run a comb through his mother’s long, uncut, white hair. And in the end, they’d pulled the sheet gently over his mother’s contorted face.

“The groom is my son.”

“Ah. The bride is my husband’s cousin. I promised her I’d play for her. It’s an old family song.”

“Your husband…he’s out there?”

“Yes. Did you meet him? He has a long beard.”

“Yes. I see him. He is wearing a skirt?”

She laughed softly. “I always remember our conversations so fondly.” She was indulging him, he could tell, the way his wife did. “It’s called a kilt. I’m sure you’ve seen one before. Our family plaid is the design he’s wearing.”

It’s still a skirt, he thought, but this time, he kept it in his own mind. There suddenly didn’t seem to be any pleasure, any benefit to shocking someone, to packing his thoughts into a bullet and firing it into his listener. He felt, so strongly right then, that he would rather hurt himself, than insult this woman.

“Thank you for what you did. For my mother.”

“It was a difficult few weeks. And I’m glad I had a chance to know her. She was lovely.”

He squeezed her hand again, his throat thick, but his mind clear.

“Will you come and listen to me play?”

“Everyone in there.” He shrugged. “Nobody happy with me.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“I’d love for you to hear the song, though.” She patted his shoulder. “Won’t you come and listen?”

He did, sitting just inside the door at a vacant table. He watched and listened as she fluttered her hands over the strings, pulling out a lovely, echoing sound, along with her pretty voice. He’d walked in on her once singing to his mother, he remembered—the Ave Maria. He watched as people in Meghan’s family stood and listened reverently to her. Mrs. Salameh’s head was craned, looking around the room for him. I’m back here, he wanted to tell her. I’m ok. I’m listening.

Susan Muaddi Darraj won the American Book Award and the AWP Grace Paley Prize for her short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home. Her writing has been recognized with a Ford Fellowship from USA Artists and an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. In January 2020, Capstone Books launched her debut children’s chapter book series, Farah Rocks, for which she won the Arab American Book Award. Susan grew up in South Philadelphia and now lives in Baltimore, where she teaches fiction writing at The Johns Hopkins University.

Do you need instructions? (Y/N)

>n

You wake up to yelling from downstairs, just like yesterday. You find your glasses on the nightstand and feel the world come back into focus. Your room has gotten progressively filthier since you arrived here. There was a point, only a few months ago, when you could still navigate the mess to find what you needed—deodorant, misplaced socks, the expensive calculator required for Trig. But now, five months in, anything that falls to the ground is as good as gone.

Beside you in bed is your laptop, still on from the night before. This might be the only object that will never be lost to the heap. You don’t know what you’d do without it.

> open laptop

The computer powers out of Sleep Mode. You lean in and study the screen, trying to remember where you left off.

Before you can read any further, you’re interrupted by more screaming from downstairs. “Are you awake?!”

> ignore

You turn back to the laptop and begin reading.

The game opens in a top-secret underground prison somewhere in the middle of Kansas. There’s a long description of how oppressive the room feels. The player doesn’t know why he’s been imprisoned—something about a shadowy organization of elites intent on world domination. You remember this being better.

You hear footsteps in the hallway, each one louder than the last. When they stop, Pop swings open the door. “You’re late!” He’s still yelling, even though you’re now in the same room. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

> say “i guess i overslept”

“I guess I overslept,” you say.

“Well, now you’re awake.” His voice is softer now, and more difficult to disregard. “Put on some clothes and grab some food.” As he walks back downstairs, you close the laptop, find your bookbag amidst the wreckage on the floor, and get dressed.

> go to the kitchen

Pop’s at the stove, cracking eggs over his cast-iron pan. “So what’s with this sleep pattern,” he says. It’s technically a question, but he delivers it as a statement. You’re not sure how to provide an answer. You’re not even sure he’s looking for one.

> say “i was writing”

“I was writing,” you say.

He cracks another egg. “You seem to think you can get through high school without sleep.”

Up until five months ago, you’d only spent time with Pop on holidays. It wasn’t that you’d disliked him; you hadn’t had any say in the matter. According to your mother, the family was toxic. Anathema. “My dad’s so judgmental,” she always said.

She wasn’t wrong about that. Since you began staying with Pop, he’s made it clear that you need to “shape up,” to “get to working,” to “get serious.” You nod every time he mentions these things, though you’re not sure if he really expects you to change. You’re sixteen. Part of you thinks he knows that you’re not actually listening.

“You need to focus on your schoolwork,” he says now, placing some runny eggs and dry toast in front of you. “And to be able to focus on your schoolwork, you need sleep.”

