This is how it was when I met her: The door jingles as I make my way into her shop from the sideways sunshine of a late spring afternoon. Candles and bottles of liquid line the racks of the dim store. They promise money and love and darker desires as well. All things I don’t have and some I don’t want. La Buena Suerte. Control. La Santísima Muerte. It smells of incense. Loud laughter comes in from the back of the store. I ask a woman sitting off to the side: Laura? She yells the name to the back.
Laura’s whole family practices magic. Always a healer. A Tarot card reader since she was seven. She has a botánica called Yoli’s in Fresno’s Tower District, the funky core in the biggest of Central California’s sprawling agricultural towns. I visit her on four separate days: for a Tarot card reading, to buy candles, for a cleansing, and to talk about her life and mine.
 
Laura stops me from putting my purse on the floor of her makeshift office in the back of her shop. It is my first visit.
“Money will drain out of your life,” she says.
Of course, I knew that. I run through some of the other rules I know: When crossing a body of water with a sleeping child, you must make the sign of the cross over them three times. When someone is talking in their sleep, you must never startle them awake. Instead, squeeze their thumb until they wake. You must let your eyes cool before going outside after sleeping, reading, sewing, watching TV or anything else that involves focus. If you show a baby their reflection, they could go blind.
Laura will read my cards today. I part the deck and wait.
“There is a man in your life who is draining all your energy. There is no change in this situation,” she says. “I see no change.”
I see no man. Wait, never mind – got him. Yep, she’s right. OK, what else?
“You are in the arts?” she asks me.
Yes, I’m a writer.
“You like true stories?”
Yes.
“You like crime?”
Yes.
“You should be writing romance and stories about mothers.”
We go on like this. She makes some scary hits (“There is a geographical distance between you and your family”) and some grand misses (that nonsense about writing romance) but I don’t care. I know that part of the deal is that I’m supposed to submit to this – that  I’m supposed to believe that cards depicting The Fool, The Sun and various fairies will tell me something about who I am and where I’m headed.
Laura is 42, has chemically lightened hair and an accent I can’t place. She tells me her heritage includes Italian and South African ancestry and I want to believe her but she slips into Spanish so well.
“My father’s side is from Sicily. He practices Catholic religion. My mother’s father did Santeria,” she would later tell me.
I would love to dismiss her as just another fake mystic, but I am too much like the clientele who keep Laura busy on any given day. She is booked pretty solidly for readings and limpias – cleansings – though there are about half a dozen Tarot card readers in this part of town, a small stretch of coffee houses, restaurants, bars and other little shops. Most of her clientele is Spanish-speaking and immigrant. They come in looking for herbs, crystals and assurance. Laura gives them that: healing they’re used to, a mix of spiritualities that live in many Latino homes where the walls are held up by the Catholic saints that replaced African deities, where indigenous beliefs and cures live on as superstition and home remedies. Homes like those of my family.
 
I remember peeking into the bedroom I shared with my brother and my great aunt. Seeing my cousin Tina laid out on my brother’s He-Man comforter, underwear only, with the women giving her “ventosas.” They’d pray and rub her down with alcohol and then hold a lit match inside a drinking glass held upside down, floating above the back of her leg. My godmother would put the match out and quickly trap the heat on Tina’s leg with the glass, causing her skin to swell up and half fill the glass with her smooth, dark skin. This was done when someone was sick with what my family simply called “aire” – air. I knew it meant bad spirits, and though we prayed traditional Catholic rosaries, they were always supplemented with what my brother and I called “left over Indian stuff” from before the conquest. My godmother repeated the procedure on the back of Tina’s legs several times. Then she pinched her back. Finally, she pounded on it in sets of three – thooom, thoom, thoom… thoom, thoom, thoom – and everything was done.
 
“You want me to tell you my story? The story about what? About my life, about how I’m doing this? Or what?”
Yes, all of that, I say. Also, can I just hang out here for a while?
She considers the question and maybe my motive. It is my second visit there and she remembers my name.
“Olivia, OK… But my sessions are private. You understand that, right? You can’t come back here if someone else is back here.”
OK. I offer to help her sort through herbs she is bagging for individual sale. I am good with herbs – they were my mother’s specialty. I recite what I know in my head: A chamomile rinse for irritated eyes. Rose petal tea for tummy aches. Azares to calm a teenager’s “nerves.”
“You know, I learned from a lot of places, not just my family,” Laura starts.
She tells me she is a certified sign language interpreter, has a degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in special behavior in disabled adults, plus another bachelor’s degree from UCLA in religion. She also studied for three years with the founder of modern pranic healing, a system of no-touch healing that claims to harmonize the body’s energy.
But it was her family’s influence that drew her back to spiritual healing after working for a dozen years in Fresno group homes and as a sign language interpreter for the Fresno Unified School District.
“When my mother died, I was 16. She had this big cabinet. It had all her books, her potions – all the tools that we use in magical ways,” Laura tells me. We are arranging the black candles my mother always told me to stay away from.
“In my family there are six men and ten women who practice. I am only the third person in my family to get permission to practice outside the family. I had to get permission from the family cult.”
What do you practice?
“It’s a lot of things. It’s magic, yes, but it’s science, too.”
“You see, we have two kinds of energy in the body,” she explains “The physical one is the one your brain makes. That’s when your brain communicates in a chemical reaction and stimulates electricity that travels through your nerves and gives action to your body.”
Her hands move rapidly as she grows more comfortable. They arc into large sweeps in the air and then her fingers create staccato points that emphasize her speech. When she is done, she rests them casually on her legs, which she never crosses. She leans in to talk.
“The astro energy – that’s prana, your spiritual energy.”
Prana is a Sanskrit word that means in turn soul, life-force, energy and simply, air.
“I can put my hands close to you and you can feel my heat. You feel it? That is prana,” she says.
Laura’s gaze is piercing though not intimidating. Still, I feel her looking inside of me.
She insists she did not want to do this for a living.
“I always had a lot of manifestations in my life, but I think to myself, no, I’m not going to do it, I’m not going to do it.”
“But magic is a strong draw, hard to shake,” she says.
We finish bagging the dried herbs, I buy a good luck candle and leave her store.
 
It’s early August in central Mexico, a time of sticky hot nights broken up by the occasional mid-day thunderstorm – weather not unlike the Midwestern summer we had left in Michigan. My brother is about 12, so I’m probably 14, and he is curled up on my grandmother’s antique loveseat. He’s been throwing up. My Tía Raquel is trying to cure him. She fills a five-gallon bucket with water and drags it into the living room. Tells me to turn out the lights. It’s just us three. She thinks bad winds hit him and is going to draw them out. My brother lies on his side and my aunt makes a funnel out of my newspaper. She sticks the coiled up end into my brother’s ear and lights the rim above on fire. The wind howls outside. The flame on the edge of the sports page burns and then rises high as the winds leave my brother’s head. When it’s burned halfway down she dunks it into the bucket of water, one element putting out the other. I don’t want to believe in the cure, only want to be mad that my newspaper was used in this, but my brother gets better, doesn’t even need any of the Pepto-Bismol my mom packed for the month-long trip. This is the only time I’ve seen anyone do this ritual.
 
I show up for a third visit to Laura’s shop. She smiles and says hello. I am here for a limpia – more than a cleansing, a soul retrieval. In many traditional Mexican limpias, the healer will spit alcohol at you, dust you down with plants and rub eggs on you, but Laura uses only crystals and metals. Thank God.
I take off my shoes and all jewelry. Laura instructs me to sit, tells me not to cross my legs. She sprays the air with perfumed water. She gives me a long, white crystal spike to hold between both hands.
“The crystal will take all your negative energy.”
She says some things in a language I don’t understand. She takes a copper claw-looking thing and puts it over my head three times quickly. I don’t feel anything and I tell her. She assures me that I will feel lighter later.            
 
