We meet in dusty rooms.
No one misses us.
Ha! Let them revel in the flesh.
We hold truths
even we cannot bare.
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About the author:
Lauralee Leonard has been a resident of Mercer County since 1995 and has also worked in the county for the majority of that time.
Any foods that diet gurus declare to be unhealthy are taboo in our home. My wife won’t bring them into the house because she would like to stick around for as long as possible and she values my company.
In order to get through our doors, a product must carry documentation including at least one of the following qualifiers: sugar-free, no sugar added, fat-free, reduced-fat, caffeine-free, low-sodium, low-calorie, or “lite,” although I have no idea what “lite” actually means.
So one day last September I was amazed, when she was unpacking the groceries, to see that she’d brought home a package of muffins. Our home is a temple where worshipers practice gustatory restraint. How could she desecrate that temple by admitting a package of killer carbs? Did she think that just because the package had a kosher symbol on it that all the bad stuff had been removed?
She put away the last freezer item, a container of fat-free, no-sugar-added ice cream, and noticed that I was still standing there. She traced the imaginary line leading from my eyeballs to the counter and realized that I was staring at the muffins. Without even waiting to be asked, she went right into her explanation.
“Every night after dinner,” she began, “we have coffee. I have a couple of pieces of whole grain flatbread with mine, you have three sugar-free cookies with yours. I got bored having whole grain flatbread for dessert every single night. I needed a change. I was sure you would welcome a change from those sugar-free cookies you have night after night. So I got these muffins. They’re sugar-free and they’re not too high in calories. In fact, one muffin has no more calories than your three cookies.”
I was skeptical, so I picked up the package and tried to read the label. Why do they put all the important information on food containers into such small print? In order to read it I had to get out my magnifying glass.
Yes, it was sugar-free. Okay, that was one thing in its favor. At least it wouldn’t wreak havoc with my A1C. Under “Nutrition Facts” it stated that a serving contained 170 calories. Three of my sugar-free cookies total 130 calories. I could have argued that 170 is more than 130 and, therefore, one muffin did have more calories than three of my cookies but, in the spirit of the presidential polling season, I ignored the disparity and considered the two numbers to be in a statistical tie.
Some other numbers on the label, however, I found impossible to reconcile. The serving size was defined as 2 oz. The net weight of the package was 15 oz. The package held six muffins. Even the Wizard of oz couldn’t divide 15 oz. by 2 oz. and come up with a quotient of 6. Were the basic rules of arithmetic changed while I wasn’t paying attention? Had I somehow slipped into an alternate universe where mathematical rules are arbitrary? I re-examined the label, passing the magnifying glass slowly over each line. There had to be some explanation. Then I saw it, the key to unraveling the mystery. The figure it showed as “Servings per Container” was 7.5. In order for there to be 7.5 servings in the package, each serving would have to consist of just 4/5 of a muffin.
Silly me! I had assumed that one muffin equaled one serving. I guess I was wrong to think logically. But it was understandable that I should make such a mistake. After all, when I went to a diner and ordered coffee and a muffin I was sometimes served only 4/5 of a cup, but never 4/5 of a muffin. I’ve seen menus where the daily lunch special was a cup of soup and half a sandwich, but never 4/5 of a sandwich. Maybe I don’t eat out often enough.
But getting back to the muffins, I calculated that each muffin actually contained not 170 calories,as implied, but 212.5 calories. I can just imagine some marketing executive saying, “We can’t tell customers that our sugar-free muffins contain over 200 calories. Who would want to buy a sugar-free product that can put on weight? But if we define the serving size as 4/5 of a muffin, we can honestly claim that a serving has only 170 calories. And if that doesn’t work we can redefine the serving size as half a muffin, bringing the calorie count down to barely over 100. We won’t have to change the product at all – only the label.”
So, accepting that a serving is 4/5 of a muffin, how do you divide a muffin into two pieces with one piece exactly four times the size of the other? And what do you do with the smaller piece, the one that is only 1/5 the size of a whole muffin? Do you accumulate fifths until you have four, which would qualify as a serving? What do you do with the half serving, the fifths left over from the last two muffins? Hold on to them until you buy another package? Save them for a very small child?
Isn’t it wonderful how we consumers are protected from misrepresentation by the government’s requirement that Nutrition Facts be supplied with each product?
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About the author:
Allen Appel was born in 1937. He received his BA in English from Brooklyn College in 1959, and his subsequent career involved developing computer applications. He moved to an active adult community in 2003, where he writes for the community newspaper.
How long will you let the silence pierce my ears…
Till they bleed?
Should I hold my breath,
Or will I faint?
If I wait,
Will I wait forever?
… I think I heard my heart drop.
Will you pick that up?
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About the author:
Ivana Vranjes Field is currently a photographer in the tri-state area. She lives in Mercer County and graduated from TCNJ. She is a self-taught photographer and was recently inspired to start up writing poetry again after taking many years off. Working on film sets was her inspiration behind taking up photography. Seeing the shots being set up and creating the mood within a scene, was very beautiful to watch and very intricate in its own sense, which pushed her towards purchasing a camera and giving it a go. She has earned some IMDB credits for previous independent film work, and currently she enjoys reading books, studying the human mind and the human experience, art, more reading, and a lot of traveling.
