Philadelphia Stories: Publishing Local Writers & Artists
To view The Time on Dali’s Watch, click HERE.
Nick Cialini lives in Lancster, PA where he teaches literature and is a PhD candidate at Temple University. He adheres to Joy Harjo’s principle that “life begins at the kitchen table” by sharing food and games with those who matter most to him. This is his first poetry publication.
I’ve never been less than an hour early for my train. I don’t know if it comes from a sense of heightened preparedness or an ongoing current of anxiety that doesn’t even let me sleep in on weekends. Years of sitting in an airport two hours before another passenger arrived ingrained this practice into me. For so long I hated the limbo of traveling yet sitting still. I ended up counting the seconds as they strolled by to occupy my brain. I don’t mind the time now. It’s a moment to pause. It’s a moment to observe the world around me I take for granted every day.
I walked into 30th street station at 1:15pm. I gazed at arrivals from the entrance way trying to find my train to Connecticut. I took note that it was harder to read this sign now than it was last year. It seemed constantly staring at a computer screen for the last ten odd years had started to wear away at what was once 20/20. I walked towards gate three which housed tracks three and four as my Acela never left from anywhere else. That never stopped me from matching up the numbers on my ticket and the ones on the sign about twice every minute. Look down, 2170. Look up, 2170. Gate three, track four, as usual. It was 1:20 now. I had seventy minutes to kill.
I found a seat on the aged wooden benches that offered lodging to travelers much more homesick than I. I put on my headphones and tuned out the sounds of the mostly empty train station but kept my eyes alert. I watched the people around me lug around their suitcases, make phone calls breaking the news of another delay, while a man filled out some form on a clipboard. A bird had haplessly flown its way into the building. It sat a mere three feet away from me. I took out my camera, but it flew away before the lens could shutter. Almost as if it was telling me the moment was not meant to be captured. Please, I wish only to be a fleeting memory, it seemed to say to me.
The man with the clipboard now stood opposite me. Using the top of his bench as a desk. I noticed his continuous glances and wondered if he wanted me to fill out his survey or sign his petition. Whatever it was, he was furiously working away at it. He grabbed my attention with a wave of his hand and spoke. I couldn’t hear him. I took my headphones off and he repeated the words.
“Can you pull down your mask for me?”
I was confused but automatically obliged.
“Give me a smile.” He enjoined with one of his own.
I replied with a mix of confusion and amusement “Are- are you drawing me?”
He began walking over to sit next to me and motioned for me to return my mask to my face. He sat next to me and began to tell me about himself. Well, more accurately he told me to look him up on my phone. I obliged. I typed “Irving Fields Philadelphia” into the search bar and waited for the results to load. There he was. The photos that appeared depicted him in nearly an identical outfit. The flat cap and scarf he wore perfectly fit the role of artist he was playing. His square frame glasses still hung over his nose, only helping him see the page below him and not my face. His dark skin devoid of wrinkles did not reveal his age but the rasp in his flamboyant voice and grey moustache did.
As if he was reading from a script, he began to recount his story to me, detailing the articles that appeared. He spoke in muffled words, and his story didn’t seem to come to him in chronological order. I did my best to listen carefully and closely as my eyes flickered back from him and the clock hanging on the wall. He wanted me to look at him for the drawing, but enough time had passed that fear of missing my train began to creep in.
As far as I could tell the story begins the day he was struck by a car. To put it bluntly he said the accident left him both physically and mentally fucked for a number of years. Almost to add validity to his story he lifted his left pant leg revealing his prosthetic leg.
“Say Ouch!”
“Ouch.”
Whether the medical bills or the unemployment during those dark years, he ended up living on the street. He spent a long time living without a warm place to sleep until he got an idea. He began going to the grocery store and asking women if he could draw their portrait or help them with their groceries for something to eat. No doubt the unusual nature of his request stood out to people, and he found himself with a new source of income and, more importantly, food.