> eat quickly and head to the bus

You scarf down the plate in silence as Pop drones on about manhood and responsibility and “the defining moments in our lives.” With your mouth still full, you head for the door before he can start his daily lecture about steering clear of your Mom’s mistakes.

The yellow bus pulls up to the corner just as you arrive. As you board, you scan for open seats. Only two remain. There’s one in the back row, where the kids with vape pens sit and blow grape-scented rings, and then there’s the cramped space behind the driver.

> sit behind the driver and take out laptop

You take the seat behind the driver and open your laptop. Almost everyone on the bus is staring at a screen, but they’re watching their favorite YouTubers beg for subscriptions or listening to whiny songs about pharmaceuticals and heartbreak. But you, you’re different. You’re working.

You once tried to explain it all to a classmate, a shy kid with greasy hair you thought might be sympathetic, maybe even interested. It didn’t work.

“It’s a game?” he asked.

You nodded.

“But it’s only words?”

You knew elaborating would be pointless.

> open new doc

You open a new Doc and rack your brain for phrases you’ve heard over the last few days. You type “THE BORDERLINE” at the top of the page and stare at the way it sits against the white background. Your cursor blinks, like it’s taunting you to press Delete.

You ignore that impulse and instead try to imagine where the story might open. You try to imagine the options that would be offered to the player. You try to imagine the narratives that would arise from their choices, and the ones after those, and the ones after those. You start to get a bit dizzy, but you keep typing, hoping some of it will make more sense than whatever it was that you’d written the night before.

The bus pulls to a stop. You’ve arrived at school.

> hide

Sorry, I didn’t understand that request.

> hide under seat

Sorry, I didn’t understand that request.

> head to first period

Ms. Andrews is already starting the lesson when you arrive. “I want to give you some time to work on your memoir projects today,” she says as you settle into your desk. It’s an assignment the class started last week. You, however, haven’t written a word. Any minute that Ms. Andrews had allowed for in-class writing, you’d instead spent working on “THE FAMILY,” an adventure game about Giuseppe Crambino’s attempt to take his rightful place at the head of the Crambino Crime Syndicate. You’d been twenty rooms in when you realized you didn’t know anything about the mob. Demoralized, you’d pressed Ctrl+A and deleted the whole thing. The fifteen thousand words you’d written had suddenly vanished and were replaced by an unvarnished white space.

“Alright,” Ms. Andrews says, “let’s get to work!”

> open the borderline

You take out your laptop, power it back from Sleep Mode, and reopen the Doc containing “THE BORDERLINE.” You decide to avoid reading whatever you’d written on the bus. You want to focus on addition, not subtraction, so you begin typing whatever comes to mind. Character sketches, possible rooms, narrative webs—all of it could be valuable, so long as you can find the right place. At this point, the only goal is to try and keep your fingers moving as fast as your train of thought.

When you look up from your frantic typing, you realize Ms. Andrews is behind you. “Are you working on your memoir?” You know this is what she’d call a rhetorical question.

>lie

“Yes,” you say. You know it is not convincing.

She squats beside you, hovering just above the ground so she’s eye-level. “You know, your grandfather told me that this is an interest of yours. Honestly? I think it sounds pretty cool.” She’s smiling, but you can tell it’s forced. The whole thing feels like an act. You imagine Ms. Andrews and Pops in this classroom, sitting across from one another in comically small student desks, hatching this elaborate, pathetic plan to try and solve the problem that is your life.

>don’t respond

You don’t respond.

“You know, I used to play some of these games when I was a kid,” Ms. Andrews says. “Floppy disks. Do you know what those are?”

>say “yes”

“Yes,” you say.

“And what I remember about all of those games is that they’re so focused on storytelling. I mean, if you’re spending all your free time writing these games, then you must do a lot of writing.” She smiles. This is meant to be comforting. “It just makes me think that if you dedicate some of that effort towards the writing assignments for this class, then your grades will improve. I bet your games will get better, too.”

>don’t respond

You don’t respond.

“You know,” she says, lowering her voice so the other students won’t hear. “I really think an assignment like this one, where you’re asked to dive into your past, to sift through your memories, might be especially helpful for you.” She pauses. “I know you’ve been through a lot.”

What you want to say is that your writing has nothing to do with the past. It doesn’t follow a straight line backwards. It doesn’t follow any straight lines. No, your writing is concerned with the present. Your stories suggest that everything could suddenly change at any given moment, that nothing is ever truly fixed, that everything depends on your next move.

