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issue two
yack
spring 2007
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cover art: "untitled" by jessica jewell |
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from the editor welcome to the second first issue of yack. what began as a project in a publishing class at youngstown state university is continued here with a new look and name, but with a similar intention: to publish a diverse selection of work from the writers of the northeast ohio master's of fine arts in creative writing program (neomfa). the program is a consortium that consists of four schools: the university of akron, cleveland state university, kent state university and youngstown state university. this online journal is meant to showcase the up-and-coming talent of the burgeoning writing scene in northeast ohio. enjoy!
valerie suffron hilty may 4, 2007
pamela r.
anderson
Sleep
Bref Double
Things I Know About My Father Sumalata A Place for Broken Things
No Vacancy My liver? You are the only one, Bootleg Whiskey This Should Have Been a Love Poem
Wild Roses & Lilacs ... so we would like to thank you once more for your generous gift of FIVE DOLLARS to the WEST VIRGINIA STATE TROOPERS COALITION. We just need to verify some information... —What bothers me the most is the no ring. —Really? More than a Nguyen? —Nguyen’s are rough, yes. Sure. But I feel like the no ring is more fundamental. —The essential flaw? —The void at the heart of the void. —But it’s surmountable. —Is it? Can it, when it’s such a thing? Such a flaw? —Sure. When conditions are right it’s like no ring was ever not there. —But that’s too rare. —And mindless, don’t forget. —But possible? —On a lucky day. Nguyen, though. That’s the roughest. Impossible. —Madness. —Proof: Something must be silent. —There must be one. —But which? —It could be Nooyen. —Sometimes I think Gooyen. —What about the “u”? —That’s something else altogether. —Nyen? —Gyen? —I tell you, nobody knows. —Somebody must. A Nooyen. Or a Gooyen. Or... —Well, if they know, they’re not telling. —It’s rough. —And you can hear it in their voices. When you say it wrong. It’s like they’ve hung up already. Inside. —Certainly rough. —The roughest. Some say there’s no way to say it. Foreign sounds we can’t even hear. —Still, I think it might be the no ring. • Hello MR[S] SANCHEZ, this is JOSE GONZALEZ calling on behalf of the KANSAS STATE TROOPERS ASSOCIATION, how are you this AFTERNOON? Why yes ma’am, our records do indicate that you may have already received a call this MORNING, but...
—For me it’s something else. It’s the not knowing. —I think it’s the same thing. —Not knowing who it’s gonna be. You don’t hear ‘em say hello, it’s lost somewhere before you even know. But you still have to pick a sex. How many times is it hello ma’am to Mister Nooyen? —Or to little Susie Gooyen. —Or on speakerphone for the whole Nyen clan to mock? —It’s terrible. Humiliating. —I tell you, that’s the problem with the whole thing. Not knowing. You put yourself out there. Out into this void. You never know who you’re talking to until it’s too late. The same every time. —I think it’s the same thing.
• Hello MR[S] O’BRIAN, this is PATRICK FLANAGAN calling on behalf of the FLORIDA HIGHWAY PATROL. MR[S] O’BRIAN, do you think crime pays? Well neither do we. That’s why we’re conducting our 2007 WINTER DRIVE. Our records indicate that last year you donated...
—Any luck? —Nah. It’s just what I was saying. Dead air. Gave the whole pitch to a dead line. —Could have been an answering machine. —Oh, that’d be cute. Wrong-ended, one-sided pitch on tape. —To be played back at their convenience. —A thousand times. —If they like. —Or never. —Always the same call. —Always the same caller. —Always the same tone. —Seems wrong, somehow. Wicked. —I think it’s all part of what I was saying before. It’s just silence, nothing, and then beep and you start. That’s the part. It’s the system. Stop and start; have not then have. There’s no foundation. —Built on sand. —For a cliché. —In a storm. —More of the same.
• Hello MR[S] YO, this is MIKE TOMAKA calling on behalf of the NEW YORK VETERANS ASSOCIATION, how are you this... yes sir. Yes. We understand sir. Yes, actually we’ve seen that episode. Right. Why don’t you call us at our house later. Yes, very good sir. Look, we’re not allowed to hang up, sir, so you’re going to have to... Oh, yes sir. We are definitely. All of us. Yes sir. We’ll get real jobs tomorrow, sir. Yes. Have a great day, sir.
—You know, someday I’d like to call someone. Me. Not we or us. I and me. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? —Personal pronouns. —Agency. —And names, too. I’d like to be the same. —But it’s culturally inappropriate. —Most of the time. —Offensive. —Ineffective. —Old-fashioned. —But still... —But studies show...
• Hello MR[S] BURKE, this is EWAN MACCARTHY calling on behalf of the EASTERN CONNETICUT FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE, how are you this EVENING? Great. Well, ma’am, we’re calling today to let you know we’re conducting our 2006 FALL DRIVE right now. Yes ma’am. TO FUND THIS YEAR’S CHARITY EVENTS, FOR THE ADVERTISING COSTS OF SAID EVENTS AND TO OFFSET THE COSTS OF THE FUNDDRIVE. Yes ma’am. This funddrive, ma’am. That’s right. Can we count on you for your usual donation of THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS? Wonderful, ma’am. Now, we just need to verify some information...
—What do you do with your money? —I used to save it. —What, like in a bank? —No, in a sock. A dirty sock. —Is that safe? —It was. —But wouldn’t they look there first? The robbers? In the drawer? —It wasn’t in a drawer. It was in the corner. Under a pile of other dirty socks. —Security of filth. —Guaranteed to repel. —What did you do on laundry day? —Nothing. I never washed those socks. They were my stashing-the-money-sock socks. A permanent fixture. Ever-growing, never clean. —Didn’t it stink? —Terribly. —Seems misdirected in a lot of ways. —You got used to it. —Like a skunk. —Like the opposite of a skunk. —Like the smell of yourself. —And those thereabouts. —Inured. —Conditioned. —How much did you have? Stinking in your sock? —Inches. Inches of cash. —Must’ve been a lot. —It was. —Incredible. What happened to it? —I spent it. —All of it? —Every inch. —Incredible. What did you do with the socks? —I washed them of course. —Any change after? Any change to any fundamental thing? —It’s much less stinky now.
• Hello MR[S] DAY, this is ED KELLOGG calling on behalf of the PORTLAND VETERANS ASSOCIATION, how are you this afternoon? Oh, really? But ma’am, our records indicate that you haven’t yet given to this year’s drive. No, ma’am. Another Ed Kellogg? A coincidence, ma’am. A malicious coincidence. Last year? TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. Yes, ma’am.
—I can’t help thinking its all related. —I said Nooyen and she hung up. I think it was a she. She hung up like a she, certainly. —What do you think it’s like, getting the calls? Must be different. —Certainly. Altogetherly different. Think of all the calls. All the names the same. Must be different. —Do you think they hear the beep? —Nah. But I think they get the nothing. They answer and say hello and then have the nothing just like us. —The void. —Right. That’s why we never hear ‘em say hello. They’ve already said it. Before the beep. And then they wait through the nothing for us. Like we wait through the nothing for them. —That’s why it doesn’t work, maybe. All that space. —The nothing. —The void. —Insurmountable. —All we share is nothing. —It’s all that gets us connected. —I can’t help thinking it’s all related.