It’s my last visit to Laura’s shop. The fourth day, my lucky number. We talk about God.
“People believe in a big form of energy – like God. Like the big God. The one that’s formed everything. You can believe that. Your energy and faith in something, it moves the world,” she says.
“Life has energy around it. The only thing that can move everything around us is energy. That’s true. If we don’t have energy it’s nothing there, nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
I tell her that I’ve always been a pretty even person but that lately my lows have been very low and my highs really high.
“You can be depressed one day and that’s because you have more negative energy in your body,” she says. “Unfortunately, the human wants to feel it or see it to believe.”
Yeah, I want to feel it, I say. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.
“Well, don’t believe what people tell you, believe what you feel,” she says. “Life is meant to be lived like that.”
 
“Here, you can do it,” my godmother is pushing a large kitchen knife into my hand. “Be careful…”
I am about seven years old and standing on the ledge of my godmother’s porch. It is summer and dark storm clouds are rolling in on us. I know that a child can “cut” a storm to keep it from ripping trees apart in our yard and flooding our basements. My boy cousins were always the ones to try to cut the storm – they always wanted to hold the knife – but they play around too much, my godmother says. They can’t take anything seriously.
“Olivia es más calmada,” she says. Olivia is calmer.
So, I hold the knife and make the sign of the cross with it, three times, slow. And I do it. I cut the storm.
​

KR Pendergrass is a career paramedic, devoted wife, homeschool mom, and part-time member of the justice league. Also the author of the short novel Incompatible With Life, and multiple short stories. Trying to establish a freelance writing career in addition to all that is tough, but if it's easy, it's not worth doing!

​     Small town church Christmas plays have their own special magic, where for one night, whatever your station in life, whatever your background, you are family. People who cross each other's paths a million times in a year become more than random faces. This particular one was no different for the denizens of this tiny town.
     The lady who does manicures is dressed to the nines, adjusting the costumes of the tangle of grandchildren hovering around her seat. The elderly couple who owns and maintains the fairgrounds are in the second row. She has a Christmas sweater on with an actual string of flashing lights around the neck. The preacher's wife is dressed as a shepherd because one of the kids had the flu and couldn't make it. Her beard is slightly crooked as she straightens the halo on one of the angels.
     The lights dim and the spotlight focuses on the man who works at the post office. He is wearing an apron, playing the innkeeper who had no room at the inn. His song goes perfectly, but he forgets some of his lines and his wife has to whisper them to him from the front row.
     One of the town's two paramedics sits in the fourth row, tears streaming down her cheeks as her autistic son makes his acting debut, nailing his part as Gabriel. His small voice resonates clearly as he hits every one of his lines with innocent relish. A woman she has only met in passing puts an arm around her as she wipes away proud tears.
     The play ends to louder applause than the small church seemed capable. The kids are ecstatic, having pulled off what they had worked so hard on. There is a little dinner in the basement afterwards, and everyone has a good time. Spirits are high as they go their separate ways. Life goes on after this momentary respite.
     On Monday, multiple people get their nails done in preparation for the holidays. The last of the Christmas lights are put up at the fairgrounds. The preacher and his wife work on the next weeks sermon and youth group celebration. And the paramedic has a package to mail out.
     His apron traded for a uniform shirt, and her sweater and khakis traded for EMS uniform and boots, they smile as they go about their business. As he hands her the receipt, he says "You know, he did amazing. You should be proud."
     She thanks him and gets outside before wiping her eye, because paramedics don't cry. But sometimes, once in a while, autism moms do.

​Late night, high-flyin’. Hydrocodone daze creates a layer between me and the bed. Nice cushion, some fluff.        
            Just another bottle of dip-spit under the bed. Can’t smoke, gotta get your fix somehow.
 
            Cartoons, or Spanish soaps. Check that channel I’m pretty sure is Korean, some kids in a swim club. Seems tense, my antithesis, abstraction aside.
 
            Lo, mom’s up. Calls my name, Joe or Jim, maybe Dean. Real name redacted. Too painful or an invasion of privacy. Everyone involved wonders how out of touch with reality that guy is.
 
            Walk across the hall and she’s propped up on pillows. One too many morphine pops, but who’s to say?
 
            She’s watching static on TV. Mumbles something about windows, and for a second you’re pretty sure.
 
            I mean, your mind is dynamic static, dulled and numb and wanting for coherency. The TV is the window and she’s watching you try to make sense of it. She’s looking out the living room at the overgrowth eight years from now and the flakes of siding peppering the driveway. The little plants that pop up through the pavement.
 
            Her decay tapped into all the disappointment you’ll deserve after she passes, and she called me in to warn us.
 
            But I’m afraid we’ve already stagnated for too long. 

Born in Houston, Texas, Terri moved to Los Angeles, California in the early 70’s to finish her education at CSULA.  After receiving her B.A. in Child Development & Elementary Education, Terri taught for 30 years in the Duarte Unified School District where she earned various other credentials & her M.S. in Literacy & Learning from Walden University. When she retired in 2012, Terri co-founded StoryChicks, an acting company with C.E. Jordan.  Both write and perform true stories from childhood as well as other personal memoirs in the Los Angeles area. 
Terri has published a children’s picture book, The Velveteen Dress (Inkwater Press, Ltd, 2014) and is currently working on publishing her second book, No Soup for Sadie.  Her poetry and essays have appeared in Anthology of American Poets 1976, EastJasmineReview.com (2011-2014), and recently in Down in the Dirt Magazine (Sept.2018).  Much of her writing reflects her Texas roots, her love for nature, and a desire to make people laugh.