>say “can i use the bathroom”

“Can I use the bathroom?” you say. Ms. Andrews nods and moves on to the next student. You almost feel bad. She’s convinced that she’s finally broken through. She really believes you’re headed to the bathroom to have a good cry and throw some cold water on your face, that you’ll return to the room a new man, ready to exorcise all of your pain through the 750 word assignment.

>leave classroom with backpack

When Ms. Andrews begins working with another student, you grab your backpack and walk out the door. The restroom is to the east, a few hundred feet away. Ten feet to the west is an emergency exit you’ve seen teachers use for clandestine smoke breaks.

>take exit door to the west and walk off campus

You step outside the door, amazed by how much fresher the air feels. There were rumors that the school building was still rife with asbestos and now you’re certain they’re true.

You’re not too familiar with the neighborhood around school. You’ve never ventured off-campus for lunch like some of the older kids and you’ve never paid attention to street signs and landmarks on your bus ride in. That time’s always been dedicated to working on the next game.

>use gps on phone to find route home

You pull out your phone and type in Pops’ address. The app starts buffering, the circle icon spinning over and over again, asking you to just wait a little bit longer. As you’re staring, you feel someone approaching. You tell yourself not to panic, but you also begin thinking of plausible excuses for why you’re not in class.

“Do you remember me?” You look up to find an older woman. She’s smiling wide, exposing her unnaturally white teeth. “I was a friend of your mom’s.” She says this like it’s a good thing. You figure they must have fallen out of touch before everything happened.

“Okay,” you say. It comes out of your mouth without thinking. You hope it somehow sounds polite.

“How’s she been?” the woman says.

You don’t know how to answer the question. She’s wearing a navy pantsuit, the kind Mom wore years ago back when she was working the front desk at the law firm on the other side of the city. Maybe Mom knew this woman back then. Maybe this woman still works there. Maybe everyone at the law firm wears pantsuits, and smiles when they ask questions, and reaches the bare minimum of what qualifies as a “functioning adult.” As far as you can tell, the woman seems to have her life together. You wonder if she has kids at home. You wonder what they think of her. You wonder if they appreciate the fact that their mom is simply present, if they realize what a blessing it is to have a reliably boring parent capable of patience and self-control.

The woman’s smile turns to a concerned stare. “Are you all right?” she says.

> run

Where do you want to run?

> home

You turn away from the woman, in what you hope is the direction of Pops’ house. You start with a fast walk, but in just a few steps it turns into a jog. The woman is calling after you, wondering if she said something wrong, but you don’t respond. Soon enough, you’re sprinting, and the laptop in your bag bangs against your spine with every step.

After a few blocks, you stop to catch your breath. You’re hunched over, hands on your knees, panting as you stare at the sidewalk. When your pulse has finally returned to its normal pace, you take in the surroundings: you’re in front of the post office, across from the 4 Points Deli. Pops’ place is just a few minutes from here. You know he’ll be furious when he sees you at home, but you’re too tired to spend the day wandering around town. You’ll suck up your pride and nod along with his lecture, hoping that such obvious appeasement will stop him from throwing you in the car and delivering you back to Andrews’s English class.

When you enter the house, Pops is fast asleep on the living room couch. You realize you’ve never actually considered what he does all day while you’re at school. Observing him there, eyes shut tight and legs propped up on the armrest, you wonder why. His skin seems to be losing its pigment, exposing purple and blue veins that remind you of the human anatomy chapter in your Biology textbook. It’s easy to forget that he’s old enough to require a mid-morning nap, that taking you in is not something he’d planned for when he’d retired almost two decades earlier.

>go to bedroom

You quietly climb the stairs and return to your room. You lie down on the bed and open your laptop. “THE BORDERLINE” is still on the screen and you read the first few lines again, trying to put yourself back in the state-of-mind you’d found before Ms. Andrews had interrupted. But no matter how many times you re-read the opening, you can’t find the words to continue. You’re still thinking about Pops lying on the couch, about the smiling woman from the street, about the awkward way Ms. Andrews whispered, “I know you’ve been through a lot.”

You’re still thinking about Mom. You’re always thinking about Mom.

You close the file for “THE BORDERLINE” and re-open what you’d started last night: “LIKE SPEAKING IN MORSE CODE.” You highlight all of the story’s text, every description of that oppressive underground bunker and the player’s confusion at his situation, and press Delete. All that remains is the title, centered at the top of the Doc, waiting for direction.

“You wake up to yelling from downstairs,” you type, “just like yesterday.”

Kevin M. Kearney’s writing has appeared in Necessary Fiction, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, and elsewhere. He’s a fiction editor at Rejection Letters and a staff writer for PopMatters. He lives and teaches in Philadelphia. More of his work can be found at kevinmkearney.com.