• Hello MR[S] SPURLOCK, this is MALIK LEWIS calling on behalf of the TEXAS RANGER ACADAMY OF FORT WORTH... yes ma’am. Yes. We agree, a rather esoteric campaign. Yes ma’am. But for just pennies a day... yes ma’am. For the safety of all Texans.
—Was it a spree? Did you hit the mall swinging your inches-of-cash sock like a lasso over your head, screaming the yee-haws of commerce? —Hog-tying all the miscellany it was thick enough to catch? —Swapping cash-weight for bag-weight at an irregular rate of exchange? —Until my arms were laden and the sock limp? —And still stinking in direct opposition to the scent of the new in the other hand? —No. —No miscellany, then. One big thing. —The biggest. —So big Alex or Pete or Johnny, all zits and smock, was paged to wheel it to the car? —On a squeaky dolly? —Out through the special delivery doors that open the widest? —And then tied to the roof with complimentary twine? —And then slow driving, arm out the window for ineffectual... —... yet psychologically necessary... —... yet psychologically necessary support through the turns? —No. It came in a little box. —That fit nicely into a little bag? —That fit nicely into my pocket.
• Hello MR[S] SMITH, this is JOHN PARKER calling on behalf of the CANCER FUND OF AMERICA... yes ma’am. That’s right, last year you gave FIFTEEN DOLLARS. Great. Just let us verify some information...
—Anything? —Grandfathered in. —Lucky. —It’s the only way like this. —No one cares. —No one can. All the calls they get. Phone all day long alive with rings that answer to dead air. How can they decide? —All day it’s the same Patrick Flanagan. —But always different. —Only in tone. —There’s no way to decide. —Unless they already have. —Always the same script. —Always the same name. —Just with a slightly different tone. —How can they decide? —Unless they already have. —It’s a hell of a system. —All talk. —Nothing but space. —Nothing. —A void. —It’s a hell of a system. —There’s no way to decide.
• Hello MR[S] TRAN, this is HAI NGUYEN calling on behalf of... Hello? MR[S] TRAN? Hello?
—There’s something to the ring that shouldn’t be overlooked. —Maybe. We’ve neglected it fundamentally. Nothing and beep. Or ring and nothing. —It’s got tradition to it. Structure. There’s the ring and then the answer. A soft, feminine hello. And you know how to respond. —Immediately. —With a soft, masculine hello. —Respond in kind, then. —As appropriate. —As you deem appropriate. —As it fits. —And from there? —Off script. —Culturally appropriate names. —A universal name. —But studies have shown. —Damn the studies.
• Hello MR[S] KENOSHA, I’m calling on behalf of the PENNSYLVANIA FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE. Yes ma’am. Yes. I’m... it’s as accurate as I can get. Yes ma’am. No, you’ve never. No, ma’am. A ONE TIME DONATION OF THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR THE BRONZE AMOUNT, FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR THE SILVER OR...that’s great, ma’am. Wonderful. Now, I just have to verify some information...
—Do you miss the sock? —I like the clean air. —But all it did was take away the stink. —The stagnant stink. —But it didn’t freshen. —Couldn’t have. —Not in the slightest. No stink can’t make fresh scents. —Of course. —But the clean air? —I had some left, at the end of the inches. So I bought some potpourri: wild roses and lilacs. —The stink made scents, then. —In a manner. —So you don’t miss the sock? Not even when you see that spot? —Where the socks used to be? —Where they used to be that you knew so well? —With my system to find and hide the particular one? —The valuable one. You don’t miss it? What used to? What used to be there? —I like the clean air. Wild roses and lilacs. •
Cat Shit
It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.
So sad, as my back hit the wall in shock, I let myself slip down it
into a squat. And then further – knees to chest, chin on knees,
sitting down in the candle-lit mysteries of the bathroom carpet. Cat
shit or no cat shit. I didn’t even notice the familiar crumbling
smush of it through my jeans. I just stared in pale dread at the
saddest thing: community toothbrush standing erect amid the odor
eliminating crystals of the mossed-over cat box. “Saddest” was the
weakest of words.
Pocheen
The Girl in the Moon in the Lake
The night Sydney McConnell almost drowned, his father told Sydney’s mother they were going for a night-walk and it was “just for men.” This made Sydney feel special. Truth was, the father was brewing moonshine and wanted to set it to distill. He had planned on peddling it to the speakeasy where he delivered ice after hours. It was hot during the summer months and restaurants used a lot of ice. His father had to move quickly, which he did best in bare feet. Most of the men in the city pointed at his father’s bare feet and mimicked his accent. Most of the men in the city called Sydney’s father Mick, which Sydney thought was a glorious nickname until he used it himself and felt the sting of his father’s open palm. Nevertheless, Sydney believed his father was very popular in town. In a sense, he was. Sydney’s father had spent most of the family’s money on an expensive camera that he set up downtown next to a wooden crescent moon. Sydney’s father had built a bench right into the crescent moon and worked hard sanding the splinters. Folks sat on the moon and his father offered to take their picture for a quarter. Despite his best efforts, Sydney’s father was unable to make profit. The mother called him a lunatic for spending so much on the camera, and indeed the waxing and waning of that celestial sphere truly affected Sydney’s father, and on this night, the heavenly body was in full form. Perhaps Sydney inherited his father’s lunacy. Like the tides, he was constantly shifting from one place to another. His mother threatened to paint the bottoms of his shoes with glue so he’d stay put, partly the reason he too went about barefoot. Father and son tramped through wet grass that night in the woods behind their house. His father handed him his red bone jack-knife and asked him to stay put. “Whittle me something.” His father almost never allowed Sydney to whittle with his jack knife! Sydney couldn’t find any sticks, so he sat down in the grass. It didn’t take long until he was lured to the curved trunk of his favorite tree, Old Sexy. Old Sexy was the largest tree in the woods. It was easiest to climb because the double trunk had goosenecked to resemble crossed legs. Sydney had heard his father use the word sexy to describe the legs of the women that sat on the crescent moon to have their pictures taken. He thought it was the highest compliment a man could give a woman, and Old Sexy was a special lady. Soon he’d forgotten about whittling and was busy climbing into Old Sexy’s lap. Sydney was soon high enough to spot the clearing where they lived. Maybe he’d climb so high, he’d tell the girl in the moon that he thought she was sexy. He made up a song as he climbed— Girl
in the moon, I only see your face,
He climbed higher, but the girl in the moon wouldn’t budge. Maybe
she couldn’t hear? Maybe she wasn’t impressed. High above the forest
floor, he nestled his bottom in a niche between two braches. He
enjoyed the view. It certainly was nice being up in Old Sexy with
the girl in the moon.