“I would always ask women, and they’d say ‘well, I’m not wearing any make up’. I told them it wasn’t a picture! It made no difference to me. “
Eventually, Irving’s habitual workspace became Pat’s Cheesesteaks. In the same manner that I met him many people found themselves sitting across from a man with pencil and paper in hand sketching away asking them to hold perfectly still mid-meal. One of those subjects just so happened to be a journalist reviewing the restaurant. They began talking, having about the same conversation that I was now engaged in, only eight years earlier. By the end of the exchange Irving became a part of an article. As he told me the story, I could sense the pride and accomplishment in his words. Being written about adds legitimacy to one’s craft. I hope I’m doing the same for him here. When he asked me what I did, I told him I was a writer. I’m currently fulfilling a promise I made to him with these words.
“When I first started out, I only drew women and sometimes their boyfriends. It seemed to pay the best. But now I can draw whatever I want. Now I only draw pretty boys like yourself, but remember, I’ll always be pretty boy number one.” He joked with a level of sincerity.
The words did not really faze me as I had prepared myself for anything at that point, but I did take it as the unusual complement it was.
Being published helped him find a home, he told me. Irving continually reminded me that he used to be homeless. He wasn’t any more. I couldn’t help but feel sad about his constant reassurance, knowing how many people must have treated this incredibly friendly and eccentric man less than human. He no longer had to draw to eat, but it clearly meant a lot to him. I could tell he wanted the first word associated with him to be artist and not formally-homeless.
“I’m drawing to feed the homeless now.”
He was about to ask the question I knew was coming from the moment we began speaking. But I didn’t mind.
“Can you pay for your portrait?”
“Sure.”
“Alright, that’ll be a thousand dollars.” He laughed.
“How about twenty?” I countered.
“Yeah, alright, man. That’s beautiful, thank you.”
Art and money exchanged hands, and I saw his work for the first time.
“You like it?”
“I love it man, thank you.”
“Give it to somebody you love. And tell them they’re beautiful.”
“I’m going home right now. I will.”
An hour had blown by, and it was time for me to board.
“You know, before he wrote that article about me, I had no idea Philly was known for cheesesteaks, and I’ve lived here my whole life.”
I laughed and thanked him for making my wait infinitely more entertaining. I won’t lie. The likeness isn’t exact. But I really do love the drawing. I’d like to think the portrait was free, and I paid him for the story. I suppose, that’s why I always show up early.
Drew Kolenik is a creative writing student at Temple University. Since a young age, he has always had his hand in one creative endeavor or another. He has taken his passion for story-telling and daily journaling to begin the search for his audience.
I’m not the type to fall under the spell of a false religion. The lesson has been on the books for ages. The catastrophes supposedly done out of desperation are more closely connected to opportunism than conviction. It’s been irrefutably argued that even Hitler was not a true believer.
However, lies, particularly the Big Lie, have real world consequences. Moments after I walked into Germany’s first concentration camp in Dachau, a hand gripped my right shoulder. A voice rattled my cranium, ominously stating, “The whole of Dachau is guilty.”
I didn’t ignore its exhortation. But its meaning was sidetracked by overwhelmed senses. Waves of human sweat permeated the air of dirty stained wood barracks. Forty-seven years later and I could still smell the perspiration of condemned prisoners. I visited the memorial of Methodist pastors murdered for their faith. Dachau was not a killing ground for Jews alone. Nazi’s arranged high altitude experiments in sealed chambers for Russian prisoners of war, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and various Catholic and Protestant ministers.
I sat in the cinema and watched films of victims with shattered ear drums, suffering from hallucinations and brain damage stumble out of chambers and die. Their disfigured bodies hauled off to a crematorium on site. Once I saw the ashes of human remains float above the camp into the environs of the town, I immediately understood what the voice exclaimed.
The town of Dachau was regularly visited with ash raining down on its cottages and streets. After the liberation the townspeople told visiting journalists they had no idea what was going on at the camp. Security forces prevented them from asking questions. The Camp’s walls and four towers were not tall enough from many in the town’s buildings and elevation to block forced labor, torture, and the bodies of failed escapes hanging across barbed wire.
