Keith Burkholder has been published in Creative Juices, Sol-Magazine, Trellis Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Scarlet Leaf Review. He has a bachelor's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics from SUNY at Buffalo (UB). Something to ponder Just imagine for the next fifty to one hundred years, No one on planet Earth procreated, I am not saying to abstain from sex or self-pleasuring, I am saying no children being born, Look at the troubles the world has already, There are just over seven billion people on the planet, We need a world that can conserve natural resources, Over population contributes to pollution and over use of natural resources, Yet, people continue to procreate at a rapid pace, We don’t live in a world that encourages solitude and serenity, Let’s face it, group activities and having friends is overly encouraged, It is hard to trust people in this world, I wish more people would live a life without procreation, Crime would be down a lot as well, That is all you hear about in the news, Maybe even through experience you have noticed a lot of crime, People in our world don’t care for one another too much, Yet, these same people continue to procreate, I am not trying to be cynical or pessimistic, I am just being honest, So live a life that you know best, I am not telling you what you should do, Just think about this poem for a little while, Less people would contribute to lesser problems in our society, There are already so many humans on our planet, A little less could help the planet a little more, Take care and be good, For goodness is not a big facet in our lives in this world, It can be if thought about, Enjoy the New Year when it comes and carpe diem. Crime This just exists everywhere, People like to get into trouble, This is how certain people live their lives, Can they change? Who knows? People have to change on their own, Or get help, Crime will always exist, To seek merchandise or money, This is just the way it is, Accept that crime will never change, Try to be a good person, Thrive in life any which way that you can, This all one can do in order to find a better tomorrow.
1 Comment
Gary Ives lives in the Ozarks where he grows apples and writes. He is a Push Cart Prize nominee for his story "Can You Come Here for Christmas?" Apple Time Some times seem so precious, so perfect that one might suspect everyone of plotting to make life supremely rich and wondrous. Such were my days with Christmas Yoder. In 1938 my father Philipp Stahl was a young intellectual, a doctor working in a clinic in Mecklenburg, Pomerania when Jewish colleagues were arrested and condemned to a forced labor gang. His letters and protests against the treatment of friends and his liberal socialist ideas drew Gestapo attention. After two interrogations and seeing which way the wind was blowing he fled to Danzig where for a packet of morphine and some cash he acquired forged seaman’s papers. In Philadelphia he jumped ship, applied for citizenship, and took a position at Philadelphia General Hospital. Soon he met and married my mother, a nurse, and there I was born in 1945. After the war we moved to upstate New York to a small farm where dad planted twenty-two acres in apple trees. By the late 1960’s the orchard was producing many tons of apples. As the orchard grew he retired from his little practice in town to give full time attention to the business of trees. In summers we harvested cherries and peaches, some of which we marketed to wholesalers, some as jams and jellies which bore our Pomeroy Orchards label. We also had a large fruit stand where in the summer and fall we sold apple products and our jams as well as three shelves of bowls, cups, and dishes crafted by Mrs. Yoder, our neighbor and a potter. The two farms bordering Pomeroy Orchards were Amish farms. My family, unlike others, did not regard the Amish so much as a religious curiosity, but simply as farmers with quaint old fashioned ideas to be sure, but to us they were mainly our good neighbors. My father had set many broken bones, attended difficult deliveries, and had even treated Amish horses, mules and oxen on occasion. In that he spoke German and was a quiet, liberal, kind man, many Amish depended on him as their physician, despite his retired status. Christmas Yoder and I became friends when we were twelve. Each September and October the Yoders and the Landis families, our Amish neighbors, hired on at apple time to pick apples, to press cider and to process and package dried apples. The Amish in our county were large extended families of uncles, aunts, cousins and a score of children. In the orchard the smaller children worked alongside the adults, children picking the windfall and hauling the hampers to the wagon. Christmas Yoder who suffered a condition, was excused from these labors. His affliction, my father explained, caused him to bruise and to bleed easily and to tire quickly. Precautions to protect Christmas from the bumps, scrapes, tumbles and cuts normal in a boy’s world were his only defense against the disease. He spent most of his time indoors helping his mother in the pottery shed or at the kiln. There was no remedy. From infancy he had always been kept at home under the care of his mother and sisters but at twelve he was curious and anxious to accompany the family for the fall picking season. As the Amish boy and I were the same age, my mom and dad, with Christmas’s folks, assigned me to be his companion on Saturdays during the Yoder’s apple time employment at Pomeroy Orchards. We were exactly the same age; his birthday on Christmas, mine on Christmas Eve. We were also the same size, but he lighter, lighter in weight and lighter in color, my hair reddish blond, Christmas’ a blond so light as to be almost white and his skin so thin and pale, nearly translucent. “Mom, I wanna take Christmas to the creek fishin.” “I’ll have to check with Mrs. Yoder first.” The next morning after the wagons arrived the ladders and apple boxes unloaded, mom spoke with Mrs. Yoder while Christmas sat in the wagon looking small and frail, wrapped in a quilt. “Okay, but you bait his hooks. You understand Christmas is not to handle anything sharp. That includes any fish you catch. And no swimming. His mom said he’s just getting over being sick. No rough housing. And stay close to him, Fritz. You know Christmas’s situation. Is that clear?” That first day together my mom packed lunches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, strawberry Kool Aid, and two Clark Bars. There are certain moments in my life which arrive unexpected and are like an epiphany. They become indelibly frozen in perfect clarity. I think of these rare private instances as Divine Flashes. I still have such a clear image of Christmas that morning in his Amish straw hat and black wool pants held up by suspenders, carrying the lunch pail and cider jug with the Kool Aid, as he and our dog Hundie followed me on the path down to the creek through a stand of walnut trees then downhill through a gully where I trapped muskrats in the winter. The morning sun had drawn out the aroma of the fescue. I walked close by with the poles and the little pail with worms, and we chatted a little. The apprehension on his face showed that natural doubt which shyness imposes, not so much a wariness but timidity and sensitivity in not knowing the other’s state of mind. I smiled and nodded. “Bitte.” “So many times I seen you, Fritz. I seen you when your chores you was doing.“ His speech had that little twinge of German accent common to many Pennsylvania Dutch speakers, and his sentence structure in English was more like German, and generously infused with double negatives, ja’s and ach’s. He was surprised that I spoke German. “I didn’t know was English boys could speak German.” Es ist, weil mein Vater ist Deutscher. I see you just once in a while too, but not so much.” “Ja, inside most of the time in the house I stay . Denn nur mit meinen Schwestern draußen gehe ich” So we shifted back and forth between English and his Pennsylvania Dutch which fell odd to my ears. My dad, who preferred German with Mr. Yoder, had said that speaking German with the Amish was like speaking with Germans from the time of Beethoven. Christmas said that my “English- German “ sounded to him clunky and bookish. But we enjoyed mixing the language, sometimes with very funny sounds and meanings. On the bank of the creek under a buckeye tree we propped the cane poles on twigs then stretched together watching the cork bobbers and talking. Hundie had curled up with his back touching me while I scratched his ears and his belly as we talked. Christmas too rubbed Hundie’s belly and scruff with obvious delight. “Your dog, he is very sweet, Ja?“ “He’s the best, Christmas, and I love this fellah like if he was my brother.” At that his face radiated an enthusiasm and his words tumbled out. “Oh Fritz, so much I know what you mean. A cat we had, Dumpling his name. So sweet was that cat and he would creep at night, Dumplin’ into my bed to sleep with me. I loved my Dumplin’ but father he drowned him because one time we was playin’ and Dumplin’ he scratched me. He didn’t mean nothin’, you know, it was only just a cat thing, but I was three days bleeding so father, he…he…. So never no more cat in the house and dogs too, ain’t no dogs in the house no more.“ He did not go to school. His mother and older sisters tutored him at home. He wanted to know all about “English” school. In comparing lessons I learned he was far ahead of me in arithmetic. He studied German but not English or spelling or history or geography or penmanship as we did. The stories his sisters taught were Bible stories. There were very few books in his house, he said, and of course no radio. He was astonished when I told him that in school we listened to a radio show for kids every Friday and that the teacher had allowed us to listen in our classroom to the final World Series game Did I listen to the radio at home, he wanted to know. “You betcha. I listen to Straight Arrow and Superman. And after supper there’s The Lone Ranger and Amos ‘n Andy. Radio is the greatest, Christmas.” The morning passed lazily. The fish were not biting but we didn’t care. When we tucked into lunch he commented that he had heard about our“sticky” bread and said that he preferred his mom’s. The Clark Bar, however, was happily received, and I noticed that he ate only half and saved the rest in the wrapper. “Some of this for little sister.” He was most impressed, however, with the strawberry Kool Aid my mother had sent along. Christmas, fascinated with the new taste drank nearly all of it. “This taste is wonderful, wunderbar.” he said. He told me about games his sisters played, but that he was prevented from joining. He loved to sing with his sisters and at church and he liked to read. When I offered to lend him comic books he allowed that such books would not be permitted. “Well the dumb fish aren’t biting. We could go up the house and read comics. Whaddaya say, Christmas? “Ja. That’s what I say. Ja ,ja, ja. Let’s go Fritz, but don’t let’s tell nobody nothing about them comic books, ja?” “Ja, nothing.” We laughed and trotted back up the hill to the barn and up to a loft. I went into the house and returned with a pile of comics that kept us fully entertained until the bell rang signaling the end of the work day. I again offered Christmas the loan of comic books. He could easily have stuffed a few in his shirt, but he declined. The next day, Sunday, only my family worked the orchard as it was church day for the Amish. My parents sent me in from the orchard early to do chores and I was heading to the hen house to feed the chickens and gather eggs I heard a whistle, turned and there was Christmas standing between the barn and the chicken house. “Fritz, come over here,” he said, “Here is for you.” He handed me two thick slices of bread, still warm from the oven. “Put some of this on the bread,” he said handing me a jar of thick brown apple butter. “See. Ain’t my mother’s bread better than English sticky bread?” He said he would like for the two of us to go fishing again, maybe tomorrow? I told him that I’d have to go to school all week, but that maybe he could come over and maybe help me do chores after school since his parents would still be working the orchard. The Yoder farm abutted our farm about a hundred yards from our barn, with their house another fifty yards, so it was handy for him to stroll over to our place. “You ask ‘em and then we could go fishing Saturday if it ain’t too cold. Make a day of it, you and me and Hundie. Have us a big ole time, Christmas. I’ll ask my mom to talk to your mom.” Sometimes things work out just the way you want them to. The next day and just about every day thereafter Christmas was waiting at the school bus shanty. We quickly fell into a routine. While I changed from school clothes my mother would chat with Christmas and set cookies and milk out for us before we did chores. My dad divided our chores with regard to Christmas’s condition. Christmas threw corn out and filled the watering cans while I gathered eggs and carried out the trash and slopped the pigs. He wanted to gather eggs but dad said a peck from a sitting cluck could start him bleeding. All through the end of summer, fall and into winter we spent time together almost daily. Mr. Yoder and dad were good friends. Dad had cared for Mr. Yoder’s father who had suffered for his last two years from a torn liver, the result of a kick from his plow horse. Dad had quietly administered palliative care as the old man slowly withered. Mr. Yoder’s soft knocks at our door