So, he slid to the dew damp ground. It wasn’t far, but as he
approached the water, the girl in the moon in the lake moved further
away. He tried to cross to the other shore to cut her off, but she
was avoiding him. The farther out he went, the higher the water became until it reached his chin. He didn’t mind because it felt like a cool hug and he knew he still wanted to bathe in the girl in the moon in the lake, as she was very close. He decided that if he snuck up on the girl in the moon in the lake she would be surprised the way the girls at school are surprised when you lift their skirts. Sydney leapt, pinched his nose and dunked completely. He felt his feet sink into the mud at the bottom of the lake. One hand held his nose and the other clenched as he bent at the knees to spring back up to the surface of the water to surprise the girl in the moon in the lake. It was he who was surprised! His feet were stuck in the mud at the bottom of the lake! The mud sucked his bare feet and he was held fast. He tried several times to dislodge his feet, but each effort only seemed to sink him deeper. His air was beginning to run out and he unpinched his nose to use both arms for leverage. His heart was beginning to race and a panic seized his mind. I’ll be stuck here forever! For a moment he was sure if he opened his eyes toward the weedy bottom, he would see the girl in the moon in the lake—pale fingers curled about his ankles. Moon-face framed by the dark water and floating hair. Sydney opened his eyes. No girl. His white legs disappeared at the ankles. He looked up. He saw the girl in the moon above. Or, was it the girl in the moon in the lake? He saw that she was still grinning and he gave up trying to free himself. He was out of breath as the muck began to loosen its hold. Sydney didn’t fight. His body was being lifted. Slowly. The End I’ve been the janitor at Lordstown Middle School for thirty years now. My mother, God rest, always told relatives and friends that I was a “custodial engineer,” but I’ve never felt ashamed about my life’s work. She just never realized the benefits of being a janitor. Then again, not many people do, but I’m thankful for that. At times, it is a solitary life. At night, just before I lock the doors, I realize that I am the only person on school grounds. There’s something divinely invigorating about that. It’s a humble life too. It took some time to adjust after leaving the plant, a thirty-three year old foreman accustomed to being in charge. A close friend at the time got me the job at the school as “Chief Custodian” almost a year after my many failed interviews and consequent divorce. “I can’t take this job. It’s a step, no, it’s a nose-dive backward,” I told my friend. “Frank,” he said, “it’s honest work.” I took the job and for the first couple of years I hated it. I was the subordinate of everyone else in the building, excluding one man, Jerry, an old auto industry retiree. He only took the job to keep busy since his pension was large enough to pay the bills. Whenever someone ordered me around, I took it out on Jerry and made him clean the bathrooms by himself. Whenever a teacher called me for a “protein spill,” I sent Jerry. If there was nothing else to do, I sent him out front to scrape the gum off of the sidewalk. Jerry decided the job wasn’t for him. After Jerry quit the superintendent decided that I didn’t need any help keeping the school clean. I started to become familiar with the building, the teachers, and the children. I set up a routine, leaving room for accidents of course, and nestled into the profession I’ve come to love. Every day I arrive at school before sunrise, start the coffee in the faculty lounge, do a quick run through of the building, unlock the doors, and head to my office to read a little of the morning paper. My mother called it a “rut.” I call it a groove. I learned the children’s names and watched them grow, from third grade to eighth. They came back after each summer taller and older and when they moved on to the high school building, I was sad to see them go. My office is actually just an old mahogany teacher’s desk stuck in an oversized closet with all of the cleaning supplies and heating and cooling controls. To anyone else, it might be called dingy, but to me it is ideal. The single light bulb hanging from the ceiling casts long shadows behind the cool metal pipes running along the off-white brick walls. At the back of my office is a gray metal door that opens to the rear of the school next to the loading dock where delivery trucks drop off cafeteria and classroom supplies. In the mornings I prop the door open just after the sun rises over a clean green hill at the east end of the school campus. The sun’s rays pour over the dandelions and into my office washing out the long shadows and painting the walls with gold. Principal Brown, having just arrived, pops his head into my office every morning. “Good morning Mr. Brown,” I say, trying not to stare at his hair piece. “Good morning, Frank. Spectacular job again I see. The place is sparkling,” he replies. “All in a day’s work Mr. Brown,” I answer. Mr. Brown smiles and leaves my office. The rest of my morning usually goes by without incident. Every so often I make my rounds through the school, checking to be sure the place is clean and the toilet paper rolls are full. My real work begins after the children go home, aside from the period after lunch when I clean the cafeteria, but ever since Principal Brown introduced the disciplinary table cleaning program, that part is easy. At night, for a few hours straight, I clean the school from one corner to the other, sweeping and waxing floors, emptying trash cans, washing chalkboards and so on. At the end of a work day I look down the hall. The sun is getting ready to set and glistening off of the freshly waxed hallway floor and I feel like I’m looking across my own private placid lake. The place truly is sparkling and I am tired. There is something very rewarding about being able to physically see and feel the work you’ve done. A twelve hour day of hard work can be a religious experience. Typically I spend most of the daytime reading in my office. Occasionally a teacher will ask me to run an errand or clean something. I gladly do whatever they ask, because they ask so nicely. I get along rather well with most of the faculty. We have a mutual respect for each other, that is, except for Mr. Mark. Mr. Mark is the seventh grade science teacher. He is also the head coach of the high school football team. One day during school hours, while making my rounds I turned a corner and saw a crowd of children in the hallway. They were shouting and gathering around in a circle. I felt a sense of urgency and hurried to the crowd, pushing the children aside. There in the center, fighting like dogs, were Bobby Adams and Scotty McGregor. Scott was at least a grade older than Bobby, and maybe fifteen pounds larger. He was a fiery red headed devil, and the son of the Mayor. Scott pinned Bobby onto the floor and began punching him in the face. I knew Bobby too. He was a skinny rotten mouthed little punk who had no respect for his teachers. Once I caught him throwing wet wadded up paper towels onto the ceiling in the bathroom. “So it’s you that I’ve been cleaning up after for a over month now?” I said. The brat just smiled. “You can’t do anything about it, you’re just the janitor.” He spit his gum into a urinal and walked out. I watched Scott beating Bobby for a moment. The boy had it coming, I thought. But quickly my conscience took over and I grabbed Scott by the arm and with a single movement lifted him off of Bobby with one hand and lifted Bobby with the other. There I stood with both boys in the air when I heard the booming voice of Mr. Mark. “What the hell do you think you are doing? Put those boys down!” I let the boys go. Their eyes and mouths were wide open. “I was just—” “You were just assaulting those boys.” He was an ape of a man, weighing in at 250 at least and very, very hairy. “Coach, he was only breaking-” Scott started to say. “Get to class. Everyone!” Mr. Mark bellowed. The children scattered. Mr. Mark poked his finger on my chest and backed me against the lockers. “Listen. You’re a janitor. I don’t want to see you put your hands on a student again or I’ll have you fired. You got me?” I couldn’t help but stare at the thick, coarse hairs on his knuckles. It was like thatch work. “I said do you got me?” “Yes Mr. Mark. Coach. Sir.” “Good.” He stormed off down the hall and from then on Mr. Mark gave me the evil eye whenever he saw me. He paraded around like a proud silverback that just backed off a mating competitor, beating his thatch work chest, talking to me while I’m trying to use the restroom. There could be a whole row of open urinals, but he always picked the one right next to me. That evening, as I was cleaning out classroom number 138, I came across Ms. Angler’s coffee cup. It was unusual for Ms. Angler, the special ed. teacher, to leave anything behind. Her desk was always in order. She didn’t even leave those dreadful little paper scraps from spiral notebooks like most teachers. You can tell a lot about a person by their desk and trash and people tend to trust janitors quite a bit. For example, I know that Mr. Stanley keeps vodka and cranberry juice in his sore throat spray bottle. Mrs. Shaffer, you know, the one who eats just a salad at lunch and complains that her diet isn’t working, eats an individual bag of potato chips and two candy