​Snakes-friends.  Lizards-yuck!  Cockroaches-okay. Grasshoppers-absolutely not.   I grew up with all of these and measured out levels of tolerance according to personal experience.  On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most acceptable, I can gage co-existence with any of these creatures when they come within a 12 foot range.  
Snakes are bountiful in East Texas.  The woods, bayous and lakes provide a perfect home for these slithering creatures.  Some are even poisonous and dangerous!   Mama and Daddy warned us of the the corn snakes, the rattlesnakes, and the water moccasins living in the corn shed, the woodpiles, and the ponds, and sometimes even under the front porch. But as kids, we trudged forth proclaiming our playgrounds and wrestling territory from these native creatures. 
“Alright now, you kids mind the water moccasins while swimming.  Don’t play around. “  My mama wasn’t about to keep us out of Lake Houston on a hot summer day, but she did warn us about the indigenous dangers lurking in the water where we played.  At first, we would swim slowly; our eyes watching the water for the serpent’s black head and the slithering ripples as a cotton mouth made its way across the surface.  Eventually, we gave up our guard and gaged how fast we could out swim the demon to shore. 
“Mama, look what Casey caught!”
My cousin runs up, holding a dead dripping water moccasin hanging from a pine stick. Its sagging ebony skin looped over the branch and tail extended toward earth formed a perfect question mark.
 “What the hell do you kids think you’re doin’?  Put that down now!” screamed my mama. 
“But it’s dead””.
 “Never you mind.” I said PUT IT DOWN NOW. “  Mama was not about to let us make friends with the wicked wiles of a water witch.  
Snakes have never threatened me, although I respect those that try.  I searched grasses and wood piles to know where they hid.  One time, I found a small garden snake.  I named him Henry and kept him in my empty marble jar. I cut a small slit in the tin lid so Henry could breathe.  There he lived with bits of grass and flies.  Occasionally, I would open the tin lid, pull Henry out and feel his cool, slick skin, smooth like glass, slide between my fingers. This was my first pet.
One summer we left for vacation, and Henry had to stay behind with Eddie, the boy next door, MARBLE KING.
“Now Eddie, don’t you take him out.  Be careful to give him just a few flies.  Don’t overfeed him.”  I reluctantly left Henry in Eddie’s charge.  I should have listened to my gut.  Upon returning home, Eddie presented me with an empty jar; Henry was gone!  Eddie sure was getting good at emptying my marble jar!  Snakes-10!
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Most people assume if you love a snake, then you’re bound to find a lizard just as friendly.  Not so. Lizards have a wicked, sinister, almost devilish personality.  Oh yeah, they look small and vulnerable, but pick one up on a hot summer day when that lizard hates to be bothered, and watch your fingers loose a bit of skin.  Lizards can bite and hang on like a bird dog on prey.  Their tiny sharp-edged teeth saw into your fingers and fail to let lose.  They snarl and hiss and rear their dragon heads, warning you…”I am not in the mood for you.”  Well, my sentiments exactly!  You can chase them down and around the house.  Those Rose-bellies skitter behind jars and under doors, into shoes and up the walls.  You can cut their spiny tails and they turn in spite, charge at you and aim to bite.  No, no… Lizards are not for me.  Their nature is hidden, chameleon relative, ever-changing, not like a snake whose true nature is evident.  Lizards-4
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You can’t live in the south without witnessing cockroaches.  Now they say that everything comes BIG in Texas.  This is true of roaches.  I have seen, felt, and killed some pretty monstrous buggers!  It has somethin’ to do with the heat and moisture, the decaying foliage and the resiliency of cockroaches which makes them inhabitants of all homes.  When we turned on the kitchen light at night, thousands, no, hundred thousands of those brown tailcoats ran for cover. The day the exterminator came to our house to snake out these pests, I watched him spray around the cracks and edges of the wall, flushing out millions of glossy coated cockroaches. I swear I did!  I watched those winged critters race out and up my daddy’s pant leg.  I screamed and jumped onto the nearest chair while my daddy just stood there, shaking out his pant leg.   I thought he was the bravest man I had ever seen.
My daddy taught me to not fear these beasts.  With swatter in hand, a wad of tissue, I could outrun and dodge the fastest roach.  They were not scary, just fat and ugly.  If only they didn’t have wings.  Cockroaches-5
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 Grasshoppers…oooo…YUK!
 This fear started when I spent summer days at my Aunt Nettie’s farm outside Tyler, Texas.. Billions of brown grasshoppers ate up the dry grasses and fields.  To do my chores, sometimes I had to walk through trillions of tobacco-spitting hoppers; those critters could cover your body in an instant.  I swatted my way, forging a path so I could breathe without a bug in my mouth.  Each step brought forth a “crunch” as my sandals terminated a small “militant” group.  If I chose to ride to the pond, sitting on the tailgate of PawPaw’s truck, a giant brown hopper would flip himself up beside me, hitching a ride like we was old friends.  “Don’t think so, buddy.  Get off my train.”  Bamm!  I squashed that bugger and kept my guard up. 
They are nasty, juice spitting critters.  They swirl saliva around in their mouths and eject it on your clean shoes or shirt.  They are quick and jittery, changing course and height  to land on your head, in your hair, or down your shirt.  There they twitch and squirm providing your with an unforgettable sensation which lasts until bedtime bath.  How can one love a bug whose eyes are more than half the size of their head and on close inspection, house spiny legs like mutated lobsters?  Reptiliatus- Ugh, yuck, gross!   GRASSHOPPERS-0!

As I began to record early memories growing up in Houston, Texas, I realized their impact and influence on making me the woman I am today.  One of the most vivid and favorite recollections of living in Texas is the rain; water is so much a part of the Gulf Coast world.  Rain was a playground. We live in it, live by it, and live because of it.  We swim in it; we fish in it; and we’re baptized by it.  So to tell the story of my first encounter with big winds and strong rains leads to an understanding of how I love water, love languages, and love warm tortillas.

 
Strong Winds and New Friends
Mid-September, l961, East Coast Texas.  The skies are dark and winds are pickin’ up.  I watch Daddy boardin’ up the windows of our little duplex on Knox Street.  Mama has gone to the store to stock up on groceries and batteries.  A big storm is a comin’!  They call her Carla-Hurricane Carla –and she is headin’ our way.  I worry if my mama will make it back in time.
On the other side of town, my aunts and uncles join families together in one household, my cousins huddle close under the bed, wondering why my uncle is filling up the bathtub with water.  Is it time to take a bath?
“Now you kids do not touch this water.  Don’t even put your fingers in it.  We may need to drink it later”.  My uncle cautions them to stay away from the bath water. They stare at the baptismal font and wonder how come they’re gonna drink bath water when every night they are told “Don’t drink the bath water; it’s nasty!”
We are used to rain in East Texas.  It does not seem scary or strange.  We git ready for big ones and hole up in our half home, lighting candles and eating peanut butter sandwiches, waiting for the lightning and thunder to stop.    At eight years, it is still the lightening which frightens me the most.  Its crackle and sulfur fumes radiating in the air.   Its super-charged bolts illuminate the house for a brief second, long enough to chase out shadows lurking in corners; shadows which I am sure are the ghosts haunting my sister at night.
 But the rain, I love the rain.  It’s rhythmic patter on the tin roof measures out songs to my heart.  It purifies the earth and brings up worms ready for bait.  And the smell of rain lingers long after -fresh and clean.
The Rain now thunders down in our yard, fillin’ up the ditch and coverin’ the gravel.  It slowly begins to rise and reaches the front porch steps.  The wind kicks the water until it ripples, making waves-a mini ocean in my back yard.
 I look out the screen door across the small lot which separates our house from new neighbors, the Garcias.  I don’t know them and have not met them, but I can see the mother in the kitchen door.  She’s wavin’ at us. She wears a frantic look and continues to gesture while the rain pours down, bucket drops,
  “Mama, come here.  The lady next door wants somethin’. She might be in trouble.”  My mama rushes to the screen door and shouts ”Hello, you okay?”  Mrs. Garcia says something neither me nor my mama can understand, but she continues to wildly gesture for us to come over.  My mama is worried that somethin’ bad has happened to one of her little boys.  I remember seeing them play alongside the house, but was always too shy to speak to them.  I don’t think they speak English and I didn’t understand Spanish.  I didn’t know then that was not a problem, since children have their our own form of communication called “ play.”
My mama gathers up some candles and a large umbrella.  We head across the small lake which has now formed around our two homes.  I try wadin’ through the torrents of water, but the rise is too high for my little legs to navigate.  Mama picks me up and carries me across.  I hold the umbrella to shield us from the pounding raindrops. 
When we reach Mrs. Garcia’s, a wonderful warmth and aroma hits my nose.  It is not a familiar smell, but I like it.  She greets my mother with universal language and hands her a flat pancake, smeared with butter and jam.  She offers me one as well and rolls it up so I may eat it better.  It is buttery joy, unlike anything I have ever tasted.  She calls them “tortillas”.  This was my first Spanish word.  Mrs. Garcia was offering us comfort and sanctuary in her home while the winds blew strongly around us.  There was no trouble, no emergency other than the joy of sharing food and space.
I simply remember standin’ there in her kitchen, surrounded by her family, her children, eating buttery warm tortillas, delighted to have made new friends.  In my mind, I imagined my mama and I had crossed an ocean and had washed up on some distant foreign shore.  Homemade tortillas united our two families across a mini-ocean, new friends from foreign places sharing a moment of warmth, a safe haven, while Hurricane Carla knocked the rest of the world down.
                                                            *********************************
Hurricane Carla was one of the worst tropical storms to hit the U.S. coast.  Originating in the Caribbean Sea, its winds reached 170mph when it touched Port Lavaca, TX.  Over 50,000 homes, 5,620 farm buildings, and 10,487 other buildings were damaged in Texas.  At least 34 fatalities and over $300 million in damages resulted.  Carla was the first reported Category 5 hurricane in U.S. history, But it couldn’t keep a small Texas family from crossing its waters to foreign land.
​