at all hours would summon dad with his black bag. Dad would give the old man an injection and keep compresses on his belly until sleep came, then he and Mr. Yoder would drink schnapps or hard cider at the Yoder’s kitchen table. After the old man died dad and Mr. Yoder still passed occasional evenings together over schnapps and applejack. Dad had dissuaded the Yoders from enrolling Christmas at an expensive hematological clinic in Albany. There was no known cure or even effective treatment so he believed that Christmas’s best place was home, simple as that. The Yoders, good neighbors that they were, would appear with a haunch of venison, a smoked turkey, or half a hog after the weather turned cold. During that twelfth year of our lives a great improvement in Christmas’s health was noticed simultaneous to our friendship, and our parents agreed to encourage us, though we needed no such urging. He had endless curiosity about the world at large. After chores we often got up to my room to read comics and listen to the radio. He loved the fifteen minute adventure shows, but was absolutely enchanted with popular music. While I did my homework Christmas would tune the radio to an Albany station that played only current pop tunes. Sometimes mom would walk over and get permission from Mrs. Yoder for Christmas to eat supper with us. “Listen Fritz, here is “Love Me Tender,” or “Listen Fritz, it’s them Platters, I love that Magic Touch song, do you love that song, Fritz? I want that radio man to play that “Jamaica Farewell.” He wanted to know what I’d learned at school and hovered over me as I did homework with the radio playing. “Them problems is for babies,” he’d say of my arithmetic lessons. He taught me little tricks to work the problems in my head, tricks Mrs. Simmons my teacher, discouraged. “Just work it out on the paper Fritz,” she’d say,” I need to see how you arrive at your answers.” But to this day his way of computation is the way I add, subtract, multiply and divide. Geography fascinated him. Once I taught him how to read a map he was intrigued with distances, climates, and the myriad of human cultures. “Going over to them places, Fritz, would be really great, ja? Do you also want to go to see such places? “Ja. I’d go to the islands down in the Caribbean first then maybe South America. And to Germany. I got lots of relatives over there.” “Maybe when we is growed up, then we could go over there. You and me, Fritz.” “That’d be so keen, Christmas. Ich und du da drüssen in Deutschland.” “Und Jamaica Farewell, in Jamaika, ja? (singing)Down in the market place, you see.-.-.-“ “You damn betcha, Kimo Sabe! (singing)Dancing girls swayin’ to and fro.” Mom was a little perplexed that December when I told her I wanted to give him a Christmas/Birthday present. “Gee Fritz, I dunno, on accounta the religion thing. You got something in mind?” “Yeah, something musical. He loves music’ he’s always singin’ or whistlin’. And he knows how to read music, he does.” Dad sitting at the kitchen table said, “I know what you can give him.” “An ocarina. It’s small, he can carry it in his pocket and ocarinas make such sweet music. I saw three of them for sale in the Mennonite store just last week. We can go by there after school tomorrow.” On the afternoon of my birthday Mr. and Mrs. Yoder and Christmas, who was looking rosier than usual, came to our house with warm rolls and a smoked turkey. We ate delicious sandwiches then Dad and Mr. Yoder broke out a jug of apple jack in the barn while mom and Mrs. Yoder talked at the kitchen table. Christmas and I went up the stairs to my room. This was the perfect opportunity for me to give him the ocarina. In my bedroom we sat on the bed where on afternoons we often read comics or listened to my bedside radio. I had placed the ocarina wrapped in Christmas paper under the pillow, but as I reached for it Christmas began speaking in a low, serious tone. “Fritz, me and you we is such good friends, ja?” “Yeah,. You damn betcha we’re good friends. You are my best friend. Sometimes I think it’s like we was twins. Wasn’t we born on the same day, almost? I wish we really was twins, Christmas.” “Since that first day at apple time I like you so much, Fritz. Sometimes I think what you said that time we are layin’ on the bank talkin’. Hundie he was there in between us. You remember?” “Yeah, sure. That’s the day we met when we went fishin’ and read comics for the first time. “That day you said you loved Hundie like he was your brother. Since that day I think I wish for you say that same thing.-.-.-that same thing.-.-.-about.-.-.-“ Tears like tiny diamonds rolled down his rose tinted cheeks. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. I suddenly realized what he was trying to express, and my own tears bubbled up either in sympathy or because I could well have composed the same words of his unfinished expression of care. A silence fell for a brief time as we sat staring at the wall not knowing what next to say. Each of us had swallowed this huge lump of affection which rendered us feeling so strange. To relieve this awkwardness I reached beneath my pillow and withdrew his present and gave it to him. “Here, Happy Birthday, Christmas. Now you’re thirteen.” Then he reached under his shirt and handed me a ceramic figure of a dog finished with a matte glaze. He had made a replica of Hundie glazed beautifully. Under the base carved letters read, fur Brueder Fritz. “And for you also, Happy thirteen Birthday.” Let’s read comics, okay?” “Ja, bring out them comics and turn on that radio. Maybe some Christams songs for Christmas and Fritz, ja?” The next morning the first gift under the tree that I opened was an ocarina identical to Christmas’s. That winter Christmas was to teach me how to read music although we were quickly able to play together by ear early on, Christmas choosing the first tune we were to master was Christmas’s current pop favorite, Elvis’s“Love Me Tender.” To be sure most of our duets were pop songs. But he also taught me dozens of hymns he know intimately from years of singing. Perhaps this was because these hymns insured approval from his family. Dad was so impressed with our progress he bought us wooden recorders, a soprano and an alto. Christmas had a marvelous ear for harmony and once we’d mastered a melody he could invoke the sweetest harmony and counterpoint from the two recorders. The acme of that winter’s repertoire was the melody line from the choral movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Now I hear it only with tears. (singing) Alle Menschen warden Brueder. With the end of the school year began a summer of splendid idleness. We romped the orchard and fields, we fished, we collected bugs and salamanders. The most memorable event of that wonderful summer though was the breaking of one of the cardinal rules. I taught Christmas how to swim. In the creek was a swimming hole, five feet deep, beneath an oak, from which a long knotted rope hung. Crude steps had been nailed so one could easily climb to the branch with the rope. We often fished up stream from the swimming hole and could hear the laughter and shrieks of bathers. Christmas begged me to take him swimming. On one hot July day with no one else swimming we shucked our clothes and tiptoed into the water. We walked out about belly deep and I told him to stay where he was and simply watch. “Just stay here. Don’t try nothing. Watch me, then I’ll come back and show you. Ja? “ I swam out to the rope, then dog paddled back towards Christmas. “See, this is what you’re gonna do. I stood next to him and instructed him to lean into the cradle of my arms and slowly walked him into the deeper pool. “Now paddle, just like Hundie. That’s right. Your feet too. Good. Good. Now I’m gonna let go but I’ll be right next to you. Don’t you get your hair wet.” Inside of two minutes he was navigating independently. His face beamed; it was his moment of glory. ”Ich schwimmin, Fritz, Ich schwimmin!” The hardest part of his learning to swim was that we could speak of this to no one. He asked me twice afterwards to take him to the swimming hole; he said he wanted to swing on the rope just one time, but I would not take him. Teaching him had been a huge risk, and done on the spur of the moment. I remember laying awake thinking how the event could have turned out badly. But that triumph, I knew, infused in him strength. He was the most determined person I have ever known and I so admired his ability to master academic subjects by himself, but I took some pride in moving him into something he could not have done alone. On rainy or windy days that summer we lay about playing music, reading, and listening to the radio. We also discovered chess that summer and by the end of August were passing hours upon hours, head to head over the chess board at our kitchen table until mother shooed us off. He was the superior player and more competitive, but I managed to win about one third of our games. He loved the challenge of playing Dad, who was formidable. Just around Thanksgiving Day that year the Yoders began allowing Christmas to sleep over at our house on Fridays and Saturdays. After supper and the dishes were cleared we would play some tune we’d rehearsed all week. Then mom would light candles and we’d settle in with popcorn to listen to my father read to us stories and poems. On Christmas Eve afternoon the Yoders appeared once again with smoked turkey and rolls and we enjoyed a jolly birthday party with a giant cake iced in chocolate Happy Fourteenth Christmas and Fritz. One afternoon I overheard Mr. Yoder and Dad chatting. Mr. Yoder was explaining how his community disapproved of its children mixing with outsiders. “But with your Fritz our Christmas has much happiness. Philipp I say to you for my woman and me it is a joy to see them boys together. Boys with Christmas’s sickness, seems like every generation got one or two, there aint many make it to twenty. Him and Fritz is so good. Since last summer he ain’t got sick, ain’t fainted, ain’t fallen down not once. He laughs and sings. Christmas can be a real boy with Fritz. So me and Hannah we know every moment them boys is together is maybe Christams’s best times. Ja Philipp, we got to thank you and your wife to be so good. Always it is Christmas who to your house comes, Fritz he can’t be comfortable so much over to our house.” “We don’t care so much that he listens to the radio or them books the boys read; it don’t hurt nothin’ and Christmas is good about not talkin’ it up with the girls.” “Otto, we love Christmas. You’re right, the boys seem to belong together. Fritz, he has no brothers or sisters, and Christmas only sisters. Ja, es ist einesehrgute Sache, dass. “Other Amish folk, do any complain, I mean about Christmas coming over to our house, the radio, books? Tell me.” “None of our neighbors. Everybody close around understands, but some tongues they wag over to Libertyville maybe. But you know what? Them busy bodies can go shit in their hat. I say this to you, Philipp. For our son, your Fritz, is just now better than anything else in this world. This we know. Later that afternoon I asked dad to explain to me the nature Christmas’s disease. Twenty was just too young to die. My father, always the pragmatist, though a pragmatist with a heart, told me in the gentlest manner that my best friend’s odds for a long and normal life were not favorable. “Fritz, it’s one of those quirks of life. Nature so magnificent, so wondrous, and overpowering is also so inexplicably cruel.” When he explained to me the deleterious power of recessive genes within a limited gene pool I told him I would forever hate the Amish people’s stupidity and lay the fault of Christmas’s disease on primitive religion. “That might be unfair, Fritz. They’re aware now of the cause and they’re taking reasonable steps to prevent this kind of thing, but the cause, you can understand, goes back for many generations. Our family, we’re not believers, we’re what are called agnostics or atheists. One would think that people of a fundamental religion would condemn us, but the Yoders and the Landis they have no trouble overlooking the way we are because they know goodness when they see goodness. I assure you even though they’re Amish, Mr. Yoder and Mrs. Yoder have plenty of misgivings about their religion. But you need to understand that being Amish is much broader than what’s talked about on Sunday. Maybe they embrace their way of life for the same reasons we live the life we live, out here free and away from the pollution of towns and cities. I left Germany, no I escaped a Germany because one faction, stupid and cruel, had come to dictate the way everyone should believe and live. Our Amish neighbors don’t pass judgment on us, don’t try to persuade us to adopt their customs. We owe them the same, son. Don’t blame mankind’s ignorance on a few people who are different.” His argument, persuasive as it was, did not set with me then. Knowing that Christmas might die young tore at my heart. I went to my room and cried. I decided to tell Christmas about our fathers’ conversation, but leaving out the poor prospects for his survival. The risk of censure from his religious community was an issue Christmas tiptoed around. He had intrinsic trust in his parents but at the same time was only too aware of the Sword of Damocles that the strictures of Amish society imposed. When I told him what I had overheard, he beamed. “That is so good, so good to hear. Don’t every boy got such a father. I don’t never talk none about me and you doin’ things together, Fritz. Not even with my sisters. See it’s them older ones we church with. Them’s