bars a day. My personal favorite is the fact that I found an empty bottle of “natural male enhancement” pills in Mr. Mark’s garbage, but the secrets are safe with me. There were papers scattered all over Ms. Angler’s desk. The coffee cup was stained around the edges with coffee and thick red lipstick. The dark fluid inside was probably cold by now. I stuck my finger in to find out. It was still warm. “Hey there, Frank,” said a voice behind me. I whirled around and coming through the doorway was Ms. Angler. She looked different than I remembered. Her hair was down, and her blouse was unbuttoned a little. She looked relaxed and remarkably attractive, considering we were under the fluorescent lights. “I was just finishing up a little work before I went home.” She walked over and picked up the coffee cup, taking a drink before I could say anything. “I’ll be out of your way in a minute.” “Oh, no hurry Ms. Angler,” I stuttered. “Oh Frank. How long have we known each other? Call me Cathy.” “Alright, Cathy. I’ll just come back later then.” I started toward the door. The downside of a life of solitude is awkwardness in these situations. “Wait, Frank.” I stopped and turned around. “I heard about what you did with Scott and Bobby.” “Yeah, well, I was really just—” “It must have taken some strength,” she said. “Well, the work I do is very physical.” Ms. Angler laughed. “I know that, but I mean not to let Scott beat the snot out of Bobby.” “Oh that,” I was making a fool out of myself. “I guess I just reacted.” With that I left the room as quickly as I could. I was sweating. I must have looked like such a fool or an ape. I mocked myself under my breath, ‘Yes Ms. Angler. It took lots of strength. I’m the strongest janitor that ever lived. You should see how many children I can lift into the air. With one arm, no, one finger at that.” I finished my duties for the evening all the while avoiding Ms. Angler. I was done a little early so I went to the loading dock and climbed onto the roof of the school. I walked across to the west side and sat down on a block to enjoy the sunset with Mr. Stanley’s throat spray bottle. Red and purple filled the sky in that second part of the day where everything turns gold. I thought about Ms. Angler. I knew that we could never be together, after all, her being a teacher, and me just the janitor. I convinced myself that it was just the price you pay for living so free. I unscrewed the cap of the vodka and cranberry and took a drink. I’ll fill it back up tonight, I thought. A heron stood at the edge of the pond about fifty yards from the school. It was like a creature from Jurassic Park with its long neck stretched out over the water, stepping carefully, if at all, and in one prehistoric motion spearing and swallowing a frog or some small crustacean. The bird was majestic. Its regal white wings spread out maybe six feet wide as it lifted off of the ground and its outline crossed the setting sun. It’s a solitary life. It’s a humble life too, and I wouldn’t give it up for Ms. Angler, or anyone else for that matter. In the months before she passed my mother grew distant from me. I did most of the talking when I visited and she just stared off into the television and nodded. She loved to watch soap operas. Nothing real ever interested her. After my experience on the roof, I was determined to get her to understand. “Mom. Mom, listen to me.” My voice was getting louder. “I am a janitor and I’m proud of it.” She didn’t respond. The doctors said that she might not even know I was there. The next morning when Principal Brown poked his head into my office he told me that the mayor and his wife were here to speak with me. I assumed it was about the fight. “Hello Frank, I’m Mayor McGregor.” “Yes, I know. I voted for you,” I said, though I didn’t really, but I thought it might help my cause. “Thank you. Listen, I’m here to thank you for straightening my son out. He feels really bad about the whole thing.” He handed me a note. I opened it up and on the inside was a poorly scribbled, “Dear Mr. Janitor, I’m sorry.” Signed, “Scott McGregor.” “Thanks.” I said, putting the note into my pocket. The mayor’s wife chimed in, “We were talking with some of the other parents and we realized how much of an impact you’ve made on our children. They all absolutely love you.” Mayor McGregor interrupted, “Which is why we’d like you to be ‘The End’ of this year’s 4th of July Parade. You could wear the barrel, you know, it straps over your shoulders and looks like you’re naked inside. But you’ll be wearing shorts of course. And it says ‘The End’ on the back. What do you think?” I thought about it for a moment. It felt like the mayor and his wife kept leaning in closer until it was almost uncomfortable. “I’d be honored,” I said, and I have been ever since.
from When Russia Came to Stay
Language class offered a glimpse into what it would be like teaching in Russia. Even when I wasn’t picking up on the unending verb tenses, it became a game to imagine life as a woman in Russia. Teaching appeared a role of mothering and training youth how to survive. Depending on one’s world view, one might teach opportunity and growth, or rigidity and sameness—acquiescence to a system corrupt and unfair in many ways, especially for women. I realized the importance of opening students’ minds and encouraging them to be confident and hopeful. “Take a short break for tea, but remember we still have much to review,” our teacher said in Russian. We went to the International Office for tea and small crackers. The tea was strong and sweet, served in ornamental pots set along the long table. Tom and Sasha talked in the back of the room pointing to a large map of Europe. “What’dya see?” I asked Tom sipping tea. “Russia’s like three times the size of China,” Tom said. He said he wanted to go to China someday, but it was hard to believe him. He wasn’t even trying to learn Russian, and sometimes I wondered why he’d come. He would stand out among the Chinese, not only in appearance with his large frame, blue eyes, and full beard prickling his face by tea time, but simply in his manner. He wasn’t quiet, ever, or meditative, the way I pictured the Chinese. “Yeah. I’d go there,” I said. After too many crackers and more sitting, I was hardly hungry for lunch. But the group would walk to a cafeteria behind the building where we studied and sit through servings of beet soup, black bread, and some variable of fried meat and greasy potatoes. On the way out of the cafeteria, we often bought a chocolate bar (a waxy Russian chocolate wrapped in blue aluminum bought from a real person working at the shop underneath the cafeteria). The second half of the day would demand the chocolate bar as Henry lectured on: History and Sociology of Religion in Russia; Russian Peoples, Culture and Literature; and Russia in Transition. Classes were sometimes indecipherable for me. Perhaps I liked “sounds without meaning,” but what I quickly grew to dislike were Henry’s long lectures on politics. At the time, it was over my head. At Malone, the classes had been small, personal, and predominantly female instructors and peers had talked easily about such things as Victorian women writers. In Henry’s class, fewer spoke than listened to him, and the few brazened enough to speak, argued. From what I gathered, the quarrels were about Russia’s place in the global market, about Russia’s natural resources, and especially about war. Some peers wanted to know how Russians perceived the ethics of war, “Would they use nuclear weapons?” We were college students—none of us had been in the military. I wondered if we understood such complicated responsibilities in our own country. Henry shrugged his shoulders, clearly not expressing everything he thought. Maybe he preferred to keep silent on the dynamic Russian conscious. Henry encouraged us to experience Russia, not to be told about her. Even when we were sick, or later when Dima’s family vied for my attention, Henry insisted we go to Russian peers’ apartments, that we stroll through the museums and theatres, the churches and marketplaces. Later, I could see that this was the only fair way to teach us of Russia. Too much word of mouth would have left us parroting bland responses to an amazing country. Still, had he told us stories of exile to Siberia, molestation in Soviet gulags; had he painted pictures of the bribery between a policeman and Russian driving a coveted BMW, about the outbreak of gonorrhea, hepatitis, and AIDS because of unsanitary medical care—Russia’s socio-political affairs would have become stories, and life, of real people living and dying. Russian peers offered glimpses of the superstitions, traditions, and aspirations of the youth. The name Olga had at first struck me as very unattractive. Maybe because it was reminiscent of ogre and ogle, which were ugly words to me. The first Olga I met (there would be others as this was a popular Russian name) was a student at the university. Contrary to her name, she was a fair-skinned Russian beauty. She was tall and thin with a straight, regal grace about her. She wore high boots, and a bright top that clung to her full chest. She was studying to be an English language teacher and often visited us during tea time in the International Office. Earlier that day, she had told the group that she would like to lead us in aerobics. Tom had asked if boys could come, but she gave him a wink and said that he’d never be able to handle her work-out. I was impressed. She was tough and feminine.