But the raining ash sticks in my conscience. The whole of Dachau is guilty. Each day walking to the bakery covered in black human ash. Each week walking to church wiping away the last remains of people utterly destroyed. How do you explain this? How do you answer your God when the time comes? Why shouldn’t Hell open its mouth and swallow this place like a rat eaten by a snake?
I left the Camp, and that hand left my shoulder. Many people were killed in that camp for being artists. Maybe one reached out to me to make sure I do not forget what I saw. I am no cosmic judge. How an entire town is morally weighed is beyond my understanding. I needed a drink and a good dinner. I did both in another town. Every so often, staring at the sky and wishing eternal peace for the persecuted.
Mark Antony Rossi is an USAF Cold War veteran, poet, playwright, and host of the literary podcast “Strength To Be Human,”
https://strengthtobehuman.podbean.com. His work has been published in Bombfire Lit, Earth & Altar, Lethe (Turkey), Leere Mitte (Germany) and Uncomfortable Revolution and has work forthcoming on Ariel Chart, Granfallon, Indian Periodical (India) & Route 7 Review.
Stanley’s Hunch
Shelly’s fiancé. Dirk. What kind of name is that? Stanley’s hand twitches. A horsefly bumps against the screen. Dirk’s smooth. Maybe too smooth. Knocks back Scotch like it’s water. Cocky. Ok, so was Stanley back in the day. But there’s something else that he can’t put his finger on. Dirk’s parents—they’re decent enough. They can be pain-in-the-ass-yacht-club snooty. But they’ve got the yacht, they’ve got the yacht.
And yeah, isn’t that what he wanted for her, putting in 70 + hours building his business to give her the best? Even returning to the ring when cash was low. Nearly got himself killed. He’d do it again. You’d better believe it. Sent her to Germantown Friends when the neighbor kids went to Northeast. The pricey business college for girls up in Rhode Island. His Shelly won’t marry no bum with a busted-up face and scarred hands. A guy who stinks of diesel fuel, fingernails black with chassis grease. Find someone with smarts and money, he told her. In that order? She asked, and he said, Nah, and they both laughed. Hell. But Dirk? Stanley could ask Marlene to talk to her but planning the wedding has helped ease that stepmother thing. It’s nice when they laugh together.
Sometimes he just wants to lock Shelly in her room. She’s been turning men’s heads since she was twelve. She’s got her mother’s sparkle. Those blue eyes wide as the ocean. Every guy was in love with Julie. Even after she got sick. Docs falling all over themselves for that high-beam smile. The surgeon’s face when he realized Stanley was Julie’s husband! Like, how’d this lout land her? And Shelly introducing him last week to Dirk’s father, who looked from Stanley to her, Stanley to her. Like, how in the world does this happen?
Now it’ll be Dirk’s job to protect her. Dirk. Christ.
Maybe it’s just father-of-the-bride jitters, but Stanley finds himself back in that old nightmare. No one said, but part of him knew Julie was dying. He knew and he didn’t know. In his dream, he’s in the ring, but can’t see his opponent. There were just gloves. Huge. Black. Hammering hammering hammering. A hook to his jaw, corkscrew jab to his kidney. His footwork is shot to hell. He tries to twist away, but he’s locked in cement. Another hit to the kidney and he’s down. He’d piss blood for a week.