​When it rains, it pours.  No, in Houston, when it rains, it floods, cats and dogs.  There are times when it rains an inch in seven minutes forcing water to overflow the city sewers and drainpipes.   So where can all that water go but up and out! 
The water rises and rises and rises until only the tops of trees are visible, and cars float like lost canoes, without oars or captains.  And when waters finally recede, snakes find themselves beached upon a front porch.
Some school days, by the time the bell rang, it was coming down so hard, we’d have to hitch up our skirts, roll up our pants, pile our books atop our heads and wade home.  No one carried umbrellas: that was for sissies!  School books served a much better purpose.
“Hey, wait up.”  I am wading through water up to my knees, balancing books with both hands.  The water is quickly rising and my 5th grade best friends, Kathy and Lisa are way ahead.    Today, we are caught off-guard by heavy rain and we hope to get home before the skies decide to really open up.  My pint size legs are pushing hard against the current of water rushing toward sewage drains-creating a tsunami opposition to my progress.   I am seriously getting a Jack La Lane workout and my thighs are screaming.  If I am not careful, I could go down and under in two seconds…no one second!
 Suddenly, wild thoughts wander into my watery brain. My body washes up on some lonely widow’s front porch and I would rest there; my tiny chest compressed against its pillars, surrounded by cast off litter and lost snakes.  My face bloated and unrecognizable ; my parents, confronted by guilt in not rushing to pick me up after school on such a horrendous, stormy day, search for weeks, mourning their loss.  Friends weep, memorials are held; the school erects a building in my name…..
Meanwhile, my underpants are soaked, well; I am entirely soaked, and I don’t seem to care.  The water is warm and clear.  I tilt my head back, stick out my tongue and taste its purity. I revel in the water’s healing properties, refusing to witness rain as a menacing force.  It is a water witch, not like the slithering water moccasins Mama warned us about.   No, it is the Good Witch of the Wet, luring me with magical wet tongues, licking my nose and trickling down my cheek.  When I arrive at our destination, I am cleansed and healed, wet as a drowned dog, and for some reason, thirsty!

​To a Latina, family is everything and Aida was as Latina as they come. Aida Gomez was born in Cuba in 1929. Life in Cuba back in those days was fair, but in October of that year the American stock crash on Wall Street is felt here. The price of sugar cane – one of the island’s major exports - drops to an all-time low. Truly, living in a Caribbean paradise had its quirks. She was very close to her family but things would soon go south for the painfully timid Aida and her entire family when General Fulgencio Batista is elected president. He later officially legalized the Communist party as the party of the island. Aida was barely eleven years old and didn’t quite understand the changes happening on her home island, but those changes would prove impossible to ignore when a young militant named Fidel Castro led a revolt against the president turned dictator Batista and successfully overtook the government becoming leader of the country. He said he fought for the rights of the common man so the natives considered him a hero. They were tired of oppression and hoped for a new and complete change.
But soon into his reign, the Cuban people defected in as many ways as they could to escape Castro’s leadership which quickly changed into a fierce dictatorship. Though he did a lot of good for his people, he became what many considered a tyrant and the people wanted freedom from this kind of government.
Aida, a quiet church-going Christian, volunteered for missionary work at her church and came to be liked by an American evangelical organization that decided to bring her to the States for a missionary trip. Though she travelled to and from her home island because of the group, she eventually never returned home. The freedoms America offered were the kind of freedoms she yearned for herself and for her family back home. The poverty of her upbringing made her want more, and the life in the United States she heard about was readily available to her now. She soon met and fell in love with a WWII vet fresh out of the navy in the late 50s. Aida and Raymond married and had two daughters. She kept in touch with her family but she wanted more than a long distance relationship with them. Her plan was to get them here and between her and her husband, it became an obsession. One by one she saved up and helped to bring her sisters and her brother to the states. Castro’s rules were harsh but she was determined to give her family the taste of the freedom she enjoyed here. All came but one, the youngest sister- who stayed home to care for her aged parents. She remains there to this day.
The sisters and brother eventually all made well in life here in the states; sons, daughters and grandchildren soon followed merging the family into a loving unit again – miles away from home. The promise of life in America proved true to the standards they expected. Home ownership, jobs, college, careers and retirement – the family cherished the promised life that the spirit of America has always stood for.
Aida never got to see her younger sister again. She passed away on January 2016 and had a good life. She had three grandkids and was loved by many; congestive heart failure took her from her loved ones. Aida left an impression to all that knew and met her, including me - Aida was my Mother-in-law. She raised both my wife and my sister-in-law with love and nurtured them to be the great moms they are today. She was truly an incredible example of what someone could do when they set their mind to it – against all odds and facing supreme diversity and a regime that was truly against freedom and civil rights, something we Americans take for granted. 
I considered her a hero, she suffered silently through the years, struggling with her husband to get her family here , a family that unilaterally agree they owe her a debt of gratitude because life in Cuba is not what we Americans could ever understand or bear. My wife’s cousins and their children understand. We all know they live better lives here in America because one shy girl from a small town ninety miles south of Florida was determined to keep her family together.
 

​This story is about a slimy, six-legged cockroach crawling up my smooth twelve-year-old forearm, breaking a path through the long, moist tendrils of an unshaven brown, armpit and proceeding to hike through the unlined crevices of my neck. It is a blisteringly hot summer night in my non-air-conditioned bedroom at J-22 Jangpura Extension, New Delhi, India. The evening moon floats like a thin cucumber slice in a lemonade sky.
I can hear the sounds filtering in through the open window—stray dogs barking in competition from neighborhood to neighborhood, the occasional truck rumbling by, someone singing lustily from the embrace of the night—a drunkard or a laborer returning home late—the drone of an airplane, the rustle of a mouse scurrying across the tiled floor of the lavatory, the sound of a door opening or closing here or there on the middle floor of the three-storied flat we lived in.  The Hindu wedding season has not really begun yet. When it does, there will be a cacophony of Bollywood music and vulgar, sexually suggestive pop songs followed by random bursts of complaints from Mrs. Gupta on the ground floor.  Mrs. Gupta can watch without complaint film stars gyrating their hips and thrusting their pelvis at each other in a manner that leaves little to the imagination, but the slightest bit of nudity or verbal obscenity is guaranteed to incense her.
Or perhaps this story is about my mother not believing me when I go crying to her the next morning. 
 “Mummy, there was a cockroach that crawled up my neck last night.” 
 
She clicks her tongue in annoyance and reproaches me with a scowl.  “There are no cockroaches in our home, Anuradha. You’re always making things up.”
 