By four, the
group straggled back to the dormitory for an hour of our own time
before the last meal of the day. Michelle was studying in the living
room, and it was freeing to have alone time. I stretched my arms
over my head and considered jumping rope before dinner but
remembered the workout later that evening. Still, I couldn’t sit
another second—head rolled, arms circled in the air. “Wanna jump rope?” I smiled, glad to have him to myself. He faked a punch to my stomach, tightened against the brush of his knuckles. I pushed him, and he acted afraid. He gripped my shoulders, swung me around; with all my weight I bulldozed him to the cot, then stepped back feeling too close and wishing to be closer at the same time. The bottoms of his socks were brown on my bed as he leaned against the wall. We were quiet. He inched to the edge of the bed and planted his socks on the floor. “Here,” he said, patting a space between his legs. My back, a sliver from the cot, stiffened between him. He kneaded thumbs and forefingers into my tight shoulders. The silence we never shared was pin-prickling. “Are you hungry?” I asked shooting to my feet and grabbing empty water bottles from the desk. He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read—was it a smirk, an almost smile? Was I reading into him what I felt? I left the room without looking back, even though I wanted to. The cook reached for my bottles, her face and neck blended together like a thumb puppet. Her chef’s hat ballooned into the hot kitchen. The plastic bottle slid from under my arm, and I stooped to the ground to retrieve it. The cats scrounged the counter, and she turned and clapped her hands. “No! Bad cats. For shame!” she spat. Her tone was fierce, and I wondered if she was concerned the cats would contaminate our soup, or if she worried the cats would be scalded by the gas stove. She turned to me with a twinkle in her narrow eyes, and I handed over my bottles. Few in the group were there yet, and I sat down next to Von and the nervous girl. Her hair fell forward like a cape protecting her face. In class, she had looked paler, her cheeks even more hollow. I wanted to see her face, but she remained cocooned. I pushed a piece of barley and chicken under the oil bubbles of the soup. I picked the egg-glaze on the roll, feeling responsible to make small talk which had come so easily during our initial days in Moscow but no longer did. Yet the jangle of words, especially my own, was the last thing I could stand just then. When I was a child, Mom and Dad had to tell me to stop talking and eat nearly every night, until puberty. Then suddenly, to my sister’s dismay, I couldn’t gush the words anymore. Thoughts became weightier, less certain, more complicated. I was tired. “How are you feeling?” I asked the girl beside Lon. She lifted her hair and offered a week smile. “Not so good.” “How’s it goin?” Lon asked from the side of a filled mouth. He didn’t look up from his soup. I said fine and dunked the roll in the soup. “I’ll see you guys later,” I said and moved to the counter for the filled bottles with my uneaten meal. Tom’s voice was a garble in the back of the cafeteria laced by Michelle’s. I forced myself not to turn around. “Thank you,” I smiled at the cook rinsing the enormous cauldron, and gathered my day’s worth of bottled water. You’ll feel better after the workout, I promised myself.
I had in mind the aerobics classes at Malone: bright, spacious, and high-impact, which was nothing like Olga’s class. She wore a too-small pink and purple leotard. She leaned over eighties-style warm-up socks and scrunched the thick pink into perfect cringles down to her slippers. I waited for her to bust out her Nikes, or the equivalent, but her slow, poised motions suggested she wouldn’t. Her hair was curled and piled on top of her head. With pink lips, she smiled at the handful of us gathered in the dormitory’s antiquated weight room, a gray cement block which would become a treasured hideaway. A mirror spanned one wall, reflecting thin benches and red and black weights. The equipment was cheap and outdated but tidy, if only from lack of use. On the floor was an Oriental rug, which we would spend most of the hour “stretching” on. “Welcome. I am so pleased you have come,” her English sounded too precise. I almost started laughing. She plugged a samovar into the outlet and asked us to get comfortable, to relax. “We will begin with a meditative series of exercises. Very, very good for the heart.” She told us to breathe slowly, to release all “spirits of hardness.” I almost stood to leave, but peeking at my peers cross-legged on the mats “breathing” made leaving too obvious a distraction. Olga poured hot water into mix-match tea-cups and said that after our work-out we would drink tea. After a series of mild stretches, she said, “Sweating bad for body,” make-up intact, purple hand weights to the side of her mat. I chugged my bottle. “Not cold water, Lea?” she asked. “Ah, not really,” I said, forcing my eyes not to roll. In the future, exercise would continue to be jumping rope in the mornings before anyone was up—or dancing with Tom in the evenings.
“That was awesome!” I said landing on my feet, Tom’s hands still on my waist. “Try to lift me higher like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing.” Again, I scrambled to the end of the hall and ran to him, soaring above his head. “Spread your arms; I’ve got you!” he said. “I can’t. You might drop me,” I laughed, shooting out my arms like wings. “So, you want to see how this looks in the mirrors?” he asked. I breathlessly agreed. We ran downstairs for the key to the weight room, giggling with thoughts of last Saturday there. While I had jumped rope, Tom pulled a metal bar with a string attached to a stack of red weights. With a sharp snap, the metal bar smacked him in the forehead. We laughed till we cried. The humor was easily re-ignited with a peek at Tom’s forehead, now a colored egg with a small scab. The dorm keeper, as we called her, lived behind the yellow door at the entrance of the dormitory. She appeared a typical babushka, aged and squared, quieted and stilled. I wondered what she could possibly do all day in the small room behind the yellow door besides greet us, leaving and returning from class. I thought she had too much time on her hands and that was why she was overly concerned if we forgot our hats or gloves. (I hadn’t then realized to be underdressed for General Winter was a serious offense to all Russians.) I knocked, desperate for her answer. “Maybe she’s not there,” Tom said. “No, she’s in there. She’s always in there.” No answer.