Dirk’s Rehearsal
It’s been building all evening, each under-her-breath comment his mother makes at the rehearsal dinner fueling it, each complaint from his future mother-in-law with her purse-string lips, Shelly yoyoing between giggling and pouting, and that look his father gives him as they argue over who will sit where, that same old look no matter how hard he works, how smart, the old fucker’s never satisfied, he could sell a million boats, load each one with every option in the book, it will never be enough, he will never be enough, and it’s that sucker-punch look his father sneaks in every goddamn single time, and he never sees it coming–how does he never see it coming?–and after the bullshit about the bar tab, the tip, the centerpieces, his lack of a tie, to top it all off, there’s Shelly’s stupid stupid giggle when they go parking after the restaurant, and when he levers the car seat down, she starts whining she doesn’t want to have sex, It’s the night before our wedding, Dirk! and she rounds her big blue eyes and pushes his hand away and fuck! can’t he even get some relief. They’ve been screwing since their third date, and now she’s going all virgin on him? and when his fingers move further up her leg she slaps him, not even a play slap like she sometimes does, his cheek stings, dammit! and that’s it, he lets loose, fingers coiling into fists, he gives in to his rage, stoking it, pretending he is even drunker than he is, but his fists avoid her face and somewhere inside he recognizes he’s been moving towards this all along; it’s that cool calculation to avoid her face with his fists that shocks him, appalls him, makes him howl inside for who he once was, for who, until this moment, he might still have been.
Shelly’s Secret
Shelly waits until her parents’ bedroom darkens, then slips off her shoes, opens the door, moves through the dark living room where the cuckoo clock screams 2 A.M. and she stops on the stairs, realizing it’s the last night she’ll hear the clock at this hour and how sweet and sad this moment should be, but now it’s just lonely and awful and upstairs under the fluorescent bathroom light bruises bloom on her arms and ribs and she knows knows that her father will kill Dirk if he finds out and it’s this, this certainty, more than the white cake at the bakery, the white dress in her closet (thank god for its Victorian collar, the tapered lace sleeves that graze her fingertips), more than everyone waiting to watch her walk down the aisle, more than the shame if she backs out now, after all the decisions and preparations and checklists, the fights over flowers and the dessert table that makes it impossible and her legs shake as she sits on the toilet to pee, shake as she washes her hands, as she wipes the mascara and glimmer shadow from her eyes—how blue and startled they look, pink-rimmed like a rabbit’s (is that why Dirk calls her Bunny?) and she stares long and hard, wondering what he sees when he looks at her, wondering how they’ve lasted this long (he’s always had a temper, he’s screamed at her, put his fist through a wall inches from her face, once even pushed her but instantly his eyes filled with self-loathing, and she always knew it wasn’t her he was mad at, it was work, his dad, the guy who cut him out on the Boulevard, the barkeep who told him he’d had enough, it was never her he was mad at and how tender he was afterwards, his fingertips tentative, gentle, but tonight was different, it was everything and for the first time she was just another thing in that everything, and maybe she should have just slept with him or at least given him a hand-job, after all, why shouldn’t he expect something (how about a little sugar, Bunny?) to tide him over, but she can’t shake what she saw in his eyes, something calculating and cold, but what would she say, how would she explain (her father will kill him) and so she turns off the bathroom light, tiptoes to her bedroom, searches the bottom dresser drawer for her old baby doll pajamas, soft and thin with wear, the elastic loose, and she climbs into her childhood bed, the sheets smelling faintly of sunlight, listens to the murmur of traffic beyond the park, and waits for tomorrow.
Mary Rohrer-Dann is the author of Taking the Long Way Home (Kelsay Books, 2021) and La Scaffetta: Poems from the Foundling Drawer (Tempest Productions, Inc.) Additional work appears/is forthcoming in The Clackamas Review, Vestal Review, Third Wednesday, Rat’s Ass Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Philadelphia Stories (issue 2!) and other venues. Although she has long lived in central PA, she is still a Philly girl at heart, and is finishing a collection of story-poems based on the Philadelphia neighborhood she grew up in.
To read Liz Chang’s review of Eve Heads Back, click HERE.
To read Liz Chang’s review of Bring Now the Angels: Poems, click HERE.
To read Courtney Bambrick’s review of Fractures, click HERE.
Writing For Social Justice — Column
As He says also in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, And her beloved, who was not beloved.” Romans 9:25
I am convinced that Toni Morrison is sending me messages from the other side. Maybe those are her knuckles brushing against my cheek when I sleep. Maybe those are her footsteps that come and go after things go silent. And that is why I’ve returned yet again to her story, Beloved.