She starts to leave my bedroom, but then she sees me scrunching up my face, ready to dissolve into tears and surprisingly, she offers me an olive branch.
 
“Okay, I’ll sleep in your bedroom tonight, and we’ll see if there’s any such cockroach.”
                                                                                   
This story might be in part about the immense pleasure I feel in proving my mother wrong. The way she looks as if someone has made her bite into a lemon when she sees that slimy, six-legged monster as I wake her up in the middle of the night. Her nostrils quiver like an overwrought buffalo’s when she notices it crawling stealthily on my neck.  I scream, she screams. My Dad comes running in from the room next door and turns on all the lights.
 
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he shouts, until he too sees the slimy, six-legged monster on the bed and throws his shoe at it in an attempt, to slice its head off.
 
This too might be about my Dad and in that moment, how he turns into my savior against creepy-crawly nocturnal creatures and unnameable apprehension.  How when I disappoint my mother time and again in my growing-up years and when her anger erupts in tears and tantrums, it is he who bridges the silences between us and gets us to make up. 
 
Inevitably, though, as I set out to tell you what happened, this telling is not only about the dark hole called blame, but also about using a compassionate lens in looking at the past.  My mother didn’t believe me, yes, but it was mostly because she didn’t want to admit that we were living in a small rented flat with barred windows above a squatter’s colony where cockroaches and vermin lurked in the terror of the night.
                                                                       
She didn’t want to believe me because she didn’t want to admit that had she not fallen in love with my father and married beneath her station, she too could have been sipping high tea at the Taj Compton Hotel in Chanakyapuri In New Delhi every Wednesday afternoon.  Just like her cousin Diya, her aunts Honey Mamiji and Dimple Chachi, her Uncles Teddy Mamaji and Bunty Chacha and everyone else she’d grown up with did, as they gossiped over the latest in politics, the squabbles of relatives living abroad and all sorts of delicious stuff between bites of chocolate éclairs and slurps of Darjeeling tea.
 

​1. Guns and Candy
            My political awareness began with a shortage of candy bars. We didn’t always have dessert after lunch, but about once a week Dad would bring candy from the drugstore. Lately I had noticed a drop-off. I asked him why.
            “They got too expensive.”
            I was familiar with the phrase “too expensive.” This was why we couldn’t have nice things. But that something not too expensive should be snatched into that category outraged my five-year-old sense of justice.
            “Why did they get too expensive?”
            “Well, because of the Vietnam War.”
            I knew about the war. Being the eccentric academic family we were, we had no TV, but my parents read The New Yorker aloud to each other. Still, how could that far-off event affect my candy bars?
            “The government has to pay for the war, and that makes everything more expensive for the rest of us.”
            I was indignant. Without my permission, my government was waging a war that everyone I knew disapproved of, and taking away my candy bars to do it. I started crossing my fingers during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Lesson 1: The perception that big government is taking nice things away engages people
 
in politics, but only by making their powerlessness apparent.
 
2. Education and Engagement
            I was soon flooded with information about problems I could take no practical action towards solving.
            I was especially gripped by The New Yorker’s analysis of legal matters: the threat to the First Amendment rights of a school teacher persecuted for wearing a black armband to protest the Vietnam War; the Fourth Amendment rights violated under the Nixon administration’s no-knock raids and wire tapping; the use of immunity granted under the Fifth Amendment to force people to testify; the long struggle for justice undergone by residents of Love Canal. From Ranger Rick and later National and International Wildlife, I learned more about threats to the environment.
            In school, too, we studied pollution and endangered species. We were warned first about the paper shortage, then about the energy crisis. After that, we studied a progressive history curriculum that examined the American dream and the obstacles women and minorities faced in attaining it. I became interested in the stories of strikes and union busting in the early twentieth century and read biographies of Emma Goldman and Eugene V. Debs. Such listing to the far left was counterpoised by our studies of Animal Farm, which in turn influenced me to read 1984 and Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
 Lesson 2: Education illuminates patterns in the distribution of power and gives individuals a sense of the contexts in which they wield and are subject to it. But education often seems like an endless study of how people in power take candy bars away from the powerless. It is confusing and somewhat discouraging to learn that you yourself, at various times and in various ways, are both an oppressive taker and an oppressed surrenderer.
 
3. People, or Why We Care
            I was lucky to have a good education, but my understanding might have remained academic without personal influences. First and foremost among these were my parents. My mother, loudly typewriting her way toward a career as an art history professor, was a steadfast advocate of feminism. My father, though in many ways a man of his slightly earlier times when it came to women, was nevertheless the only dad I knew who did most of the cooking and cleaning in order to help Mom out. Dad’s pacifism and politics also affected me. Although I can’t verify his dark hints about why he left work in professional music in New York in 1950 to teach at Oberlin Conservatory, the atmosphere in the entertainment industry during the House Un-American Activities Committee’s heyday was undoubtedly a factor, and so wariness of witch hunts and repression were woven into our family life.
            Other adults were important, too. I would have known little about the plight of Native Americans but for my third-grade teacher, who had worked on a reservation. Charismatic, passionate, and well-informed, she never let us sheltered private-school students forget how privileged we were to have our education and to live in a country that had once belonged to others.
            When, in the middle of third grade, I was snatched away from my beloved teacher and taken on sabbatical with my parents, a new chapter was added to my lessons on privilege. In Cairo, the crowds and smells and animals in the streets filled me with questions whose answers almost always came down to lack of money. Poverty was why it always smelled like garbage. It was why our hotel manager could slap the elevator boy—only a few years older than I was—across the face. Poverty was why a man with a stump where his foot should be was begging on the street (how we could just walk by was harder to answer) and why crowds of children with flies swarming around their eyes tried to sell us things at the Pyramids. In Luxor, poverty was why there were no cars except a few taxis. The main mode of transportation was the donkey-drawn carriage.
            As a Third World country, Egypt also taught lessons in geopolitics. My main takeaway was that official positions are often at odds with the people they supposedly represent. First there were the remnants of British and French colonialism everywhere, for example in the once-elegant trappings of our now seedy Cairo hotel, or in everyone’s penchant for kissing, French-style, on the cheek. The hotel food might be nationalized, so we got the same dishes in Luxor as in Cairo (only not so well prepared), but it was all French-inspired.
            Then there were the headlines in the paper: “Sadat Says War May Come Any Day,” which alarmed my father but sent the desk clerk into gales of laughter. Apparently the government issued such pronouncements so frequently that no one took them seriously, even though the Yom Kippur War did come nine months later.
            Finally, there were personal encounters. Although the Egyptian government was supposedly under Soviet sway at that time, Egyptians themselves spoke resentfully of Soviet intrusiveness into their national affairs, and we observed Egyptians treating Russian tourists dismissively. Conversely, Egyptians were uniformly friendly to Americans, in our observation, and made no distinction in their treatment of Jewish Americans in our tourist expeditions, despite troubled relations with Israel. The attitude toward Americans was perhaps summed up by a disreputable looking cab driver, who after asking us our nationality, announced, “Americans OK. Nixon no good.” He then turned to me. “You like Nixon?” When I shyly but emphatically shook my head, he abruptly pulled me into an unsavory version of the French cheek-kissing.
            After living in France for six months and touring much of Western Europe, we returned home. There my interest in my father’s leftism and more generally in global and domestic socioeconomic inequities led me to a fascination with socialism. This was furthered by a brilliant friend of the family who spoke twelve languages and had once driven Ezra Pound in a Washington taxi. He celebrated the anniversary of the end of Vietnam with Champagne, called J. Edgar Hoover “the real Public Enemy Number One,” spoke colorfully of friends beaten up for demonstrating, and, after visiting China, declared that the Cultural Revolution was not all bad. Fortunately (I believe), the Hungarian and Cuban émigré friends parents of my friends counteracted his more extreme anti-capitalist views by making sure I understood exactly what life was like in the socialist police states they had fled.
Lesson 3: Although politics may seem to be all about money and power in government, the only place it means anything is down among the people.
 