We drifted
back upstairs, and my heart began to slow, to sink. The group hung
out, dorm doors opened. Clusters of Russian and American peers
sprawled on the beds reading or writing; they sat in circles on the
rug singing or talking; they played cards on the desk—no one was
alone. Lord, help me pray—a knock on my door. “Come in,” Michelle said. “Hey guys.” Tom sat on the end of my cot, his feet by my hip. I sat up and grabbed my journal. Go away. “We were snorkeling, right. And my dad threw the corn at me, instead of the fish. Then! The fish started attacking me. So, I saw an old woman and decided to throw corn at her.” I was trying to zone out. “The fish attacked her, and an ambulance had to come!” A little laugh escaped. This was ridiculous—Tom, his story, our situation. Yet, we were laughing, tears streaming down our faces. How easy it was for things to dive past thought, free and light. He scrunched a sweatshirt under his head. Michelle asked if we minded she turn off the light because of her headache. Tom moved from my cot to the floor. “I like my landscaping job in the summers, and it makes good money. But I’ll get the Engineering Degree just to have options,” he said. “I definitely want to be an English teacher. I think. It’ll be tough to go back to school after being here, don’t you think so?” I said. “Oh yeah. Henry says we shouldn’t expect people to understand our experiences in Russia. I know they’ll never understand. Only we will,” he said. Dima will. A moment of silence. Let’s just go to sleep. With Tom there never seemed a way to be quiet. “It’s most important that we try to understand the experience ourselves,” Michelle said. “The first time I came, I thought it would be so hard to explain it all to my mother—but, really, it was hardest just to gather what all it meant to me.” Tom and I couldn’t quite understand where she was coming from. “You think it’d be cool to honeymoon in Russia, like that couple we saw in Red Square?” Tom asked. I thought Michelle was right, somehow. I felt that there was something happening that would take a long time for me to sort through, but it was so easy to be swept into another dream with Tom. “Yeah. But probably anywhere would seem euphoric once you’re married. I mean—” “Sex will be awesome!” he said. “I swear. I will do it in the limo on the way to the reception! Why not?” I added. “Lea, think about that. You won’t want to rush it. You say this now, but you’ll change your mind. You’ll want it to be special,” he said. My shame crouched in the dark room. “No. I think I really will.” I hugged my pillow with deep longing.
Michelle and I were walking to the kiosk for instant coffee. “Henry wanted to talk with you,” she said. “At lunch yesterday he asked me about your relationship with Dima.” “That’s strange. What did you say?” I began to feel uncomfortable that Henry would talk about me with another student. Why wouldn’t he just ask me about my relationship. “I told him it seemed like you really liked him, and that—” I was glad the wind was hard against my cheeks, glad to have an excuse for the flush that ran over my nose. “What?” I turned my head, but her face was hidden behind the hood of her jacket. “Why didn’t he just ask me about it? What else did he say to you?” I should have been quiet, let her explain her thoughts. But in a way, I didn’t want to hear her opinion on my relationship with Dima. He wasn’t just another Russian. She didn’t know him, and neither did Henry. “Nothin really, but he knows how Russian men can be trouble—he’s lived here for years. He knows the people,” she said. “But he doesn’t know Dima. He’s not like the typical Russian,” I said.
I knocked on Tom’s door. “Come in,” he mumbled laying on the bed in faded jeans and a t-shirt. “Hey. Can I borrow your plaid button-down?” I asked. “What can I borrow of yours?” “I’ve got a really cute skirt you can wear—wait, I better not say that you probably will!” We laughed, but it felt strained. Something was off. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said moving toward the closet, keeping his back to me. “Are you and Dima engaged?” “No. Why?” He busied himself with a pile of shirts as guilt choked me. He turned to me with a blank face. “Really, we’re not engaged, Tom.” “His father told Henry you are. Just be careful—” Shame ripped inside me. I was here for Dima—for us. Tom was fun, but what was I thinking? “Yeah. I feel confused.” If only he was here—just one look, one touch, and confusion would evaporate. Like the frozen earth with the warmth of spring, we would be together again. I had to protect our relationship, to guard myself. “I’ve been praying for you,” Tom said. He didn’t smile; his face was serious and open. I believed him. “Tom, I don’t know. I’m nervous about his family. I don’t know what they expect of me, or even what I expect of them.” He nodded. “Thank you for your prayers. I’m just so far away from him, and—” Did he sense my attraction? I looked down—“I love him. In many ways being here reminds me of him.” He handed me the shirt. “The language is killing me—I can’t learn it quickly enough, and I’m gonna make a fool of myself with his parents. I can’t talk to them! And there’s so much to say!” “It’ll be alright,” he said lying back on the bed, hands behind his head, eyes to the ceiling. Tom was a great catch, but time made him less mythical. His laugh was still contagious, his touch on my arm, my shoulder still electric, but in fragmented moments I felt his aggression, his perfectionism. I began to understand how he had pushed himself so hard on the football field that he had nose-bleeds after practice. I didn’t like the way I began to see myself in him. He rolled his eyes and told me he didn’t want water or grapefruit when I tried to 'health-ify' our greasy meals. I felt like a nag, like a wispy woman, like an anal-retentive nuisance. I doubted he’d be the type to be partners with his wife. He would be the leader, always, and his woman would have to learn to acquiesce even when he was in the wrong. On his birthday, Michelle, Tom, and I took a metro to a small café for the closest thing to American fast-food, Gardina Restaurant. We ordered “pizza” (thin cracker-like dough and strong cheese slathered with pepperoni)—I added a dill and cucumber salad to my tray. He talked with Michelle most of the night. On the way back to the dormitory, we stood holding onto the metal bars at the top of the metro as the bus rolled through the night in a muffling roar and Russians engaged in eye-contact avoidance. I pulled my eyes from Tom’s stare and gazed at the bright lights of the metro glaring against a dark window. Reflecting Tom. He still stared, as though he was forcing me to face him, to speak to him through my eyes. I’m sorry. This isn’t right. You’re amazing—but. Please stop. Look away. I began to realize Dima’s gentleness. He could be shy, quiet, and I could wish he’d speak up, be assertive. But there was something in the ways we worked together. He needed me and I needed him, beyond physical attraction. I began to imagine Dima’s touch, a whisper of Russian in my ear, a silent, shoulder-bobbing laugh. Flashes of his full mouth on a bottled Heineken, square jaw raised, knees bent with frayed khakis—easy and still on the bar stool. He would peer at me, engaged in dramatic conversation with his Russian friend, offering a slight nod, easy smile. “Deem,” his friend would say, “Lea’s like my sister, man.” Dima would nod, grin, not a trace of jealousy on his face. Shame curled around my heart. I didn’t deserve his loyalty. I brainstormed Christian friends from Malone that I could set Tom up with. It felt like a line was drawing between us. I wanted to keep the separation, to distance our flirtations. If he was praying for me, I would pray for him, I thought with mixed feelings of relief and sadness. He was just so cute, so Christian, so strong. And I was just so disgusting. “Are you and Tom okay?” Michelle asked once we were back in our room. “Uh-huh. Why?” I strained to sound nonchalant and grabbed Dima’s white bear. “Nothin, really. Just seemed like there was tension tonight—you guys usually laugh more—” I wondered what she really wanted to say. Her words seemed as tensile as her face. “Michelle, tell me honestly, are you still attracted to Tom?” What a relief just to say it, but I worried she might not be willing to open up. She hesitated, pulled a Bible from her side of the desk, and looked across the room at me as I changed into sweats and Dima’s t-shirt. “No. Not really,” she wasn’t going to open up, “I’m over that. Are you?” I wanted to hold back, to keep from spelling out my every passing feeling, but it seemed the first time in a long time that we had actually talked openly. “I don’t know. He’s a great guy—” A steely look shadowed her face. “Lea, you’re practically engaged. You really shouldn’t be flirting with Tom—” Color crept over my face, anger paralyzed by surprise. I nodded my head, looked down, tried to get a barring on what had just happened. I sensed it clearly. We were webbed in jealousy.