the ones don’t want none of us havin’ nothin’ to do with no English devils. Don’t you know you is just a bunch of sons-a-bitches sent from below to lead the true believers straight to hell.? Father, he don’t believe such, mother don’t neither. Fritz, Father said if I was to bring some books over to our house it would be okay with him and mother. Only I got to hide them under my mattress ‘cause he don’t want my sisters to know. Ain’t that swell?” “You betcha, Christmas. Want some comics now?” “I like to read them comics only over here with you. Just for fun is them comics. Now I want to read that history book and geography book from your school. I want to know everything what’s in them books. Fritz, I want to know everything, just like your father. Everything. After I read them books I want to read them German books your father read to us them poems, ja? That Schiller book. I want to read some of the stories in that Thomas Mann book, some of them stories in that Tolstoy book, ja, ja und dass andere Schriftsteller, Gorky, Fritz, und that Steinbeck too, I got to know everything.” Thus I became my best friend’s private librarian. Mom was friends with my teacher, Mrs. Simmons who loaned us textbooks which Christmas devoured. During my hours at school his unquenchable thirst drove him to plow through ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade books on history, literature, and math. Some evenings he came to my father for help with geometry and biology, and once dad had unraveled the problem they’d set to discussing a story he’d read. He’d stay until his mother rang the triangle on their porch, summoning him home. One such night I watched my father returning a book to its shelf and noticed him sniffing and wiping his eyes and realized that he was silently crying. The next Spring Dad told me that he and Mr. Yoder had arranged for Christmas to work in our fruit stand with me during the summer afternoons. “ “ You two boys will be in charge. Think you can handle it?” There isn’t much a fourteen year old boy thinks he cannot handle. That summer was magnificent. Dad let us keep a little radio in the fruit stand with the stipulation that it be turned off the moment a car stopped. Initially Christmas was very shy and left all the interface with customers to me. Soon however, we found that tourists liked to take pictures of the Amish boy. He got a charge from this and liked to fool with the tourists by moving the moment the shutter snapped, or faking a sneeze, or passing his hand before his face. “I’m sorry Miss, there was a bee.” His goal was to make some tourist shoot an entire roll of film without getting a good shot. An interesting phase of our fruit stand summer was that his presence greatly increased the sales of his mother’s pottery wares. When dad suggested that Mrs. Yoder raise prices, the sales actually improved. Christmas, who knew ceramics well, turned out to be a crackerjack salesman. One afternoon in July he came over bearing a burlap sack. Once we arrived at the fruit stand he pulled out a straw hat, white shirt, black trousers, and suspenders. “Okay Fritz, me and you is both Amish today. This was a lark and once I’d changed into his clothes we laughed and laughed like idiots. I would dearly love to have just one of the dozens of photos of the two Amish twins taken by tourists. One afternoon a couple with Alabama license plates stopped at the fruit stand. The man, possibly drunk, was loud and argued prices in a bullying manner. The wife was no better and complained that there was no restroom. “Well Miss, you and the mister could just use our orchard over there. It’s eight miles to the filling station.” The couple grumbled but disappeared into the orchard leaving a camera bag on our counter. I dashed over and took the Kodak Hawkeye point and click camera. “Quick Christmas, drop your trousers and show them buns. Good, hurry, now you take a picture of my ass, hurry.” The bad tempered tourists went home with two moon shots. The afternoon mom walked up to the stand with a jug of Kool Aid and caught me in Amish clothes was the last of the Amish twins. She promised not to tell Mr. and Mrs. Yoder as long as I did not dress Amish again. I wished that that summer would never end but soon enough summer was over and it was apple time. At the beginning of the school year Dad, with Mr. Yoder’s consent, had enrolled Christmas in a college correspondence course in World Literature. Christmas’s lessons would come to our address and he delighted in reading and writing at our kitchen table during the day. Spending nearly all of his days and many nights at our house, I reckoned, put a burden on Mr. and Mrs. Yoder, but they encouraged this and spoke of their son’s obvious contentment and happiness. I too was content and I supposed, the happiest of all people. Life was, indeed, so very good. That Christmas, the Christmas of our fifteenth birthday, when the Yoders arrived for the now traditional birthday/Christmas party, dad told us both to go upstairs and wait until called for. When we came down, on the table on each side of the birthday cake lay two portable Remington typewriters. “Happy fifteenth birthday, boys.” That summer of my fifteenth year my father got a rare day visa for our family to visit relatives in East Germany.. Mr. Yoder was hired to look after the orchard, Christmas would run the fruit stand by himself. We were a month away. Upon our return to the orchard Mr. Yoder broke the news to us of Christmas’s death. According to Mr. Yoder, in an apparent attempt to climb to the rope at the swimming hole he had slipped. A protruding nail head had opened a three inch gash. Christmas had bled out before reaching home. *end* Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com. THE DOCTOR IN THE BIKINI “Your panties? They’re in the top drawer, next to the Gideon Bible.” She laughed. “This is the first time I’ve put anything in the drawer. And definitely the last.” Jenna Kirkpatrick got out of bed and reached into the drawer. Was the Gideon Bible frowning at her? She stood on one foot, then on the other, as she slipped her pink lacey panties onto her beach-tanned legs. “Think I’ll wear my new sundress,” she said, removing it from a hook in the bedroom on the third floor of Watson’s Regency Hotel, a short walk to the boardwalk at Ocean City, New Jersey. She twirled around in her pink sundress, with its pattern of swirling circles, before her newest lover. He whistled. She went over to him, as he lay in bed, tousled his dirty blond hair, and whispered in his ear. “Pardon me, love. But I’ve forgotten your name.” He jumped up and laughed. “Pierre,” he said. “Just call me Pierre.” They had until noon. The brightly lit digital clock read 9 am. They would stroll along the board walk, get a cup of coffee at Ocean City Coffee Shop and then he’d report for duty. He drove the power boat for one of the parasail companies. As they strode up the ramp to the boardwalk, Pierre asked if it were normal for a psychiatrist to be “on the make,” as he phrased it. “Normal for this one,” she said. “My therapist told me to join Saint Augustine Fellowship, which is a nice way of saying Love and Addictions Anonymous.” She pointed at the waves on the ocean. “Would you mind if we said hello to the ocean? It’s one of my better addictions.” Jenna removed her sandals and watched her footprints as they sunk into the warm sand. Then she broke free and ran to the ocean, its sound like a thrumming Beethoven symphony. She walked in up to her ankles, then knees, and finally her waist. She laughed as she felt the cold salty water soothe her unquenchable heart. “Okay,” she thought. “So I’m messed up. But I’m still a good psychiatrist.” Pierre came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, lightly touching her large spongy breasts, that poked prominently from the pink sundress. She turned around and they enjoyed a long delicious kiss. Hand in hand, they walked back to the boardwalk, and strode onward until they came to the coffee house. They positioned themselves by the self-serve section and viewed the varieties of coffee, both regular and decaf. Pirate’s Coffee (strong Costa-Rico and Columbian); Ocean City Blend; Raspberry; French Roast and seven other varieties. Jenna chose a 20-ounce white cup, squirted some Raspberry into the bottom and filled it with French Roast. She sniffed it and offered Pierre a smell. “Very nice,” he said. “What’ll you have, love?” she asked. “My treat.” “Can’t drink while I’m on the boat. Gotta concentrate on the riders two hundred feet off the ground. Can’t be worrying about taking a leak. She laughed. They sat down on a bench facing the ocean. At nine in the morning tourists were already marking off the spots where they would spend the day. Colorful umbrellas were twisted into the warm sand, blankets set down, then the coolers came out, while gray and white sea gulls swooped low with their practiced “Feed me! Feed me!” cries. “I love it here,” said Jenna. “It’s the only time I feel free.” She sipped through a tiny opening on her hot coffee. Pierre watched the breeze blow her long black hair. With his fingers, he combed it across her shoulders. “Beautiful woman,” he said. “Well, my patients like me anyway,” she said and brought her iPhone out of her pocket. “Not a single call,” she said. “Not yet at least. They have no idea where I am or what I do in my spare time.” He asked what she did other than screw total strangers. She explained her reading habits: psychiatry journals, which she found “absolutely fascinating,” a dose of crime fiction such as the Jack Reacher novels and was impressed to find Pierre had read every single one of them (she hadn’t) and a selection of literary novels, like Gone Girl, if she could get through them. “Start and stop, that’s me. I just don’t care if I pick them up again.” “Sounds a lot like your Saint Augustine friends.” “Aren’t you the smart one?” she laughed. The July sun was getting hot. A few fluffy white clouds passed leisurely by, as if out on a Sunday stroll. Jenna explained she’d rent one of the blue and white striped umbrellas, lie on her blanket in her two-piece bikini, and let the sun melt her cares away. “Speaking of the devil,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her blue iPhone. Without hesitating, she pressed a button and said, “What’s going on Mr. G?” She walked away from Pierre so he wouldn’t hear her confidential discussion. She listened a few moments and nodded. “Tony, I know how hard it is, I really do.” She walked on the boardwalk, staring at her blue-painted toenails. “If you were to jump off that little bridge, you wouldn’t die. You’d lay there on the rocky bottom in more pain than you’ve ever had in your entire life. Do you hear me?” He mumbled a yes. He was a good looking Italian man around forty years old. Women loved him but it didn’t help. She had a knack for helping her suicidal patients. She had made two half-hearted attempts to end her own life. “Tony, I just had an idea.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “Would your dad let you buy a dog?” “Yeah, why?” “Well, go to the SPCA and buy yourself a dog. You need someone to take care of other than your old father.” “You think?” “Yes, I’m positive, Tony. And you call me when you’ve gotten the dog. And give him a good name.” “Sure, Dr. Fitz,” he said. She walked over to the bench where Pierre was conversing with a young woman on the next bench, who held a big white tub of Johnson’s Carmel Popcorn. She patted the iPhone in her pocket and immediately forgot about her patient. Pierre handed the woman a business card that read “Best Shore Parasailing.” He had launched into a promotion of what it felt like to soar above the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps to spot a couple of dolphins or even the long fins of the sharks, who at this very moment in July, were tasting human blood in North Carolina. “Yes,” said the woman. “I saw it on television. What’s going on?” “Sharks are unpredictable,” said Pierre. “Often times they think a person is an enemy. They have poor eyesight so the swimmer might be making similar movements to the fish they like to eat or could even have an open wound or wear something shiny, like the skin of their prey.” The woman shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. “Shall we walk?” Jenna interrupted. “You think about it, ma’am, and get back to me if you’re ready to have the best experience of your life.” He doffed his Yankees cap. He and Jenna walked on the old wooden boards as bicycles of all sorts whizzed by, some with bells warning pedestrians they were coming by. On they walked, passing a raft of women’s clothing shops that had Jenna craning her neck to see what was in the window. They also passed “Shore Paintings” fifty percent off. Leaning against the door way were colorful paintings – “Museum Quality” screamed a banner – and a couple walked out with a painting under each arm. “This so-called sex addiction of yours,” said Pierre. “You know what?” said Jenna. “I like you but this is something I do not discuss.” “No prob,” he said. “And don’t get mad if I bring up someone else to my hotel room. It’s the way I am. It makes me happy.” Pierre nodded. “I think you’d really love to parasail. What do you think?” Jenna said she would try it the next day, which was her last in Ocean City. She had patients to see on Monday morning at her office in Philadelphia. <> After a refreshing sleep, Jenna awoke alone and changed into her two-piece bikini and pulled a white beach dress over it. The digital clock read seven a.m. She thought about Jack Reacher, who had an internal clock that never failed