 
 
 
4. Growing Up versus Giving Up
 
            Politics for my grown-up self seems like a long, disappointing slide away from my hopes for America. From the trickle-up economics of globalization and the unthinkable consequences of climate change to unmitigated bellicosity and the rise of the “alt-right,” enormous forces are arrayed against the peaceful, moderate, free, clean-living country with a strong middle class that I came to envision as I made choices at the polls. At the same time, my own left seems to be sliding past me as well. I am not on board with extreme anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism sliding into anti-Semitism, or anti-vaxxers, though I am sympathetic to the frustrations behind such views.
            The right, too, must feel that their vision for America is slipping away, or why would they be so desperate to “Make America great again”? Yet on the other hand, many of them are at least uncomfortable with their party’s new ties to White Nationalism.
            Perhaps such disillusionment is partly an inevitable reflection of the truth that with each day we age, life itself is slipping away. Whatever the case, disengagement cannot be our answer. Indeed, it must be viewed as the most serious enemy we face.
            Once again, my reading illuminates and expands on what experience has taught. Particularly germane is the thinking of Holocaust writer and chemist Primo Levi. A compelling yet discomfiting thread in his witnessing is condemnation of those who disapproved of Nazism but allowed it to happen. They are doubly guilty, in the former varnish maker’s view, for in allowing their principles to be overruled, they allowed Nazism to appropriate their passive support and give its monstrousness a veneer of respectability.
Lesson 4: Applying Levi’s view to my own life, I resolve to remain engaged and struggling, regardless of circumstances, lest I become one of those he calls (in The Periodic Table) the “honest and unarmed” who “clear the road” for unthinkable evil.
End
 

Evan Guilford-Blake is, socially, admittedly far left-of-center, He writes prose, plays and poetry for adults and children. His work has appeared in more than 90 journals and anthologies. His prose has won 27 awards and received three Pushcart Prize nominations. His plays have been performed internationally and won 46 playwriting contests. Thirty-nine are published. 
 His published long-form prose includes the novel Animation and the award-winning short story collection American Blues, for adults; and the novel The Bluebird Prince for middle-grade students (and their parents).  
  Evan and his wife (and inspiration) Roxanna, a talented jewelry designer and business writer, live in the southeastern US.    

​I have been a hardcore liberal all my life. And I’ve championed liberal causes from environmental protection; African-American, women’s and gay rights; first amendment rights (even for people and groups whose positions I vociferously oppose; Evelyn Beatrice Hall -- not Voltaire -- had it right about defending someone’s right to speak, even if you disagree); to candidates for office. I’ve spent a lot of intellectual, emotional and physical energy doing so, and I’ve put my limited money where my mouth was.
I’ve even spoken out loudly against capital punishment, and the cruel and unusual punishments imposed by some nations (many of them governed by religious precepts with which I profoundly disagree) that include what I have always thought of as barbarous and inhumane treatment of those found guilty.
But I’m coming around on these last issues. Legalized murder and torture do have their good sides.
After a lifetime denouncing the reported executions of miscreants, stonings, amputations-as-punishment and burnings-out of offenders’ eyes, the recent glut of such incidents, made available courtesy of the Internet, has led me to believe they do have a place in the allegedly civilized world, as well as in the “uncivilized” Third World.
I think, however, that their present use (especially but not only the death penalty) in, for example, the United States, isn’t always just or appropriate -- even when the person suffering the penalty is undeniably guilty (although I will not argue the justness or propriety of the death sentences or executions of merciless people like Dylann Roof, Ted Bundy and Ricky Jovan Gray, even if -- if -- they are legitimately psychiatrically “of unsound mind”).
I will argue, however, that -- whether what’s deemed cruel and unusual punishment is just or not -- it is too limited in its application: Cold-blooded killers are not the only ones to whom it should apply.
No, the question, as I see it, is which other criminals, what other crimes, merit “cruel and unusual” retribution. Those who unapologetically take lives -- that is, commit actual murder -- are simply not the only ones who are deserving of it: There are murderers of different hues, and those who do it indirectly ought to be held just as accountable as those who actually commit the act.
Take, for example, Bernie Madoff. Madoff literally ruined the lives of thousands of people and no doubt shortened the lives of many others whom he thrust -- mercilessly -- into poverty and want: The fact is, to all intents and purposes he killed them -- abused them and left them with neither the will nor the means to live. In my book, that’s murder. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison. He’s now 76 and, according to recent reports, suffering from terminal cancer.
Good. Great! In fact, it’s capital! I’m delighted to hear that my fellow taxpayers and I won’t be providing his upkeep much longer. The sooner the better, incidentally, and I hope there’s a lot of unpalliated pain involved. That may be a cruel and unusual point of view, but it is certainly a justified -- and appropriate -- one for someone who, it may be argued with logic and conviction (no pun intended), is a mass murderer pretty much on par with Jim Jones.
Then there’s Judge Mark Ciavarella, convicted of “selling” juveniles, whom he sentenced for their (usually minor) infractions, to unjustifiable terms in for-profit juvenile detention “facilities” -- in return for substantial payments. Among his victims was then-17-year-old Edward Kenzakoski, with no prior criminal record, who appeared before Ciavarella on minor charges and was sentenced to six months. (He was one of about 4,000 such offenders to whom Ciavarella, or his colleague and co-conspirator, Michael Conahan, issued similar punishments.) Kenzakoski’s parents said he never recovered from the experience, and he committed suicide when he was 23. Ciavarella was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison for using those whom he sentenced “as pawns to enrich himself,” according to the federal prosecutors who tried the case. Conahan received 17½ years.
It’s not a bad turnabout-as-fair-play, but hey! -- it’s nowhere near enough. An eye for an eye, please. Even if the latter “eye” was plucked out by the victim himself, and the former “only” provided the stick with which to poke it. The case of Michelle Carter, who pressured 18 year old Conrad Roy III, via text, to take his own life, is another splendid example of how to murder by remote. (Ms. Carter has been sentenced to 30 months, fifteen in prison, fifteen on probation. She, it may be noted, in absentia sentenced Mr. Roy to death.)
But, as I said, murder’s not the only crime that should require just desserts. How about Tyler Kost who, at 18, was charged with sexually assaulting and molesting 11 girls between the ages of 12 and 17 over the course of five years. He served 990 days in prison in a plea deal, pleading guilty only to “touching the breasts of three girls without consent and attempting to have sexual contact with two minors,” a deal which, according to The Arizona Republic, “Even the judge appeared uneasy with.” (Kost, now 20, has since been released. There’s been no report on how any of the eleven -- or three -- girls are doing.)
Or even the case of one Michael Flynn, the former Trump staffer who thus far has received nothing but the slap on the wrist of being fired for corrupt practices that jeopardized national security. And of former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose plea agreement (for paying hush money in an attempted cover-up for -- allegedly -- molesting a teenager, one of several he was alleged to have abused over the course of his many years as a high school coach but with which he could not be charged because the statute of limitations had run out) resulted in a sentence of 15 months in prison, two years’ supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. On July, 18, 2017, this estimable felon was placed in a "re-entry facility" and was released once and for all on August 16. (The impact on his victims hasn’t been given much attention. But, then, why should it? Hastert wasn’t sentenced for his unchargeable act of causing his -- alleged -- victims’ suffering.)
And speaking of child molesters, how about Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick who is being allowed to live out his days in a “life of prayer and penance,” according to the order of Pope Francis, after close to fifty years of child abuse and payoffs to cover it up.
And there’s former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, impeached and sentenced to fourteen years in prison for doing nothing more than what American politicians have done, with impunity, for decades: attempting to peddle his influence. His sentence, I’m happy to report, was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court on April 21, 2017. That means he’ll have only another seven or so years to rot -- excuse me: to serve -- in prison. Unless the current president (himself a candidate for some cruel and unusual punishment) follows through on his comments regarding that Blagojevich should receive a pardon.
          All betrayers of the public trust. All men whose actions have caused Americans to die, or undergo extended anguish, or otherwise suffer pain or disgrace or public humiliation they would have escaped but for the malfeasance of the criminal in question.
          And, last but surely not least, the not-yet-proven-guilty Andrew Anglin, publisher of the alt-right The Daily Stormer. In a 2017 lawsuit filed against him, he has been -- alleged -- to have pursued a “terror campaign” against a woman by harassing and victimizing her repeatedly -- because she is Jewish. The suit claims his actions have destroyed her ability to live her life. The woman “has received more than 700 harassing messages, including death threats, and a message on Twitter to her son suggesting that he pursue a free Xbox located inside an oven,” according to The Washington Post. If the allegations are proven true, Mr. Anglin’s actions, I submit, are as grievous and as much a kind of murder as those committed by Bernie Madoff and Dylann Roof. (Think the comparison with those two isn’t apt? I think it is. Roof killed nine people outright and shattered the lives of a few dozen more. Madoff -- indirectly and probably unproveably, to be sure -- caused the deaths of countless of his victims, and psychologically devastated hundreds -- probably thousands -- more. The actions of both were committed in equally cold, equally merciless, equally indifferent-to-suffering blood.)
 