In Russia, cats lived in corners: under the stairways, tucked into the dorm’s dilapidated bathroom (drawn in by the cooks offering of left over chicken), in a discarded Panasonic box on Minin and Pozharsky Square. They were wild cats, with claws and reproductive organs left functioning, thus sometimes odor permeated their domain. I loved cats, but clean, domestic, shiny-coated cats. One Sunday evening in the bathroom of our dorm, a litter of marble kittens clustered around a mangy mother-cat. Though the cooks had left food earlier, only raw bones remained. I wondered where to buy cat chow and then the awful thought, they were probably feeding on mice. It was a natural conclusion with a glance around. The bathroom walls were chipped tile, as was the floor, and filthy floor boards covered a rectangular hole underneath the hot water pipes, now aged brownish. I gingerly stepped to the sink and brushed my teeth. I splashed water on my face and hoped to look better than I felt, but there were no mirrors to check. As I left the bathroom, the mother cat leaned into a dead mouse as her babies meowed. I sped down the hall, grossed out and wondering how I could avoid the bathroom, or ask someone to clean it. Tom’s door was open, and he asked if I was ready to leave for Henry’s. “Sure, let me just grab my coat—you guys have mice in the men’s room?” He laughed, but I didn’t. I was sick of living so uncomfortably. “Seriously. Mice are in the women’s bathroom. What can we do?” He said we could ask Henry about traps, but I didn’t want to. I felt uncomfortable with Henry ever since I learned he had been asking about my relationship with Dima. It seemed he didn’t trust me, and I didn’t want him to think I was squeamish over a few little creatures sharing my space. After all, he lived in Russia. I felt certain he wouldn’t complain, especially if he only had four measly months to handle a few mice.
Tom and I
strode into the dark evening and shuffled onto the metro. Henry’s
apartment was separated from the main road by a snowy field and old
factory. We strolled by yellow barrels outside the lifeless shop,
wondering aloud if this was another building in the throes of
renovation. Above us on the stairs, a rustling sound interrupted the dark. We paused. Side by side. Tom breathed against my cheek A blinding light rained down on us. “What the—Tom?” “Whose there?” he asked. The light fell over our torsos, legs, and boots as an old woman’s voice apologized in Russian. Two other women clicked their tongues as we blindly peered into the dark. I felt Tom’s arm around my shoulders as the babushkas wrangled and finally scuttled by. He gripped my shoulder, protective or possessive I couldn’t tell. “Are you okay?” I wasn’t sure how to answer. As my eyes readjusted, bright spots speckled the air. My heart pounded with excitement and my skin was numb. I could have run faster than ever before; instead, paralyzed in place, all the energy, all the possibility burned like a fire in the frigid air. “I’m fine,” I said and stepped away from Tom.
“Come in,” Henry said in his deliberate, soft way. His face shined like wax as thin lips held a toothless grin. He turned from the door to the kitchen, one of three small rooms in his apartment. I wanted to study his soft eyes where emotions often pooled because they were less cautious than his measured words. As we untied our boots and slid our coats off, sugar and cinnamon wafted from the kitchen where small pots and tea cups hung from silver racks on blue walls. “I’m making bread. Like dates?” Thoughts of my mother’s date bread made my mouth water. Bowls of ice-cream bars, popcorn, fruit, crackers, and nuts spread the kitchen. Tom and I filled plastic plates and joined the group, pressed together on a braided rug, dark futon, and folding chairs. “You have a phone call, Lea,” Henry said. I stood from the futon and stepped over jean legs and feet in worn socks, shimmying into the closet-like computer room. “Hello?” I said, hoping it was Dima and fearing it could be his father, for whom I hadn’t prepared a Russian conversation. “Lea. How are you?” Dima’s voice felt like honey in dark tea. “Okay. I was just thinking about you.” “Oh yeah? What were you thinking?” “Just how I miss you and this distance apart is really tough.” “I know. But if we survive this, we can survive anything—right?” His voice was always steady, emotions rarely raised the inflection, quickened the pace. But there was something in the way he said “right” that made me pause. Was he doubting? I needed him to be strong. To believe everything would work out and we’d be together before we knew it. I told him everything would be fine, we’d make this work the way we had made our hectic high school schedules fit together—even though the distance between Lake Catholic and Mentor High was a mere skip. Twelve thousand miles over an ocean was a bit harder to blend. I was quiet. Near resenting having to be the cheerleader. Please, just let me know everything’s okay, I silently begged. “You know, we might get married sooner than you think,” he said. “You can’t keep a secret to save your life, Dima! You know I’m waiting. Your dad seems to think I already am your fiancé—” “Hey, I told him he could call you that. That’s okay, right—” “I guess so, but Henry has concerns because you’re a ‘Russian.’ “Oh yeah! We saw this one guy; he was drunk and passed out in the snow. It was the strangest thing. You’d think he’d wake up face-first in the snow. But he didn’t!” I said. “Are you being careful?” he asked. “Oh totally. I promise there’s nothing to worry about. The group sticks together.” I wished this hadn’t come out and yet was relieved that it had. I had always told Dima everything. He always listened. When I told him which of his friends I found cute, he’d keep driving, eyes peeled to the road, pale fingers adjusting the volume on Neil Young. “Are you listening to ‘Like a Hurricane,’ Dima?” The lyrics drifted, pulled me back to him: I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream, you could have been anyone to me. Before that moment you touched my lips, that perfect feeling when time just slips away between us on our foggy trip. I tapped a hand against my thigh.You are like a hurricane; there's calm in your eye. And I'm gettin’ blown away to somewhere safer where the feeling stays. I want to love you but I’m getting blown away. “How’s everything in Findlay?” I asked trying not to waste time in silence. Every minute cost a dollar—luckily from Gotek’s account. “Okay, I guess. I miss you. Life is horrible without you.” This didn’t sound like him. “Oh, baby, I know it seems like a long time, but it will fly by. Really. I mean, I feel bad because there’s so much happening here that I don’t have as much time to feel sad. It’s not that I don’t miss you—” “So, are the people in the group cool?” “Oh, Dima, there’s one kid I know you’d like. His name’s Tom. He’s a lot of fun.” The group laughed at the black and white Russian comedy. I picked the paint chipping on the window sill. Why had I said that? I didn’t want him to worry, and there was nothing to worry about. Then, I did want him to worry because there was something to worry about, and maybe if he worried he’d take me back to where we’d been, to where we’d be. “What’s so funny?” he asked as the group laughed in the one large room of the apartment. “We’re watching a movie here. But it’s only two in the morning there, huh?” We were truly in different worlds, and I began to realize that it was easier to be on an adventure in Russia than at home waiting. I couldn’t even fathom if the roles were reversed, if Dima was to see my parents after years of my separation from them. We hung up after “I love you’s,” and a heaviness swamped my heart. It would be a week before another brief phone call. A tiny saccharin voice laughed in the living room. Henry was standing beside his three year old godchild, whispering in her delicate