him. She’d always been an early riser. She was the oldest of six children, evenly divided between boys and girls, from an impoverished Catholic family in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. To wake up was to hear her parents yelling at one another, pounding the kitchen table, her mother throwing bacon grease in her father’s face, the father slapping his wife until she got welts on her cheeks. Then, “You brats!” her father would call at the foot of the stairs. “You lazy goddamn brats. Sleeping your lives away, are ya? Get down here for breakfast or I’ll take the strap to ya.” Jenna felt guilty when she prayed every night that her father would meet a horrible demise, maybe be burned to death like the saints, but apparently his mean temper kept him alive. She rarely thought of her childhood any more except when a memory pushed its way up from some corner of her brain – the frontal cortex and hippocampus, she learned in med school – and now, as she readied herself for the boardwalk, a memory escaped. Jenna found herself in shock, holding her hands over her face. Father had seen her new Cinderella lunch box that she’d traded with a classmate in first grade. “Where’d you git this?” he yelled, as she prayed he would drop dead. “I…. Mary Ann didn’t want it,” she stammered. “And neither do you,” he said, throwing it onto the kitchen floor with a clatter, then smashing it with his work boots. “Oh, go away!” Jenna said aloud in the hotel room. “I’m glad you’re dead, you goddamn bastard.” The ultimate analyzer, she tried to think what triggered the memory. Nothing came up. <> Under the blue sky with its slow-moving clouds, Pierre adjusted Jenna’s life jacket over her blue and white bikini. He could smell her sun tan lotion and watched her black hair sway in the breeze on the boat. God, she was lovely, he thought. He reached into a box on the boat and brought out a small elastic band. “Tie your hair back with this, Jen,” he said. He helped her into a swing, fastened all the straps and cords, and then told her that as he drove his power boat, a huge parachute would open up, trailing her in the swing, and upwards she’d glide. She nodded her head. “I won’t be killed,” she stated matter of factly. “Do you think I’d let anything happen to my beautiful Jenna?” She smiled and then cleared her throat a few times, as he climbed over to the bow of the boat and fired up the engine. As the boat sped away from the dock, she jerked in her seat and all thoughts vanished as the ocean spray drenched her and she shot upward into the air. “I’m flying!” she screamed with joy. What a view she had! It was better than sitting motionless in an airplane because now she was a part of the flight. She kicked her legs and waved her arms as she viewed the rippling gray Atlantic below. Pierre aimed his boat away from the shore. He wanted her to see the “pod of dolphins.” The wind was strong, whipping her ponytail back and forth, as she tried to distinguish shapes in the water. At first she thought they were sleek gray barrels rolling in the sea. But, no, barrels couldn’t leap and dance and play and barrels didn’t have the blue-gray sheen and snouts that poked upward as if they were praying to God almighty. She clasped her hands to her chest and shouted, “Thank you Lord. Thank you for keeping me in this world for thirty-four years.” Her words fled into the air. Filed away in God’s filing cabinet. Pink, she imagined. <> Of course, it was the nuns that saved her. Sister Marcella, in particular. They knew what went on at home. Sent Father McGarry to talk to her parents. Wise old white-haired Tom McGarry knew it wouldn’t do a lick of good, but he must try. Seated on the green davenport in the living room, where there wasn’t a mote of dust or a crumb on the floor, the priest had brought Sterling and Dorothy Fitzpatrick a gift of flowers in a milk-white vase. “A cup of tea, Father?” asked her mother. “I’d like that,” he said, holding his hat in his hand. “Sterling, may I call you that, Mr. Fitzpatrick?” “If me own priest can’t call me by my first name, I don’t know who can, then,” he said, never looking up at the priest. “You’re a machinist, then, Sterling?” “The finest,” he said. “They made me foreman. I can sure get those lazy bas… oh, excuse me, Father. Sometimes my men would rather talk than do their God-given work and I’m known for carrying the whip, as they say.” With a clatter, the pot of tea and tea cups arrived on a silver platter, along with some cookies for dunking. “Nice to have a little party during the day,” said Dorothy, who had a bruise near her eye, which could not be covered up by make-up. The priest explained that the school at Our Lady of Lourdes enjoyed all six children – Albert, Anthony, Dorothy, Sterling, and AnnaMaria – but were especially impressed with Jenna, “a very bright, pleasant child.” “Oh, we’re well aware of that, Father,” said Sterling. “Always wanting to go to the public library, wanting to stay up late studying, which of course we don’t allow.” “Marvelous cookies, Dorothy,” said the father, after dunking a powdered sugar cookie into his tea. “Thank you, Father.” “Let me come to the point,” he said, looking at each parent. Dorothy put her tea cup down on the little table with trembling hands. “I’ll say it for you, Father,” said Dorothy. Sterling looked at her and raised his right hand as if to hit her. “My husband here is a good man but has a nasty temper. Occasionally he gets the strap out and I’m sorry to say he, uh…..” “Oh, for Chrissakes, my love,” said Sterling, standing up and kissing his wife on the cheek. “Once, maybe, or twice, I do admit to getting the strap, just like when I was a lad back in County Cork. Did me good. I minded my manners just as I expect my own brood to do.” “It’s not easy raising six children,” said the priest. “And the two of you are to be praised for doing your best. But I want you to think of something.” The priest took another sip of tea, looked at Dorothy and then at Sterling. “Remember how Christ was lashed before they laid him on the cross?” There was silence. “Before you take your strap, Sterling Fitzpatrick, I want you to imagine that you are lashing our own Jesus Christ the Savior.” Both Dorothy and Sterling gasped. “Father!” they both cried in unison. Father McGarry took his leave, hoping his intercession was of some use. <> Pierre slowed down “The Higher Power” and pulled her over to the dock. Jenna lay exhausted with her eyes closed. He kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry, ma’am. ride’s over.” “May I keep this as a souvenir?” she asked, as she undid the borrowed elastic band. “Sure. You may also keep me as a souvenir,” he said. They laughed and agreed to have dinner, after dark, and to meet at a new restaurant “The Big Fish.” For a few weeks, an airplane had flown low over the beach with a sign for “The Big Fish” at Eleventh and The Boardwalk. Jenna was sipping on iced coffee when Pierre entered the restaurant, dressed in khaki shorts and a button-down blue shirt. She lifted up her head for his kiss. “I actually ordered some wine,” she said, “but I forgot you’re dry around here.” “After we eat – and I am star-ving – I’ll tell you a bit of history of our enchanted city.” “I know a little,” said Jenna. “Started as a religious colony…. “Four Methodist ministers, the Lake Brothers and one William Burrell, in 1879 brought forth onto these lands a Christian retreat and camp and forbad the public drinking of alcoholic beverages, hence we buy our liquor at Roger Wilco when we’re coming from Pennsylvania or at Roger Wilco when we’re coming from New Jersey. The New Yawkers have their choice of booze on every street corner in their city.” A waitress arrived at their table. “Hi, I’m Annie, and I’ll be your server tonight,” said a small attractive woman in black with a white apron. They ordered their fresh fish. “Annie,” said Pierre. “I’d like a cup of black coffee right now. Thanks, dear.” Candles glowed in the center of the table and they had a view of the ocean, barely visible under a moonless sky. Over dinner, Jenna said, “Pierre, tell me a little about yourself. You are such a clever fellow.” “What do you want to know?” She explained that one of her jobs as a psychiatrist was to do a “psychiatric evaluation” the very first time she and the patient met. “I ask all sorts of questions, like what’s your relationship with your family and siblings – we call them your ‘family of origin’ – if you’re able to work – who you live with – and what your goals are. If you’re living the best possible life you can. And then I tell them I’ll help them achieve their goals, little by little.” Pierre held up his fork with the crab-stuffed flounder. “This is very good, by the way,” he said. “But, are you, my dear, living the best possible life you can?” “Aha,” said Jenna, pointing her finger at him. “You’re trying to get out of answering the question, but I’m calling you on it.” “Not really,” he laughed. “Not really has no meaning,” said Jenna. “It means ‘yes.’” “Of course I want to talk to you,” he said. “Our relationship, such as it is, goes two ways. I know so little about you – except you love having orgasmic experiences – and so do I. In fact, for, oh, about eight years or so, I was hooked on about every drug you could think of and served jail time.” He speared a french fry. “I had a great counselor when I got out – Dr. Leah Goldman – who told me to replace pot and cocaine with risk-taking behavior that created its own adrenaline high.” “Very smart,” said Jenna. “I’ve gotta remember that.” He explained he was a Jersey guy, raised on a farm with horses and chickens and cows – he did a marvelous low “mooo” – and was so “goddamn bored” he started snorting and inhaling and “enjoyed it to the max.” Until his parents turned him in. “Oooh!” said Jenna. “I know,” said Pierre. “But they did the right thing. I never would have stopped or would have died of an overdose. When I got out, they loaned me the money to start my own business. Besides, I’m in love with the shore, just love it and can’t live without it, so, for now, this is the place where I belong.” They lifted up their glasses and clicked them together. That night they went to Pierre’s apartment. “Why, it’s like a college dorm,” said Jenna, as she slipped off her sandals. There was a desk piled high with papers and magazines and a reading lamp with a swivel neck like a goose. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor and a drying rack held his wet swim trunks and shirts from “The Higher Power.” Though they were both exhausted, they made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms. Jenna murmured, “Thank you for one of the happiest days of my life.” <> Jenna unlocked the door of her office and flung her backpack on her desk. She liked to get there early – before 7:30 – before her secretary came in – and get ready for the day. She raised up the white blinds and looked at the view from the fifth floor of The Melrose Park House, ten miles south of Philadelphia. Islands of greenery swam into view as did the huge swimming pool, for this was an apartment complex with offices inside. The console telephone on her desk was already blinking and she scrolled down to see who had called. Odd, she thought. There was a call from Lainie, the Dutch partner of Sheila Newman. Wonder what she wanted. The call could wait until the doctor got situated and Marna came in to make the coffee. Typed on a white sheet and waiting in the middle of her desk was a list of the patients she would see today. Marna would pull their charts from the pink file cabinet in the adjoining room. Occasionally Jenna didn’t have time to review the patient’s chart and had trouble remembering what had happened the last time. For example, Shelly, a beautiful forty-year-old woman who was hopelessly in love with a married man, had had surgery. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if it was for a cracked elbow or cracked wrist. She loved each and every one of her patients. She knew this to be a truth. Love – call it “agape” - must radiate from one to the other or else healing was not possible. She especially looked forward to couples counseling this very day between Howard and Rebeccal, who were engaged to be married. As this was the second marriage for both of them, they didn’t want to make the same mistakes. Jenna had won a prestigious award in Philadelphia Magazine for being one of the Top Couples Counselors in the city. “Hello! Hello!” called Marna as she let herself in the front door. “How was your vacation,” she said, as she entered the doctor’s office. “As wonderful as can be expected,” said Jenna. “I even met a guy. And I got you a little present,” she said, handing her a pound of Ocean City Coffee in a beige-colored bag. “I’ve heard this is the greatest,” said Marna, tossing her shoulder-length auburn hair. “How about if I make it right now?” “Up to you, love. Or you might save it for home and use our Starbucks Breakfast Blend.” “It’ll be a surprise,” said Marna. Jenna smelled the delicious aroma and turned on her messages. Sheila Newman, a woman she’d been seeing for six years, seemed to be in terrible trouble. Jenna dialed the phone number of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her patient, she learned, was in a diabetic coma and wasn’t expected to live. Jenna crossed herself and went over to the window. “Dear Father, please help our darling Sheila, and if she must die, make it a merciful death.” She wiped her eyes and went in for her first cup of steaming hot coffee. “The cure-all,” she thought about coffee, not for the first time. That and Skinnygirl pinot grigio, which was at home in the fridge of her condo. She put a call in to Tony, who had been thinking of jumping. “Glad to see you’re still with the living,” she said. He gave a slight laugh and said he was going with his old dad to the SPCA to find a dog. “I’m proud of you, Tony,” said Jenna. “In time these feelings will pass.” She was lying and they both knew it. As a man with Asperger syndrome, he had never felt at home in his body. He was the consummate outsider, the man looking through the window while everyone else was having a life. For some reason, he had been born in the wrong body, they both knew it, and her job was to keep him alive and involved in life as long as was possible. She prayed for him every night, as she did her other patients. She attended the funeral for Sheila Newman in Bensalem. As a lesbian, she had been married to Sheldon Newman, a tall, stately, gay man who came to the funeral with his lover. Sheila and Sheldon, who apparently never had sex, had adopted two boys. Jenna knew all about them and was pleased, at last, to make their acquaintance: Dov, the fun-loving ne-er do well, whose wife adored him and was happy to support him – why not, thought Jenna – and Saul, the doctor, with his shaven head, his wife and two little boys. If a funeral can truly be a “celebration of life,” this was a first-rate gala. Several tents had been set up, with wonderful food from Jewish delis, coffee to soothe everybody’s nerves, and the knowledge that all the supposed “enemies” were simply regular folks, doing their best to be cordial and accepting of the highly unusual relationships in the Newman family. In the open casket, Jenna viewed Sheila for the last time. No longer would she see her every Monday afternoon at five p.m., her last patient. She looked peaceful, this huge woman, with jowls like a mastiff dog, wearing one of a half-dozen button-down shirts she bought in six different colors in an online catalog. The color blue was very becoming and Sheila looked as if she found peace at last. With her bipolar disorder, she spent too many energetic days and nights when she couldn’t stop herself from her “manic buying sprees,” as they were called. And around her neck was a gold chain bearing the name “Lainie Ponsen,” her lover of over ten years. And a woman who kept Sheila as tranquil as possible. As Jenna was biting into a pastrami sandwich, she heard bickering under a maple tree. A fight had broken out between Sheila’s former husband and Lainie about where to bury Sheila. Each claimed sovereignty over the departed. Sheldon wanted her buried right here in Bensalem, even though he resided in Long Island. Lainie wanted the casket of her lover transported to Rainbow Village near Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the first gay and lesbian retirement communities in America. Lainie, a retired anthropology teacher, would move to the home, now that Sheila had passed. The argument continued at Saul’s home. “Reminds me of the wisdom of King Solomon,” said Saul, who, like the rest of his family was a religious Jew. “Two people are fighting over a baby, each claiming to be its mother. One woman announces she’ll give up her rights to the child, proving to the wise king that she indeed is the mother. “As her son and executor, the casket will be shipped to Rainbow Village in Cincinnati. It’s not that far. A nice day’s drive.” When Jenna returned home to her condo, her head was spinning. She flopped into bed where visions of the day twirled in her head like a kaleidoscope. She looked at the huge cuckoo clock on the wall. Nearly midnight. Then, for the first time in the day, she remembered Pierre. Should she? Was it too late? She realized she missed him. That was a first. “Darling,” she said, after he answered his phone. “Sorry to call so late. Did you miss me?” “Of course I missed you,” he said in a sleepy voice. “I’m counting the days until you come back down.” “Would it be all right if I came down every weekend in the summer?” “You know where to find me,” he said. “When you come again, I’ll have a surprise for you.” “A surprise? Oh, tell me what it is. I can’t stand waiting.” “You’ll wait. It’s good for you.” He paused. “Pierre will be no more. You’ll learn my real name.” They were quiet. “And,” he added. “I hope you like diamonds.” Ruth Z. Deming, winner of a Leeway Grant for Women Artists, has had her work published in lit mags including Hektoen International, Creative Nonfiction, Haggard and Halloo, and Literary Yard. A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder, and their loved ones. Viewwww.newdirectionssupport.org. She runs a weekly writers' group in the comfy home of one of our talented writers. She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her blog is www.ruthzdeming.blogspot.com.
AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY He was a man who loved women. His ease in finding them was as natural as the moon shining on his back yard deck in northeast Philadelphia where he and his fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny sat, heads tilted upward, watching the thousands of fireflies blinking in the night sky. “Do you think Mommy sees them back in Kingston,” she asked. “I believe she does, sweetheart. It was only her disease that kept you apart.” “Do you think I’m too old to catch the fireflies?” “Hardly,” he said, getting up from his lawn chair and going into the adjoining kitchen. She heard his slippers slosh over the floor and open a cupboard and then slam it shut. He presented her with a glass jelly jar with a metal lid. “Promise you won’t let them die?” “Oh, no, Daddy. When their blinking slows down, I’ll send them back outside.” Mark Eisenberg’s used-car business had done well the year he’d traveled to Jamaica on vacation. He met a beautiful Jamaican dancer at Alfred’s Pelican Bar. Watching her dance with a variety of black-skinned men right there on the beach, he sipped his Rum and Coke, then put down the drink on the high table, and danced right up to her. “May I?” he smiled into her eyes. She was a few inches taller than Mark, but was impressed by the way he held the small of her back and guided her across the floor. Nuzzling her head next to his cheek, she whispered, “You a good dancer, Mr. White Man. How long you down here?” They continued their conversation in his motel room, where they didn’t get much sleep. In the well-stocked mini-refrigerator, Mark brought them Coors Beers, explaining to Naisha that it came from the mountain waters of Colorado. “One of the most beautiful places on earth, Naisha, but not so beautiful as your body,” he said, filling her face and body with a million kisses. “You take me there, my white boy?” she asked. “Sure, I take you there, my African princess.” When he went back to Philadelphia, he had her name – Naisha Radcliffe – and address and sent her a postcard, thanking her for the wonderful memories, and wishing her “best of luck” at Alfred’s at Pelican Bay. One night after coming home late from his used car lot, the answering machine was blinking in his lavishly furnished Philadelphia row house. Making himself a cup of coffee, he sat on his red leather sectional, pulled off his shoes and socks, and listened to the message machine. Naisha had called him three times and left three urgent messages to call back. She was pregnant. Yes she was sure it was his child. How did she know? It had been nearly a year since she had been intimate with a man. By the sound of her voice – tear-filled, frightened, excited – he was certain she was telling the truth. As a car salesman, he had a knack of knowing people, whether they could afford, say, an old Cadillac Fleetwood with fancy fins, or a fairly new BMW sports car going for thirty thousand dollars. This knowing of people, he would tell his mother, isn’t something you can learn. “It just is, Mom. It’s been with me since I was a kid and little Stevie Vetter tried to con me out of my baseball cards, remember?” She did. She remembered everything about her son. Naisha wanted to have the child. And Mark knew he would take responsibility. Living expenses were cheap on the islands, so every two weeks, he would send her a cashier’s check for $500, which was enough for obstetrical care and the upcoming birth and maternity expenses. Naisha didn’t seem to mind that Mark had no intention of coming down, nor did she seem to mind asking for more money as her pregnancy rolled on. “Oh, honey, you know, I need some new maternity clothes. I want to go shopping where white folks go.” Then after a pause, she added, “You know, our baby going to be half white anyhow.” Was she taking advantage of him, Mark wondered. Probably. He’d have to sell more cars to keep up with her demands. He arranged for his friend, Larry Kirschner, a well-known videographer, to film a television commercial, touting “Mark’s FairShare Auto Mart” right next door to Church’s Fried Chicken and down the road from Einstein Medical Center, right on Broad Street. A smiling black-haired Mark Eisenberg, wearing a suit jacket and no tie, walked around the lot, which flashed with tiny attention-grabbing silver flags. “Look at this beauty!” he smiled, crinkling his blue eyes. “You come in here and make me an offer on this practically brand new Cadillac Escalade Truck and you’ll drive it home.” The television commercial worked. Business picked up and Mark was once again moving cars. His pal, Stephen Johnson, from the neighborhood wrote up the orders in his cubicle, offering customers bottled water or coffee. Sitting at home after work and looking at television, Mark mused about his child’s birth. Should he go down? Nah, unnecessary. Naisha didn’t need him. She had more relatives than there were beaches in Jamaica. Why, then, was he looking on the Internet for plane tickets from Philadelphia to Miami to Kingston? The hospital where Naisha gave birth, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was nearly as modern as an American one. The men’s room was not as clean and the air-conditioning left much to be desired but his woman was in safe hands. Nurses walked around in crisp white uniforms and peaked caps. Soul music was piped into the waiting room, where Mark sat among a sea of black faces, men and women and children, all awaiting the birth of a new family member. A water cooler gurgled when a child poured himself a drink. “Mr. Eisenberg?” called a nurse. He jumped up and walked toward her. She smiled, touched him on the shoulder, and asked him to follow her. Naisha lay in bed, her face shiny with perspiration, and in her arms, was the tiniest baby he had ever seen. “Meet your new daughter,” said the nurse. The baby was quiet. A white cap rested on her head, as Mark first kissed Naisha on the lips and then turned his attention to their daughter. The baby’s blue eyes stared silently ahead as if reviewing her long journey from conception to life in the dark but noisy womb, filled with all sorts of music and voices and laughter and that one particular voice that was always there, whether she was eating her crunchy fish and chips for breakfast or dancing to the Righteous Brothers in her tiny living room. Selling a Porsche was nothing in comparison to meeting your own flesh and blood, through the graciousness of a woman he hardly knew, a perfect stranger, who had incubated this miracle and now brought her forth as if she were the long-awaited heiress to a throne. He held the newborn in his arms, surprised at how natural it felt. He told no one about his feelings, but his heart was singing a triumphant melody, as his eyes filled with tears. “You done good,” he said to Naisha. “You done us proud, Mama.” “I don’t want her. I feel like killing her. You take her away so I don’t kill this baby of mine. You hear me, man?” * Naisha never saw Jenny again. She had no interest in writing or in getting letters from her daughter. Mark promised his daughter that some day they would make the trip. In Jenny’s bedroom, she had a map of Jamaica on the wall, next to posters of Bob Marley and The Red Hot Chili Peppers – the famous one where their penises were encased in socks - and on her bureau, a framed black and white photo of her mother. From the deck, Mark watched his slender daughter balance carefully over the railing while she scooped up fireflies into the jelly jar and then quickly screwed on the lid. Then she descended into the back yard. The grass looked black in the night but Jenny fairly glowed holding the flashing glass jar as she skipped across the back yard, which still held her old swing and sliding board. “So like Naisha,” he thought, not for the first time, as he watched her partially blond dreadlocks sway down her back. Mark was a man who could not keep away from women. He conducted all of his affairs away from home. He preferred wealthy women, who he dreamed would lift him up from what he told his mother, known as Bubby Eisenberg, was his “penniless pauper” status. “Oh, Markie,” she remonstrated. “Always so hard on yourself. You know, if you need a loan, Bubby will be there to provide.” Not on your life would he take money from his mother. She was a stingy bitch and used her wealth to lord over him. He and his lovers would meet at their homes or in motels. Making love was a fine affair. But none would make a suitable live-in companion that he cared to introduce to Jenny. One day his daughter surprised him. “Daddy,” she said. “I don’t mind if you come home smelling like perfume and the inside of a woman, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if you brought these ladies home to meet me.” Mark turned red. “Sorry, Daddy,” she said, “I didn’t mean to….” “I’ll tell you something, kid. Now that