This time, my sister Jazzy and I are using our new podcast as an excuse for yet another walk down Morrison’s Bluestone Road looking for clues to heal the chokecherry tree society’s back—clueless about what I mean? Then you have your homework.
This is not the first or the last time my sister and I will read Beloved or restudy the screenplay or rewatch the film knowing that the answers are all there. Our continued question—how do we complete the ultimate social exorcism and banish the evil of colonialism once and for all? We both agree wholeheartedly that Beloved holds the answers; it is just a matter of respecting the text and respecting our foremother enough to take a second look.
In our work as facilitators, before the bookshop, we reminded youth in countries around the world that the etymology of the word respect means to look again. We find in our society it is all too easy and highly common to make assumptions and conclusions about people, art, philosophies, and books based on our first impressions.
But respect requires us to return and see more—ask more questions—a second (or even in our case six hundredth) look lets you see what you never remembered you’d forgotten. Like it was Toni who took a second look at her own Black Book to better understand the woman she featured there, Margaret Garner. This woman who at first glance is seen as a wild slave and a horrific child murderer; at a second glance, she becomes a beacon of motherhood and the definition of freedom.
So, because we respect the heck out of this book and Toni Morrison, we find ourselves reading it like it is the first time. I am recognizing how much I’ve changed this time around simply by the questions that I find myself asking myself. Like, in 2012, I was obsessed with the feet. In 2014, it was the colors. In 2016, it was the men. In 2018, it was the mothers. And this time around, I am caught up in the Fugitive Slave Act and what its modern equivalent may be, how we treat felons, and how we know we are free. I always wonder how I miss so much. And wonder who I will be the next time I read it and what she will see that I cannot yet see.
So, the other night, my sister and I spent the night in the bookshop determined to unpack this book once again. “We have to do it for the podcast,” we said laughing. We poured libations for the ancestors, held hands, and invited Toni Morrison and Margaret Garner to “Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.”
“60 million,” I read the book’s dedication out of respect for the 60 million who died during the transatlantic trade of people.
“60 million,” Jazzy repeats.
“You are my people,” I say out of respect for the book’s opening biblical quote about second chances.
“You are my people,” she repeats.
“This is not a story to pass on,” we say in unison.
From 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., we post sticky note after sticky note on the walls asking ourselves who was Beloved? And why we are being haunted by her. And whether we are wild or free. And how we are Sethe. And whether we have two legs or four. And why the community failed Baby Suggs. And what it means to be loved. And finally, we run out of sticky notes. We sit on the floor staring up at the wall and realize, once again we’ve only just begun.
My hope is that on your journey to wherever you may be headed, you will return to the books and the authors who are your beloved and take a second look. And that you will find your people and discuss it with them. And that you will find the clues to join us on the ultimate social exorcism so we can banish this thing once and for all.
Ase.
For the last 10 years, Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new owner of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.
Every day for two weeks, my refrigerator vegetable drawer, stocked full on grocery day, slowly emptied.
The carrots accompanied paper bag lunches. The mushrooms, celery, and zucchini complimented several evening stir-fry meals served over rice or noodles. The seedless oranges and Red Delicious apples vanished as mid-morning and afternoon snacks.
The eggplant remained.
The vegetable rolled back and forth each time someone in search of food opened the bottom drawer, and after finding nothing but the eggplant, quickly closed the drawer again.
Knowing that a return trip to the grocery store to restock our fare would be irresponsible without cooking this sleek dark-purple vegetable, I resolved late on a Saturday evening to complete the task. This vegetable that no one would touch, this vegetable that refused to wilt or wither its way to the trash can, this vegetable that occupied too much space in the refrigerator drawer would become Eggplant Caviar, a dish that tastes better than any fish roe could match. I needed to make this leftover vegetable disappear.
The best pan for this task was the 16-inch frying pan buried in the back of my cabinet behind several more useful-sized pots and pans.