ear. She wore a pink dress over her tiny chest and legs, perched perfectly straight on a stool in the center of the room. Her blue eyes glued to the rug hanging on the wall behind the group as she recited a Russian poem. Midway through, she looked down. Henry stooped again to her soft hair, brushed it from the side of her face, and whispered the ending to the poem. She finished with to a roomful of applause that drew red to her already pink cheeks. She hid behind Henry’s dark legs as he seemed to absorb her, glowing with pride, eyes misting over. The godchild ran to the nervous girl sitting on a chair across the room, who resembled her mother (plain, frail, sad-looking). The child drew her arms around our peer’s neck and yelped when she realized the girl was indeed not her mother. Henry laughed so hard he wept, mingling his tears with the child’s as he scooped her up and delivered her to her mother. Later, we would learn that the child was intentionally fatherless. That her mother had wanted a child, had gone to great lengths to use a smart, attractive, and good-hearted Russian man to serve her purpose. Henry seemed to support the mother’s decision, as he had agreed to serve as the godfather. Secretly, I imagined Henry and the child’s mother falling in love and becoming a “real” family. Whenever he would talk of the child and her mother, he did so with nearly painful tenderness. His smile was so deep that it seemed the cold, harsh confusion of Russia (and maybe his own lonely life) was swallowed by his love. I would search his face, his eyes lingering somewhere else, and imagine he was forlorn because he was wildly in love. Had I thought that was the way of love? Believed that falling in love continued to snowball in intensity? Maybe only that it should. And I wondered about Dima. Would our love be kinetic, free-falling, enigmatic? Henry would never tell me what he feared about my relationship with Dima, but later I would think his fear might have been related to the accounts of Russian men from his godchild’s mother. If none had been suitable for marriage in her eyes, the fact that a naïve American might marry a Russian man could very well be alarming.
Six years and a baby of our own later, sitting quietly at my computer, summer sounds of owls and crickets like humming waves washed over the evening. I listened to the whispering silence and imagined love was more mystery, more intensity than one might dare to dream. Emotions would come in waves, like the night song. Believing in love was to accept the only magic this world had to offer.
pamela r. anderson is director of philanthropic giving at WKSU-FM, Kent State University's public radio station, and she also is a freelance speech writer. A graduate of Hiram College and Kent State, her poetry and other writings have been recognized by several professional organizations, including Ohio Professional Writers, Inc. and have appeared in the Kent State University Magazine, Epitome, DiceyBrown.com, and others.
tara broeckel is an MFA Playwriting candidate through Cleveland State University’s NEOMFA program whose most recent works (Bedknobs and Handcuffs and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place) have been produced by Cleveland State’s Factory Theatre. Tara currently manages an Indonesian imports store and resides on Cleveland’s west side with her fiancé, Nathan, their cat, Mo Cushla and Trixie, their recently adopted rescue dog.
travis hessman, for whom there is no excuse.
jessica jewell is a student in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program and the Wick Poetry Center Fellow at Kent State University. Her chapbook was the runner-up for the 2006 Tennessee Poetry Prize, and she was recently nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize. Her poetry is forthcoming in Nimrod and has appeared in such journals as Poems & Plays, Touchstone, Angle Magazine, Clark Street Review, Whiskey Island, and others.
satya palaparty is a creative writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She often writes of her memories of India, and also of her cross-cultural experiences as an immigrant living in the United States. She has presented her work at readings and conferences including the Pennsylvania College English Association (PCEA) and at the Winter Wheat Festival at Bowling Green State University. She most recently published her work in the Online Literary Journal of the NEOMFA and the Akros Review. Satya holds a Masters degree in English Literature from India, a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Cleveland State University, and is currently completing her M.F.A.
lea povohazev writes in the genre of creative nonfiction. Her work appears in Ohio Teachers Write and is forthcoming in the anthology Growing Up Transnational and the Akros Review. She has a column in Cleveland State's Vindicator. She has recently completed a memoir, When Russia Came to Stay, a story of love, multicultural marriage, and the Russian Orthodox Church, showing how the mystery of life, the unexpected way things happen, leads to faith in God and family. She lives in Stow, Ohio, with her husband and their two year old and newborn.
jeremy sayers writes, when I was born, earth had only one artificial satellite—Sputnik. Telstar wasn’t launched until the summer I was working toward my first birthday. Years later, working as a satellite engineer for NBC television, I got to “talk” to Telstar every day. (Actually, it was just pushing a couple of buttons and flipping a switch, but fascinating in a strange way). In the intervening years between those signpost events, my grandfather taught me, among other skills, to plow corn and potato fields with horses. A wealth of experience to write about.
john skarl, twenty-seven, hopes his beard makes him look at least thirty-five. He is cultivating an appreciation for pocket cutlery, button-up sweaters and Spanish accordion. On shuffle, his iPod produced "I Feel for You" by Prince. If he could recommend a book by shuffling his library, he would. Instead, he recommends the last three books he's read—Ask the Dust by John Fante, The Bread of Those Early Years by Heinrich Boll, and Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
aaron smith was born, raised, educated, and experienced in Northeastern Ohio over the past twenty-four years. He has spent those years moving from one rust town to another. In 2005 he graduated from Kent State University with a B.A. in English. Currently he is a second year MFA candidate in the NEOMFA Consortium through Youngstown State University. Beyond Ohio he has traveled widely in North America and the Caribbean. Since the new millennium many of these journeys have been searches for the ever illusive break beat, hidden away in the warehouses and nightclubs of the electronic dance music culture. When not writing poetry he also enjoys spinning and creating Drum and Bass dance music.
tobin terry is a student in the NEOMFA. His work has also appeared in The Akros Review. A piece of advice for aspiring writers: By way of Barbara Kingsolver, Tobin suggests "Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."
marianne thomas-jackson is the mother of twin boys and three girls and the proud grandmother of nine beautiful children. A graduate of Kent State Stark, she is currently enrolled in the NEOMFA Program as a fiction writer/closet poet. Marianne has been published in the Writing Center Review, Canto, a creative writing journal, and Kent State Stark Writing Group, whose copies were sold to benefit the Katrina flood victims.
sara tracey is a life-long resident of northeast Ohio and a third year MFA candidate in poetry. She is a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Akron and plans to continue teaching after finishing her MFA. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Akros Review and Hobble Creek Review.
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