you’re fifteen, what would you think if Daddy brought home a stepmother? Of course, I have yet to meet her.” Jenny said she’d like that. * His friends, the Truby family who lived across the street in the rowhouse whose every outside stair featured a huge planter of brightly colored flowers, had tried to fix him up with a Chinese woman. Mark had balked. Yet another ethnicity to deal with. His Jamaican woman had wanted to kill their baby. His Jewish mother used her wealth to control him. Chinese women had a reputation of being cold, unaffectionate. It was once frowned upon for Chinese women to hold hands in public or engage in intercourse before marriage. Reluctantly, one night after work, he knocked on their door. Sitting on their plastic-covered blue couch with his legs crossed, he listened as they pleaded the case of their dear friend, Yinlin. He nodded his head. “Can we call her right now and set up a date?” “You will love this woman,” said Albert Truby. “There’s absolutely nothing not to like about her. Dear, can you get the phone?” Mary Truby went into the kitchen and brought it out. “Put it on speaker, dear,” she said. After dialing, the answering machine came on. “Ms. Yinlin will call you back at her earliest convenience,” said a voice who was decidedly not Ms. Yinlin. “That’s her secretary or should I say,” and he laughed, “her administrative assistant.” “Jesus,” Mark mumbled under his breath. A week later Mark drove a late model red Porsche to the new Lafayette Arms Hotel in downtown Philadelphia and handed over the car keys to the valet. Smoothing down his black hair, he walked into the hotel and made a right into Hunan Gardens and scanned the room for a lone Chinese woman. When he didn’t see her, he told the female maitre’d to seat him. He ordered a red wine and sipped it while watching the door. He looked at his huge Timex watch, no one could tell it was a cheap watch, and saw that it was ten past seven. She was ten minutes late. He drummed his fingers on the table and read everything in sight: the wine menu, the dessert menu, propped in a trifold on the table, and the specials on a blackboard. He couldn’t concentrate on what to order, he was so worried she would stand him up. “Oh, you’ll love her,” he heard the Trubys’ voices echo in his ears. And there she was, checking in with the maitre’d and in fact, taking his hand in her own. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Eisenberg,” she said, as the maitre’d pulled out Yinlin’s chair. Mark smiled a weak smile. “Not at all,” he stammered, as he stared at this woman it was impossible not to love. Her face was certainly kind looking. And her black eyes shone. But the woman was, well, just plain ugly. Homely. With her long face that didn’t fit with her trim body, she looked like a standard poodle. Mark found himself speechless. “Calm down,” he told himself. “I’ll eat and run.” “Might I order for you?” she asked. “Of course,” he said. “Well, that wine of yours is all wrong. I’m Chinese, you know, plus this is my restaurant, so we’ll start from scratch.” She summoned Zhang from across the room. When he arrived she spoke quickly to him in Chinese – they sounded like two songbirds - then pressed his hand, and said laughingly in English, “We want to impress my new friend, Mr. Eisenberg.” “Oui, Madame, we certainly will,” said Zhang, looking over at Mark. Over spring rolls, she quizzed her new friend like a detective. Yes, he did amazingly well at his used car lot on North Broad Street, making more money than he knew what to do with; he was raising his fifteen-year-old daughter Jenny; and his hobbies were many, although he couldn’t think of a single one he was so nervous. “And you,” he said, after the new bottle of wine had been deposited on the table. “You, Yinlin, I may call you that, perhaps?” She nodded. “You were born here or in China?” She explained that her parents had sent their little Yinlin over all by herself during Mao’s “brutal cultural revolution” and she stayed with family in Philadelphia. She attended business school at Wharton College and went into the hospitality business. “We opened Lafayette Arms four years ago,” she said in her high-pitched musical voice, “and of course I have rental properties all over Center City.” She laughed. “Such a funny name for the downtown district. Never could get used to it.” “Does your business consume you?” he asked. “Oh, certainly not. There’s nothing I love more than going to the movies, especially with a man on my arm,” she winked. “You know, snuggling at the theater while we share a box of buttered popcorn.” Mark tried and failed to imagine himself and Yinlin at the Ritz Theater, fingers intertwined. “Of course,” she winked at him, “no one wants to go out with me because of my looks.” The room went quiet. They heard the rhythmic chatter of others in the dining room and background piano music. “Your … looks!” Mark whispered in her defense. “Oh, Mr. Eisenberg, don’t think me naïve. My condition is called ‘acromegaly’” and she spelled it for him. “My anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone and all that. Happened at puberty. Beauty changing into the beast,” she laughed. “I don’t accept that at all,” said Mark. “The first thing I noticed about you was the kindness of your face, and if you don’t mind my saying, the sensuality of your body.” “Mr. Eisenberg, I’ve never gotten this close to a man for him to actually think of my whole being, instead of this blasted face of mine.” Mark picked up her hand and kissed it. And before he knew what he was saying, he blurted out, “I want you to come over and meet my daughter.” They both looked shocked, as they picked at their chicken and cashews and crunchy Peking duck in pineapple sauce. “Mr. Eisenberg,” she said after dinner. “You may think I’m being forward – and I am – but would you like to see where I live before you go home to your daughter in your Northeast Philadelphia rowhouse?” How, he wondered, did she know he lived in a humble rowhouse? And that pack of lies he told about his used car lot. She’d checked up on him, of course. He blushed as he realized she knew his so-called “net worth.” These business magnates – and she was certainly one of them – commanded power and were to be obeyed. He admired her and knew that to be with her he would have to tame her. With Mark’s arm looped around her shoulders, they walked to the elevator and she pressed the button for the penthouse suite on the twentieth floor. She removed her red high heels and left them in the carpeted hallway. He did the same. Jingling the keys, she unlocked the door. Music greeted them. “Smetana’s Moldau,” said Mark. “You like classical?” “Love it,” she said. “Let me get you a drink.” “No, no. I’ve got to drive home.” They toured the six-room suite. Piano in the living room, original artworks on the walls – she was a patron of Fred Danziger, she said, and bought his paintings at the Rodger Lapelle Gallery here in Center City – then told him, “let me show you the breeches of William Penn.” Taking Mark’s hand she steered him into a high-ceilinged study where the drapes opened up to a spectacular view of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall. Mark stood at the window looking out at the night sky at the world-famous steel-gray statue of the man who had given Pennsylvania its name. A Quaker, he befriended everyone including the trusting native Americans, who, after his death, were painfully evicted from their lands. “You are really something Yinlin. Really something.” He moved toward her and took her face in his hands. “I’d like to get to know you better.” “We haven’t finished our tour,” she said and led him into a room in the rear with an eggshell-colored carpet and walls. A sense of peace fell over the two of them. She was a tigress in bed. She told him she had had many men in her youth and two abortions. “But, never, Mr. Eisenberg, have I found the one man to love.” “Perhaps you have now,” he whispered. “Perhaps I have,” she responded. * Jenny and Mark decided to prepare barbeque when Yinlin visited. They met her out front when the driver of her Lincoln dropped her off. She kissed Jenny on the cheek and said she was even more beautiful than she had imagined. “And, you, Mr. Eisenberg, look adorable in those shorts,” and kissed him on the lips. They ate on the backyard deck. The ribs were messy and delicious with Mark’s home-made sauce. The salmon had been cooked on a charcoal-broiled plank and was done to perfection. Corn on the cob had been roasted inside aluminum foil and was served piping hot with butter. “Food,” he whispered to Yinlin. “Next best thing to having sex.” Her tinkle of laughter seemed to float across the darkening yard. “Jenny,” he said, “you’ll excuse us if we make a toast in front of you, sweetheart.” “Sure, Daddy,” she said. Mark went into the kitchen and got some pinot noir and ginger ale from the refrigerator, as well as three long-stemmed glasses. Putting them on the glass table with a clink, he carefully poured the wine into the adult’s glasses and the ginger ale for Jenny. “I propose a toast,” he said. “To the two most enchanting women of my life. My darling daughter Jenny, and my new friend Yinlin Li.” They clinked glasses and sipped slowly, meeting one another’s eyes. Mark washed his hands off on the moist towelette on the table and walked over to Yinlin, who wore a low-cut gray sundress that showed the rise of her breasts. He got down on one knee. “My darling, wilt thou marry me?” he asked. “Of course I will, Mr. Eisenberg, of course I will. If it’s okay with Jenny.” “I’ve never been so happy in my life,” said Jenny, standing up to hug Yinlin. “Please, may I call you mother?” Clemencio Montecillo Bascar was a former Professor and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the Western Mindanao State University. He is a recepient of various local, regional, and national awards in songwriting, playwriting, poetry, and public service. Several of his poems had been published in international literary magazines and journals such as, Foliate Oak , BRICKrhetoric, About Place, Torrid Literature, Mused-theBellaOnline Lietrary Review, and The Voices Project. He had written and published by the Western Mindanao State University two books of poetry, namely; "Fragments of the Eucharist" and "Riots of Convictions." In the Philippines, some of his poems appeared in the such magazines as Women's, MOD, and Chick. At present, he writes a column in the Zamboanga Today daily newspaper and resides at 659 Gemini Street, Tumaga, Zamboanga City, Philippines. He is married to the former Miss Melinda Climaco dela Cruz and blest with three children, Jane, Lynnette, and Timothy James. UNLAWFUL AMERICAN INVASION OF MINDANAO AND SULU In several published articles, I presented internationally- celebrated and multi-awarded historians and authors which commonly corroborated with one another by way of their respective accounts that Spain miserably failed to conquer the two sovereign Sultanates of Maguindanao (Mindanao) and Sulu and North Borneo which were separate and distinct from each other until they were unilaterally joined as one military district and subsequently organized as a Moro Province after the sneaky occupation of these two ancient monarchies by the American forces starting May 19, 1899. The chronicles of the 1898 Spanish-American War do not contain any factual account of even just a single military encounter between the American forces and the Spanish colonial army in Mindanao and Sulu. The last Spanish garrison in Jolo was already beleaguered by the Sultanate warriors and was scheduled to be turned over to the Sultan like what was done earlier with the Spanish garrison in Siasi, but because of some urgent matters that he had to attend to in Siasi, his presence in Jolo was delayed which opened the opportunity for the Americans to stealthily effect the turnover of the Jolo Spanish garrison to their command under cover of darkness at the most unlikely hour, 2: 00 o'clock dawn according to an American soldier witness.