“Loud noise!” I called like a golfer who shouts “Fore!” Then I squatted and pulled the rimmed pan by its handle from among its counterparts causing a clang and clatter that would have startled my 12-year-old son Nick when he was a toddler.
I set the heavy pan on the stovetop, grabbed a knife and dinner plate from the top cabinet, and set up my dicing station on the counter above the dishwasher.
Nick wandered into the kitchen.
“What are you cooking?” he asked, seeing the green pepper, onion and eggplant lined up for chopping.
“Eggplant Caviar,” I answered and pointed to the recipe. “It’s a dip to eat with crackers. I have whole-wheat sal-tynes, as you call them. And butter crackers.”
“Mom, I don’t call them sal-tynes anymore,” he said. “Can I help?”
Back when my son was a little boy who mispronounced the word saltine, finding a way for him to assist me cooking a vegetable like eggplant was difficult. He stood on a chair to reach the countertop. Few jobs were appropriate. The risk of danger prohibited him from chopping vegetables with sharp utensils or working with heat over a hot stove. He was reduced to measuring and stirring ingredients into a bowl. To assert his authority over the task, he would add extra spices to the mix when I wasn’t looking.
Now he was on the verge of becoming a teenager, and we prepared dinner shoulder-to-shoulder in our sock feet. I still cut the vegetables while he mixed ingredients. But seemingly overnight, he had graduated from a bowl on the counter to a pan over the stove.
“Sure, you can help,” I said, relieved to pass the bulk of the chore on to somebody else. “Get ready for the vegetables.”
The green pepper was a rich forest green. Using a dull knife, because that’s all we own, I cut through the tough skin of the pepper to make thin strips, discarding the seeds and stem on top of a grocery bag on the counter. I then chopped the uneven strips into smaller pieces like confetti. With the same blunt tool, I scraped the chopped vegetable from the dinner plate into the pan where my son waited to begin cooking. I repeated the task with a medium onion, adding its discarded brown skins to the trash pile and the tiny, white, nose-stinging squares into the pan.
My son added olive oil and garlic to the mix and increased the gas flames underneath the pan until the vegetables sizzled, turning pungent and raw into pleasant and sautéed.
Looking over his shoulder, I saw steam rising from the pan. I wanted to nudge Nick aside and take over, turn the heat down, and stir the mix to prevent the onions from burning. I was just about to step in when Nick adjusted the stove himself and added a slight flow of chicken broth to get the simmer under control.
“Do you want me to stir?” I asked.
“I got this, Mom,” he said, giving me no room to intervene.
Nick stirred vegetables with a plastic, ochre spatula at the stove while I tackled the awkward eggplant with my insufficient tool. The blade of my knife was too short for the task, but no other cutlery we owned could get the job done. I adjusted the knife’s position each time the blade slit into the vegetable but stuck, barred by the curb of the knife handle. Good-bye you plain, purple vegetable that’s been in our refrigerator forever.
After creating rings of eggplant stacked like pancakes on the side of the plate, I cut through the edges of each slice and delicately peeled away the black skin, careful to separate the tough peel from the spongy meat I wanted to keep and cook. After all of the skins were discarded, I lay the beige circles one at the time on the open side of the plate and began slicing each in a graph paper pattern, dropping the resulting squares of eggplant into the mixture being stirred by my son.
“What we need is some music,” he said, temporarily leaving his post to find a pop station on his red I-Pad touch that he placed on the counter, closer to the refrigerator than to the stove. We listened to a singer I had never heard before release his emotions and somehow – abracadabra – carry away my worries about the eggplant, too.
My child worked at the stove, and I erased final evidence that the raw eggplant ever existed. I threw away the grocery bag filled with the inedible vegetable scraps and wiped the counter with a paper towel after spraying the surface with cleaner. Lifting the kitchen faucet handle and nudging it few times to adjust the running water temperature from scorching to tolerable, I rinsed the dirty prep utensils and dishes and placed them one by one out of sight in the dishwasher.
“I’m going to add more olive oil,” Nick said as he worked behind me. “Do we have any hot sauce?”