          So here’s what I propose: A new criminal code (and this should please even Jeff Sessions) that strikes back at the malfeasant by punishing him (or her; there have been a few female miscreants whose behavior has been just as blatantly malicious; they get no sympathy from me simply because they are women. Hear that, Kathleen Kane, Corinne Brown, Karla Homolka?) for the impact of the crime, not merely the fact of it.
Please note: What I’m going to suggest is certainly cruel punishment but -- while it may be “unusual” for the United States -- it’s not unusual in the way of the world.
So. Let’s let Bernie Madoff starve to death, and deny him medical care as long as he lives. Will he suffer? You bet he will. That’s the point: His suffering will set him up as an example to the financial community. (While we’re at it, we might apply the same penalty to Enron stalwarts Kenneth Lay -- which, regrettably, would be a posthumous dishonor -- and Jeffrey Skilling, whose 24-year sentence was reduced to 14 years; this incorrigible conspirator and perpetrator of fraud will be probably be released from prison sometime before the end of 2019. Sure he’ll be disgraced, but -- unlike many of the people he defrauded -- he’ll be alive. And financially comfortable. And likely laughing all the way to his mansion.)
Mark Ciavarella? Simple. Cut out his tongue so he can’t speak any more lies, and sever one of his hands -- the one he writes with -- so he’s unable to sign anything, such as an order to imprison a juvenile. I know: He’ll never again be in the position to sign such an order, but other judges will read about it, perhaps even see him or at least his photo, and they’ll shudder to think the same fate awaits them if they commit the same, willful, heinous crime -- regardless of whether its commission results in the suicide of one or more of their victims. Dennis Hastert and Theodore McCarrick? Castrate them, the old-fashioned way, without an anesthetic and while they are fully conscious. That will obviate any possibility either will return to outside life with the opportunity to commit the same -- alleged -- crimes when released. And as a side benefit, it might make them examples to the child-molester community, too, especially to the 300 Pennsylvania priests whose misbehavior has recently been placed in the spotlight.
Think about what you do, people, before you do it! That’s the message this code is intended to convey. If you are found guilty, you will receive the same mercy you bestowed on those you condemned to their enduring pain. No excuses, no claims of mitigating circumstances allowed.
So. Jeff Sessions, unsheathe your terrible swift sword. Mine eyes have seen the vainglory and the inglory. Now it’s time to show its consequences to those who have made it -- make it -- their practice.
End