(Source: Peter Gordon Gowing-"Mandate In Moroland: The American Government of Muslim Filipinos, 1899-1920." As I had contended in several articles previously published, the surprise military occupation of Sulu by the American forces led by Captain E.B. Pratt, is extremely difficult to justify from the viewpoint of the US 1787 Constitution which explicitly prohibits a war of conquest, more so if we take into consideration the following well-documented historical facts: * the Sultanate of Sulu was already recognized by the United States of America as a sovereign and independent monarchial state as early as 1842 when it signed a treaty with the Sultan of Sulu for the purpose of encouraging trade with the United States of America with the Sultan's assurance of providing full protection to all the American vessels, their commanders and crews visiting any of the islands under his territorial jurisdiction. This treaty is included as Appendix A of the book by a widely- respected researcher and author, Peter Gordon Gowing, entitled, Mandate In Moroland, copyright , 1983, page 347; * both the Sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu and North Borneo upon the retreat and withdrawal of the Spanish colonial forces from Mindanao and Sulu in the later months of 1898 and in January of 1899 recovered the areas previously taken and occupied by Castilian conquistadores and reassumed fully their sovereignty and ownership of their respective territorial domains and became free completely from the threat of Spanish conquest which they heroically and successfully resisted for more than three hundred years; * the failure of Spain in conquering, colonizing, and Christianizing the Sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu is the best and irrefutable proof that these two ancient monarchies were not colonial possessions of the Spanish Empire and were not parts of the Philippine Islands, the colony which was expressly sold and ceded by Spain to the United States for $20-millon as the spoil of the 1898 Spanish- American war in Article III of the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris. * having maintained and defended their statehood from Spanish attempts of invasion, colonization, and Christianization, the Sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu, were never involved nor had any alliance of any kind with the revolutionary movement against Spain initiated by the Filipino revolutionaries in Luzon, and therefore, any notion, suspicion, or speculation of involvement of the Sultanates in the Filipino armed struggle against the Spanish colonial government of the Philippine Islands, is totally devoid of historicity and completely without empirical basis; and *the fact that Mindanao and Sulu were not conquered by Spain , not political components nor revolutionary allies of the short-lived First Philippine Republic established by Gen. Emilio F. Aguinaldo, there can be no valid reason to assert or claim that these two monarchial states were parts of the Spanish-American War of 1898 or the Filipino-American war declared on February 4, 1899. While the Sultanates were at war with Spain for more than three centuries, they were not at war with the Americans nor were they covered by the declaration of war issued by the United States on April 25 against Spain and its colonies. So based on the above-cited historical events and facts, any painstaking student of history is confronted with the absence of mercantile right and political ascendancy for Spain to sell and cede to the United States two monarchial states which she failed to possess by virtue of conquest or other modes of territorial acquisition. It is also extremely unlikely for anyone who possesses operative familiarity, knowledge and understanding of the 1787 American Constitution to just passively agree that the Sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu fell under the possession and sovereignty of the United States by virtue of conquest for there was no formal declaration of war issued for such purpose duly authorized by the American Congress. Besides, if there was, it would be onerous to justify, for the Sultanates were not guilty of "actually invading the United States" nor were they massing their forces to create the gravity of "imminent danger" that would justify American conquest of the Sultanates. Without these justifiying circumstances, such conquest if it were carried out, in my honest opinion, would have been patently contradictory to the 1787 US Constitution, specifically Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 which states that: "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." Now, if the cession of Mindanao and Sulu to the United States was irregular on the ground that Spain did not have sovereignty over these two unconquered Sultanates, and if the United States did not acquire ownership and sovereignty over these two monarchial states by virtue of lawful conquest, how on earth did the Americans justify their military occupation of these two sovereign states and eventually incorporate them into the body politic of the present Repubic of the Philippines when the only basic document used by the framers of the 1935 Constitution as the legal basis for defining its national territory was Article III of the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris? Here is the answer: President William Mckinley who according to J.C. Shurman, the President of the 5-Member First Philippine Commission, had entertained doubts as to the sovereignty of Spain over the Sultanate of Sulu, promptly directed General Elwell Otis, the commander of the American expeditionary force in the Philippines that a formal agreement be made with the Sultan. It was Brigadier General John C. Bates who was charged with task of gaining recognition from the Sultan for what " President Mckinley viewed as a simple transfer of authority" from Spain to the United States. According to author-researcher Peter Gordon Gowing, the diplomatic spadework for American negotiations with Sultan Jamalul Kiram II, could be credited to the tactful behavior of Capt. E. B. Pratt and his officers leading to the initial talks between Brig. General Bates which only strengthened the contention that Spain in fact and in truth did not have sovereignty over Mindanao and Sulu. Since the Americans were really determined at all costs to obtain the signatures of the Sultan and some of his datus on a document that would succinctly acknowledge US sovereignty over Mindanao and Sulu, General Bates tried all conceivable diplomatic initiatives which ranged from persuasive means to coercive tactics to achieve this purpose. Eventually, despite overwhelming odds, General Bates succeeded and the Sultanates of Mindanao and Sulu were finally conquered by the United States of America, not by war, not by law, but by diplomacy. What style or genre of diplomacy was employed by General Bates, is anyone's domain for further inquiry. UNITED NATIONS, DECOLONIZE MINDANAO AND SULU I don't know from what authentic and valid cartographic documents or territorial maps the Philippine Congress used when it defined the administrative jurisdiction of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) or any other autonomous political sub-divisions created by said Congress from the time of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. to the dispensation of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III. From the standpoint of history, there were two separate, independent, and sovereign ancient states that existed long before the Spaniards made their maiden appearance in the Visayas on March 16, 1521. These two ancient states were the Sultanate of Sulu and the Sultanate of Maguindanao which according to credible and noted authors and historians were not conquered nor colonized by the Spaniards. This historical fact is confirmed by no less than the former American Governor-General of the Philippine Islands, Francis B. Harrison in a letter addressed to then Vice President Elpidio Quirino and Secretary of Foreign Affairs dated February 27, 1947, a pertinent portion of which is quoted to wit: "I wish to reiterate my previous statement that so far as the Sultanate of Sulu was concerned. President Quezon had no legal power to abolish the Sultanate-that could have been done only by the Moros themselves, either by positive action of their own, or by neglect to elect a new Sultan-but promptly therafter, two Sultans were chosen by rival factions. The only other way in which an ancient State like the Sultanate of Sulu could have been abolished would have been by force, as, for example by armed conquest, and that determination of the question was, of course, lacking in the premises." Up to this point in time since I cited the written assertions and testimonies of various historians and authors that Sulu and Mindanao were not colonial possessions of Spain by virtue of conquest or other modes of territorial acquisition and therefore, should have not been included in the sale and cession of the Philippine Islands by Spain to the United States under Article III of the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris, no one has yet come up with a rebuttal or counter argument that the experts and authorities I mentioned in several articles previously published in my column, are confirmed and certified charlatans. For those who are not familiar with the colonial history of Mindanao and Sulu, the real and primary root-cause of this seemingly endless and insolvable Mindanao Crisis, was the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris as the only diplomatic document used by the framers of the 1935 Constitution to define the national territory which incorparated Mindanao and Sulu to the body politic of the Republic of the Philippines against the overwhelming opposition of the inhabitants of these two monarchial states as expressed in two separete petitions ,one (1)- that of June 9, 1921 by the Sultan of Sulu and 57 other prominent Sulu leaders and two (2)- that of the Dansalan Declaration of March 18, 1935, signed by 189 Lanao Moro leaders. In fact aside from the supporting testimonies and attestations from internationally renowned authors and highly respected and multi-awarded writers of history textbooks which are still being popularly used in both public and private educational institutions, there are two diplomatic documents entered into between the United States of America (USA) and the Sultanate of Sulu which tacitly confirmed that the Sultan was still the owner of the territorial realm of this ancient State several months and many years after the signing and ratification of the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris. These are the "Bates Treaty of August 20, 1899 and the " Carpenter Memorandum" of March 22, 1915. Both diplomatic documents textually deny the ownership and sovereignty of Spain over the Sultanate of Sulu in several Articles and provisions. Buttressing further the assertion that the Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao (Mindanao)were not among the colonial possessions of Spain that were sold and ceded to the United States although were surreptitiously included by lines and coordinates technically defining the boundary of the Philippine Islands in Article III of the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris, are the following top American military, diplomatic, and political officials: (1.) GENERAL GEORGE W. DAVIS, Commander of the Department of Mindanao and Jolo, 1902. He was among the first military officers who intimated that Sulu archipelago was not sold and ceded by Spain to the United States in the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris. His suggestion which was included in his Annual Report to the United States Government is partly quoted herunder: "It is suggested that through such cession for a yearly cash payment the Moro overlord could be induced to retire and leave the United States to deal with the Moros in such manner as might seem best adopted to serve the purposes of the United States in Morolands..." The suggestion of Gen. George W. Davis to pay the Sultan for the cession of the Sultans' kingly rights and pretensions over his lands and vassals in Sulu, as found on page 562 of his Annual Report of the War Department in 1902, is an archival document which tends to point to the fact that that Sulu was not among the colonial possessions ceded and sold for 20-million dollars by Spain to the United States in the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris. 2. CONSUL O. F. WILLIAMS, a U.S. diplomat who hinted to the certainty that Sulu was not included as among the territories sold and ceded by Spain to the United States. This could be gleaned from his suggestion contained in a portion of his letter sent to John Hay, the Secretary of States in 1903 which reads: " Let a shrewd agent ask his price, he now needs money. Let the Sultan list his property in toto: then put a price at which he will sell all estates, all rights, and claims of chiefs, datos, rajahs, all sovereignty, and give complete release and quit claim, and with his harem, chiefs, and datos forever leave the orient." This particular suggestion by no less than the United States Consul to Singapore, O. F. Williams, could be deductively and logically interpreted as a testimonial admission that Sulu archipelago still belonged to the royal dominion of the Sultan of Sulu about five (5) years after the Philippine Islands was sold and ceded to the United States by Spain. This archival evidenciary material tends to expressly deny that Sulu was a colonial possession of Spain by virtue of conquest and colonization, and was conclusively at that point in history still a sovereign and independent State from the Spanish Colonial Government of the Philippine Islands. Consul Williams, documented admission and acknowledgement that Sulu archipelago was still owned by the Sultan, could be further deduced from the following part of his letter to US state Secretary, John Hay, as follows: "Then sell his- the Sultan's estates to Americans and thus recoup in full and rid of the whole trouble. I am sure I can effect this if given a chance. I believe the settlement can be final and honorable and be now bought at a price which can be fully repaid with its interest, for the sale of the Sultan's lands." Source: Peter Gordon Gowing, Mandate in Moroland, Quezon City; 1983, p. 70. To my point of view, however, as an academician, the most authentic and reliable diplomtic evidences that attest to the fact that the territorial realm of the Sultanate of Sulu was not included in the sale and cession of the Philippine Islands by Spain to the United States in the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris are contained in the "Bates Treaty" of August 20, 1899 and the "Carpenter Memoramdum" of March 22, 1915, respectively. The pertinent Bates Treaty provisions are as follows: (A) "ARTICLE IV- While the United States may occupy and control such points in the archipelago of Jolo as public interest seem to demand, encroachment will not be made upon the lands immediately about the residence of Highness the Sultan, unless military necessity requires His occupation in case of war with a foreign