“No, I need to add that to the grocery list,” I said, continuing to move dishes between the sink and dishwasher.
“But let me see what I can find,” I said, scanning the different spices on the shelf and reaching for a familiar choice. “How about red pepper flakes?”
While I rummaged through a utensil drawer to find a measuring spoon, he jumped ahead and started sprinkling the dried herb over the pan. He also freely added oregano and basil.
“Wait, you might add too much,” I said.
“Mom, it’s fine,” he said.
I went around the counter and sat on a stool. Nick continued to transform the eggplant into an incredible dish. He added canned tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce and more rogue spices. When he declared the recipe was ready to try, I opened the crackers. We both chose the butter-flavored and ignored the whole-wheat saltines.
We moved to the living room. Nick put down a yellow placemat on the coffee table and served the caviar in a pottery dish I usually reserved for company. He set the crackers between us and scooped a helping of the appetizer onto a plate for me to try first.
The caviar tasted nothing like eggplant. Its savory flavor and texture had just the right kick.
“Is this good or what?” he asked, putting another spoonful on his plate.
Then we sat at opposite ends of the worn, tan couch, each of us blankly putting dip on our crackers while watching a re-run detective show on TV, enjoying the caviar, and making the eggplant that wouldn’t go away disappear.
A former newspaper journalist, Caroline Kalfas writes in Woolwich Township, NJ. Her work has appeared in various newsletters and the 2018 and 2019 editions of Bay to Ocean: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association. She is a graduate of N.C. State University in Raleigh.
Don’t talk about them.
Don’t talk about that family at the end of the street, don’t talk about the house with the woods beside it.
Just ignore them, and don’t talk about them.
And they didn’t really talk about the grass that always grew too long. Nor the disarrayed wooden front porch, which rotted away a little more with each season. Nor the tattered screen door, hanging limply on by its rusted hinges.
They didn’t talk about the boy who lived there, nor the two girls, and how they seemed to vanish each time a neighbor came much closer than the sidewalk.
They didn’t talk about the odd clothes those kids wore, like hand-me-downs, both too big and too small and mismatched from shirts to sneakers.
The closest they ever got to saying anything at all was a Sunday morning, where they had stopped by the woods to strip some bark from the loose branches, to play swords in a backyard.
One of the boys nudged another and breathed as quietly as he could, “look.”
They watched as the father and son got into the front seats of the tan-brown station wagon and the mother and teenage daughters into the backseats. The car drove up the gravel path and past them as they watched, gawking awkwardly from the corner.
The car drove away down the street and turned out of sight.
The neighborhood went quiet. It remained quiet for some time. And for that strange amount of time, the boys seemed just to wait, as though the scene had not entirely ended, as though the other shoe would soon drop.
Something sodden seemed to form over them, inarticulate and heavy. They stopped playing.
And after the short time had passed for waiting, they quietly threw down the sticks among the trees’ roots and picked up their bikes where they had left them. Without speaking, they began to walk home.
“Did you see their faces?” one of the boys asked after they had walked past a few houses.
“My mom says not to talk about them.”
“Yeah, that’s probably right.” A pause came, and then went. “But did you see their faces?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Why did that boy sit in the front seat?”
“I don’t know. We shouldn’t talk about it anymore.”
“Yeah, I guess.” They quietly walked on for a bit. “Has your older sister ever let you have the front seat? – And he didn’t look any older than us. And – Why did their mom sit in the back seat?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”
The neighborhood fell quiet again.
The tread of the bike tires purred on the street as they walked back home. It felt like the only noise in the entire neighborhood – or the entire world.
A breeze passed, but it was not cool, and they passed under the shadow of one of the cedars.
Soon, very soon, the summer would end, and they would go away again – away from here, away to school, away from childhood – and these strange and quiet moments would fade.
“I mean–did you see their faces?”
Isaac W Sauer is a writer and poet currently working as an investment analyst in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Eastern University, studying literature, politics, and philosophy.