​Miles from nowhere in this god forsaken middle America stretch of land. Everything is flat and they will not let me continue unless we're all together. The weight of my possessions dig into my shoulders. I am antsy. I am exhausted. I still want a fix. My legs sink knee deep into the freezing glistening snow. It deceives me with its beauty. I guess I will take my time. Those empty, lonely, wood shacks aren't going anywhere. They will be there waiting for the strike of my pocket knife on flint. Lentils in old cooking cans after I slip and almost fall into a rushing river trying to collect fresh drinking water. Trying to get through the long days so I can go back. Back to mild winters and wild adventures. Back to the survival I do not need to be taught.
In the morning, after sleeping outside, a mouse is trapped in my homemade snare. His tiny body is frozen and his eyes bulge out of his head, asking, why? Why did I set that trap and why did he walk into it and how come after they make note of his dead self, do I bury him? My heart aches for that poor little mouse. I am sorry I do not have incense or prayer flags or anyone but myself to recite a hymn for an unnecessary death. After, I get in trouble for not having my gloves on. My hands are purple, stiff, throbbing with icy pain but I am simply experiencing the same cold pulsing he felt and all the other creatures felt around camp as one delinquent after another shows their dead animals to egt permission to move onto the next meaningless task...
When one of us, trudging slowly along, has to shit, everyone stops. The line slows. Halts. Drop your packs. Get comfortable. Whomever has the shovel passes it down the line. Start digging. Start feeling the bounce back of metal clanging on frozen ground making no headway. Making no sense. I look out at the horizon wishing I could walk off the face of the earth. I wish I could run through this knee deep snow making it to some other side where none of these self appointed counselors exist. Where their opinions matter not and none of us are forced to give forgiveness we do not feel.
I ask if I can move closer to the fire but those chairs are only for those of us who are cooperating. Answer a question, move closer. Say it's okay, move closer. Agree you are the only problem, move closer. The smell of sweet smoke as the logs pop makes my body ache for warmth. The kind of warmth humans can not give without something in return. She tells me she know I want to move closer and she knows I want one of her Snickers® and she knows all about me because there are some very real questions answered before bounty hunters wake someone in the dead of night to get on a plane to middle America where it's cold and mice lose their lives in the course of survival training. She emphasizes REAL. Winks. She's been around. Knows “how it is” on the streets. Knows what my real problem is but wants me to figure it out. She wants me to get honest, but no too honest, so I do not get left behind when everyone else gets to go into town for a hot shower, pancakes and milkshakes. I turn my back to the fire. I will not let this small cold piece of an experience break me.
The week before, you helped me pick out my clothes for school the next day. What a wonderful mask you used to hide your face. To hide what was coming. I noticed the hollowness of my ribs poking through. What do you think? I asked both of us. You and my reflection in the mirror. A mirror with a long crack running top to bottom. Covered in stickers, photos, lipstick kisses. My good luck charm. Kiss the mirror before creeping into the unknown. Isn;t it funny how sometimes, when we choose something new or different, it si the precursor to setting the next twenty into motion? Why was it that day I chose a short skirt when I never wear skirts? Why was it that evening I was even planning on going to school the next day when I never went in general? Why did you think sending me to an ice prison would create the closeness that had been lacking for so long?
Before you woke me in the dark hours of early morning saying people had come to see me you asked for a hug. Why? I got slightly irritated. Slightly on edge. As if we were friends. I listened as you climbed the stairs slowly. Shut your door gently. Made a phone call. Everything was off. Out of place. Uncomfortable. You came back. Later. Whispering my name.urgent. Pleading.
“These people want to speak with you.”
They were rough. Prickly.establishing who was in charge. It was not me. She wanted to be the good cop. He would be bad. You set me up. Backing into the harshly lit hallway as Thing 1 and Thing 2 flicked on my overhead light.
“Listen up. You can come easy or go hard.”
Thing 2 bad cop had ill fitting jeans with a fanny pack. Thing 1 good cop wanted to make friends. Wanted to help me help myself.
“Fuck you!”
if we were on the streets I would eat y'all alive, trading your bones as curious trinkets. If I can dress in private I can get high. One for the road. Thing 2 bad cop won't let me say goodbye. You were too busy in the kitchen sobbing. How typical. You were the victim and he was nowhere to be found. I was on my own. Traveling to the biggest mind fuck of my life. Hurtling towards the best performance I have ever given. Once I played the part I was assigned I was free to go. Free to go to the next arranged program. I had made it to that pancake breakfast wth chocolate milkshakes and thoroughly relieved parents desperate to believe we had all been broken down and rebuilt into shinier versions of their once precious babies.
You and him showed up weeks later. After I spent long bored days playing parcheesi in empty laundromats. Setting off the bedroom siren each time I needed the toilet to piss and sob. Each time I needed to stuff my mouth with tissues and scream into my fist, gagging on the difficulty of winning a standing ovation. Big Bobby confessed his darkest secrets to me laying on the couch in the basement with the television on, low and humming. His tears flowed and just when I thought my body could give him warmth if I lay crushed beneath him he turned to his plate piled high with cheap chocolate cake. A poorly chosen, sad substitute for the cold beers and dead deers he longed for in whichever shit hole he hailed from. And, when they finally came for me, we all played nice. Hugging stiffly. Making horrifically boring chit chat as my keepers looked on warily. Unsure if I should go even though they had no say in the matter. Even if they looked at you and him seeing what, exactly, I was up against. We three sped across flat long stretches of nothing. The sky was bright blue. Cloudless. Signs posted 80MPH speed limit so he pulled 120. miles from nowhere heading towards a damp musty mildewed motel nestled among giant redwoods and rednecks. Somewhere along the way brother joined us leaving you begging we didn't make a scene. You wanted everyone to go along with the plan. Smile. Make believe it was all business as usual. I bit my tongue, biding my time until I knew I was in the best possible position to manipulate my way back down south across the border to the dope opera I ached to star in.
When you came out of the shower I was placed in the center of the bed all geared up to give it my all. I cried. I pleaded. I shrieked. I pulled at my hair and slapped my face as if I was slapping you. I punched the mattress and kicked at the walls shaking plaster dust onto myself, shivering with the memories of Idaho survival wilderness boot camp hell. When you closed your eyes to take a breath and strengthen your resolve against my onslaught of painful truth of the history of our family tree I darted to the door slipping out barefoot. Feeling my way blindly through the snot tears choking me I made it to his room where I knew his desire to be cool, to be the good guy, would allow my manipulation a fertile soil to take root in. you kept banging on the door to be let in. I kept giving brother the look to take his hand off the door handle. He wasn't in my bag, yet. I need a few moments more to seal the deal. We call this whole thing off. We all go home to what we know. I'm the problem. You all are the victims. And, when he finally gave brother the nod to let you in, you knew. You knew you had been defeated. You knew that when push comes to shove I will watch you topple over the edge of the cliff. Won't flinch. I won't cry. I'll just scramble back down the other side of the mountain feeling sorry I didn't check your pockets for cash as I go to meet my connection and find a clean work.
The next morning we stopped by what would have been, should have been, my second prison. The dismay on the wardens face as he explained our change of plans. My change of plans. Her sad attempt to convince me to stay. They had horses. You whispered how I used to love horses. Couldn't I just try? Even for a few months? But, all that freezing snow. All those miles humming sad mournful Cat Steven's songs. All the betrayal you abandoned me to take. I ask him if we're done? Ready to go?
The house is cold when we enter. I think I hear the echoes of Thing 1 good cop. The footsteps of Thing 2 bad cop are still embedded in the carpet outside of my door. You keep saying something about needing to check my room before I can be left alone. He tells you to give me a break. And, a joint.
I slam the door and feel relieved when the jamb shakes plaster dust onto the top of my lucky charm mirror. I lock the door and put lipstick on. Heavy blood red. I cook some hidden dope and shoot up quickly. It slams me hard. I kiss the mirror sloppily, light his joint and slip out of the house. Welcome back, Eva. It's a wild, wild world. At least, San Francisco, isn't as cold as Idaho...

​Reviewed by Molly Martin
A Matter of Selection
by Carol Smallwood
Poetic Matrix Press
Paperback: 120 pages, March 5, 2018, ISBN-13: 978-0998146980
Carol Smallwood’s A Matter of Selection is a small edition of poetry spanning a broad spectrum of free verse, requiem, rhyme and elegy.
 
Opening with a foreword offered by Jordan Blum of The Bookends Review, Smallwood sets in motion the idea that we all make ongoing selections; some good, others not, and leaves us with the realization that choices are the grist of our being.
 
The book is divided into four sections: “Nature,” “Moments in Time,” “The Domestic” and “Speculations”, each providing a different poetic mix.  “Nature” sets the tone for the first segment “The Universe”,  six stanzas focused on finding a good center using the sewing metaphor of cutting up pieces to sew with needle and thread. “Wind in Trees” presents a sketch that comes and goes with the anecdote left to the interpreter.  Finishing up this section is a three stanza piece, “The Big Corn Field”, rich with the poignancy of harvest and the emptiness of the field when the harvester has wrought its fury.
 
“Moments in Time” offers a 7 stanza Septet beginning with consideration of Routine before meandering through back aches and snow, the limitations of logical atomism, more snow, a mention that humans shed their skins a few cells at a time before ending on a whimsical, thought provoking note that “It’s good we’re not snakes—imagine all those human skins.”
 
“The Domestic” includes Supermarket Triptych, Hanging Clothes on Clothes Lines, The Car Wash, The Sewing Box, and The Last Doll before coming to a close with a peek through Venetian blind and Capturing the Moon.
 
“Speculations” provides a jewel “Near the Library Window” for those who enjoy a nice visit to the reading room, while “A Matter of Lines” puts into focus the wait at the local post office where a queue leads to one or the other clerk behind the counter. “Sleeping Beauty” cause us to consider, What would’ve happened if she hadn’t been a beauty? “The Epilogue” offers one more poem for those of us who gaze at the skies in effort to locate dinosaur and ships or puppies chasing butterflies to consider
The sky today was cumulus clouds:
The choice too immense, I chose one
to secure the secret of time and space,
forget spinning on a planet.
Smallwood’s collection of finely honed, detail filled verses spring from the page as though borne on wings to fill the air, the room, the location with perfume for the eyes. I enjoyed reading these verses, some more than once, others a quick passage with scant time to savor the message before rushing on to the next just to see what was there.
Reviewed by: molly martin
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