power, and where the properties of the individual is taken, due compensation will be made in each case. Any person can purchase land in the archipelago of Jolo and hold the same by obtaining the consent of the Sultan and coming to a satisfactory agreement with the owner of the land; such purchase shall immediately be registered in the proper office of the United States Government." (B) "ARTICLE XIV- The United States will not sell the Island of Jolo or any other island of Jolo archipelago to any foreign nation without the consent of the Sultan of Sulu." By way of recollection, GEN. JOHN C. BATES was given full powers by General Elwell Otis, commander of the American expeditionary force in the Philippines to negotiate with the Sultan of Sulu in order to gain recognition from the Moros for what the latter viewed as a simple "transfer of authority" from Spain to the United States. Here is what the internationally famous American historian, Robert A. Fulton wrote about this particular diplomatic mission of General Bates: "Preparing for their mission, Bates and his staff scoured the Spanish archives in Manila and discovered that Spanish sovereignty had in fact been no more than a fiction. Of greater significance, it was dubious Spain had ever had the "right" under international law to cede the lands belonging to the Moros as part of of their holdings in the Philippine Islands. This discovery prompted Otis to revise Bates mission to one of gaining acceptance of U.S. sovereingty by various Moro peoples, and a pledge for them to stay neutral and on the sidelines during the fighting to come, a daunting task." Finally, to prove to all and sundry that Mindanao particularly the Sultanate of Sulu never fell under the total control of the Spanish Crown by virtue of conquest, and as such, was not a colonial possession of Spain, let me quote part of the introductory NOTE of the Carpenter Memorandum between the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands and the Sultan of Sulu forged on March 22, 1915, to wit: " NOTE- Prior to American occupation the Sultanate of Sulu had been for more than 400 hundred years an independent sovereignty; during the latter portion of the Spanish regime, the Sultanate had partially reliquished the exercise of that sovereignty as to foreign relations and to a lesser degree as concerned the port of Jolo and the four other points occupied by Spanish military garrisons; a temporal sovereignty partial but nevertheless de facto existed, and was recognized by the Bates Treaty in the term "Government of the Sultan," to which the Americam auhorities were by that agreement required to turn over for trial 'where cases and offenses are commited by Moros against Moros. (Bates Treaty, Article 1X.) Is there a need to explain more why Sulu and Mindanao should be decolonized by the intervention of the United Nations' Committee on Decolonization if this body has any legal teeth at all? Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet who has recently been nominated for The Best of the Net and 2 Pushcart Awards for Poetry in 2016. His poetry has been published world-wide in various publications throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Ken loves thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night, and spending time with his cat Willa. Ken's new book, "The Cellaring", a collection of 80 haunted, paranormal, horror, weird and wonderful poems, has been released and is available through Amazon.com. He is the co-editor of the poetry anthology titled, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze available at Amazon.com. A second anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses will be released soon. Where the Pink Flowers Grow Please take me home, where the pink flowers grow. Brush my cheek and inspire mortal desires. Cast the dark away, allow the light to glow, meld my spirit back to life’s internal fire. Here I now lie, deep in this hallowed ground, listening for the sounds of the shovels’ infernal digging. The soul awaits its journey, but the sun is warm and forgiving. Yes, please carry me home, where the pink flowers grow. (Initial Publication, Bewildering Stories, Issue 656) Filet of Soul, Rev 2 Rising from the grasp of a tenacious Black Hole; escaping on the crest of a comet’s bristling tail An atom’s enigma in this planetary dust bowl; a distorted ray of matter; oblivious to detail. Bouncing on the Moon with erratic steps; racing a light beam to the Sun’s inner core. Traversing a nebula where many have wept; Kissing a falling star as wishes often bore. A spirited haste to rejoin the human race… choking on the stardust in a flavored sky; ready for trials after a harmonizing disgrace. Free of a serpent in a final flaming goodbye. A Dark Light Yet another vestige of love lost whetted cheeks and swollen eyes life's cruel moments wreak havoc within the softness of one's heart. Blasphemous tides slap ruby lips take a soul with an innocuous glee in a moment you're smiling wide blood stained teeth devour again. A heart stops beating with malice the breath gone in a rattle and hum final whispers and the brain quivers dormant pulse and a bluish pallor. The tempest roars imperviously loud a body can be lost, never to be found great ships disintegrate upon granite lives are left, penned on parchment. The Reaper watches jubilant on rocks as a grand lighthouse loses once more clothing and splintered wood float on as rubble and rabble left on the shore. In a stormy gale, glows a freakish orb stung by the tail of an iced scorpion harbinger doomed in a soulless sky tears in the torrent beget a dark light. (Initial Publication, Black Poppy Review) Clemencio Montecillo Bascar was a former Professor and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the Western Mindanao State University. He is a recepient of various local, regional, and national awards in songwriting, playwriting, poetry, and public service. Several of his poems had been published in international literary magazines and journals such as, Foliate Oak , BRICKrhetoric, About Place, Torrid Literature, Mused-theBellaOnline Lietrary Review, and The Voices Project. He had written and published by the Western Mindanao State University two books of poetry, namely; "Fragments of the Eucharist" and "Riots of Convictions." In the Philippines, some of his poems appeared in the such magazines as Women's, MOD, and Chick. At present, he writes a column in the Zamboanga Today daily newspaper and resides at 659 Gemini Street, Tumaga, Zamboanga City, Philippines. He is married to the former Miss Melinda Climaco dela Cruz and blest with three children, Jane, Lynnette, and Timothy James. a TEAR from the CRAdle
In this solitary side of twilight TO MY DISMAY i discover a tiny bead of tear trapped in the SADDEST corner of my EYE; i swear, THIS WASN'T THERE IN THE carefree years of my BOYhood nor in the exciting days of my YOUth; there isn't any reason for it to exist for it has never been a part of the crowdeD cubicle of LIFE; but obviously, the world rejoices TO SEE ME IN CONSTANT ANguish CRrying SHUddering irredeeMABLY in shame; people of my own fellowship and bloodline want me ripped apart by forces common to our heritage; now they are even invading the last frontier of my privacy, MY IMAGINATION which is my sacred refuge fROM THE WICKEDNESS of today's EMbrace. as i intentently stare at the MIRROR, not a visible trace of tear is left clinging to my conscience I REALIZE now that i have always been crying tearlessly from the moment i first opened my EYES. Mark A. Murphy’s first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse was published in 2013 from Salmon Poetry (Eire). His poems have appeared in over 160 magazines world-wide. Lit Fest Press in America aim to publish his latest manuscript, The Ontological Constant in early 2018. Helen Keller Paradox or Out of the Dark “The only thing worse than being blind is having no sight.” - Helen Keller For a woman that never listened to the radio, (except by her finger tips) watched a television, or told a patriotic lie to save her own skin, but argued for peace in times of war and equality during the heresies of the past, who lived in a perpetual land of silence, darkness and disparity - without a prejudiced bone in her body towards her fellows, no less a woman, for all her inability to hear or see the material world, a woman who knew all the arts of love and patience and forgiveness in the violets of Mark Twain's garden, living by her own dictum that Knowledge is love and light and vision... our sister in destiny held greater acuity, finer artistry in one little finger than all the wolves of Wall Street, all the hawks of Capitol Hill, and all the president's men. Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in a state of desperation engineered by late capitalism, within which his mind is a mere subset of a much larger hallucination wherein men are machines, machines are men, and the world and everything in it are mere dreams whose eddies and currents poets can channel briefly but cannot control. Perhaps it goes without saying that he lives in Los Angeles. The news Can you believe the size of that man's ears? Look at how the light shines on the asphalt. Wouldn't you like to have an automobile like that? Look at the man with the baseball bat He is strong He is handsome He's just like you But more muscular And standing inside a huge bright green field With cheering fans arrayed around In a rough circle Waving their arms like at a parade Look at the beautiful woman She is so beautiful Delicate And full featured Sensuous. Here in paradise we have arrayed experience As in an intricate geometric pattern Black and ochre Yellow and white Spread over the veranda Come sit down and try this beer The beer is good Like the beautiful woman is good Something out of Sumer or god something that might remind you of something something ineffable something you will never be able to find The man has a gun Dear god Dearest god Let us worship together The man with the gun the cheerleader sublimated out of time itself the cheerleader ordains the fallow year and the heartbreaking century wrought into a bundle of earth and stone. she levitates inside of the miasma of american experience condemning all poverty as derision and beckoning the rift over the rough edges of space to close in on her and ours *** This is a safe space Where we should not speak We're not allowed to talk about Jews or Gentiles here We're not allowed to talk about white people or black people here Brown people or yellow people or red people. Let there be silence here Where we are safe With our mouths tightly bound with rope You are safe with me I know everything you're never going to say *** no one shall redeem you we have weathered and reasoned with your curls mopped your starbursts murdered your borders. this body exacts penalties and earns rewards there's no going back *** each lie brings evidence against itself inside the hernia a poem inside the poem, the truth. when I built Jerusalem I used many stones from many burial grounds many ovens for many loaves each child is sacred each child is dead. each lie brings evidence in court over the bodies some of them living some dead each one speaks louder over my earphones each one insists that it is eternal and blameless each one is screaming now me now now now I hold them over my shoulder on the long trip out past Mississippi past Uranus Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, Guwahatian Magazine (India), The Galway Review (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Osprey Review (Wales), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey) and other magazines. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs A Modern Fairy Tale: Trumpelstiltskin Trumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale not written by the Brothers Grimm. It’s written every day by Fox and CNN. America hears it every hour and half the nation loves it but the other half hates it. Let’s remember though we Americans will never know what might have been. Had the vote gone otherwise Bill would be in the White House and all the interns on the run. Private server Huma would be grilling wieners for the press. Golly Gee, you say, that sounds like a lot of fun. For Fox and CNN, yes. Not so Hillarious for us. After Services After services on Sunday the old Marlboro man puts his Bible under his arm and talks to his pastor through a hole in his neck. His wife waits in a nice frock and lovely hat and sees smoke coming through his nose. A Poem for Catholics Natural Family Planning has its ups and downs so to speak but it often works quite well. But when the calendar says not tonight I ask my wife to please go in another room with that banana. Bulbs Alive A doctor by day Ralph spends his nights ordering tulip bulbs from Holland beautiful and rare to arrive in autumn to plant and think about for months ahead until spring arrives and the tulips become a rainbow beautiful in his garden. Ralph talks about tulips at the office every day where he pulls small bulbs from the gardens of patients. Unlike his tulips those bulbs don’t grow, never become a rainbow. Twilight Song Sometimes she sits there and listens to him. Sometimes he sits there and listens to her. Sometimes they know what the other will say. Sometimes they surprise each other. As the years go by they say the same things: “I felt it again last night. What do you think?" But they’re careful about what they tell each other. Neither would want to frighten the other. But more often now the key phrase is this: “Should I call the doc now or wait until morning." |
ArchivesCategories
All
|