My mother grew up on Coney Island. Her family rented the third floor of a rickety wooden building three blocks from the sea. From the greasy windows of the apartment you could see the bungalow next door, where one of the broken panes was replaced with a dirty rag.
It was hot on the third floor—a fan my mother’s aunt had loaned them chugged away, barely blowing the mail, including the overdue rent bill. Every evening, amid the smell of burnt onions, my mother could hear the Schramms below, screaming at each other, throwing pots and pans. The house would rumble as if it were under the Cyclone.
Sometimes, my mother saw a shadowy figure pass in the window of the bungalow next door. No one knew who lived there. Nobody ever came out to talk to neighbors, to buy groceries, even to throw out garbage. My mother and her sister named the shadowy figure Ray.
Whenever the weather permitted, my mother escaped the apartment to the magical world surrounding her: the beach, the Parachute Jump, the Cyclone, the Steeplechase. She didn’t have money for the rides, but she learned to scour the ground for fallen change that would buy her the occasional thrill.
Her parents—my grandparents—ran a candy store. My mother and her sister were not allowed to eat the candy, not because my grandparents were concerned about their teeth rotting, but because they needed every penny to make ends meet. The Schramms were bean counters, making sure their inventory brought maximum profit. “Shoo,” they said whenever children wandered in without parents. With the ever-present temptation, my mother and her sister played in the streets, ragamuffin girls in hand-me-down dresses.
There was a boy who played with them whose name sounded like Morris. The boys playing stickball called him Missy. Morris often stayed home from school, reading and drawing.
My mother and her sister didn’t have books. Sometimes they’d go to the beach with Morris and draw in the sand. Anita would draw stick figures of girls in nice clothes. My mother would draw children with round cheeks who were allowed to eat candy. Morris would draw sea creatures, monsters and mermaids. Soon Anita, who was a few years older, grew tired of these games and ran off to find older friends, or even help my grandparents in the store. My mother would stay and listen to Morris’s stories about the figures he drew. She would sit at the sandy shore, staring out at the sea, as Morris talked about an ugly old witch who lived on an island they could just barely make out on the horizon. The old lady’s hair was made of seaweed and she had a spiky wand she’d use to beat children. If the children were especially naughty, she would turn them into pigs.
“She was once beautiful,” Morris told my mother. “And in love with a handsome prince. But then the prince drank a potion that gave him wanderlust, and he sailed away to another land. The beautiful young girl also took a sip of the potion, hoping it would transport her to her hero. But the potion reacts differently for different people, and it made her grow warts and develop evil powers.”
My mother wondered whether the Schramms had imbibed a potion that made them so mean and ugly. Sometimes, when they threw pots at each other, she secretly wished they’d maim one another. Then her parents would become the bosses of the candy store. She promised Morris that if that ever happened, she’d share the candy with him.
There was also the story he told my mother about a mermaid named Pearl. “Although Pearl was a magnificent swimmer, she aspired to be a singer, but alas the sounds she made were not quite as beautiful as what she heard in her head. This made Pearl sad. The sea witch loved to find others who were even less happy than she. She went into her laboratory and mixed up a potion, attaching a label that read: ‘Take one tablespoon a day for voice enhancement.’ Then, with a stroke of her wand, she dropped the bottle in the sea so that it floated just above Pearl’s head.
“What’s this? thought Pearl, grabbing the bottle and reading the label. When she saw what it was purported to do, she screwed off the cap, sniffed to make sure it wasn’t poison—in order to guarantee success, the witch had made it smell like chocolate—and took a sip.”
Meanwhile, the ship on which the witch’s handsome prince sailed was on a mission in Pearl’s part of the sea. When he spotted Pearl sunning herself on a rock, her hair and fin flowing beguilingly, he became smitten. He ordered his crew to sail closer.
The sea witch was watching on her crystal ball. She knew this was her opportunity. The potion Pearl had just sipped would switch the soul of the witch into Pearl’s shimmering body, leaving Pearl behind as the witch of the sea.
“But, once again, the potion didn’t work as the sea witch intended,” said Morris. “Her soul indeed went into Pearl’s body, but at that moment a huge wave came and swept Pearl off to sea. The prince was mystified. He ordered his crew to find her. They searched for days and days. All they found was the seaweed snarl that had been the witch’s hair.”
“What ever happened to Pearl’s soul?” asked my mother.
Morris shook his head. “Never found.”
When Morris wasn’t telling stories about sea witches, he taught my mother to blow bubbles and swim like a mermaid.
One rainy afternoon, stuck indoors, my mother heard the Schramms’ door slam below. She heard screaming, and the usual throwing of pots and pans. She couldn’t make out the words. When my grandparents weren’t working in the Schramms’ candy store, they’d tell my mother and her sister to ignore the fights. My grandfather would whistle and my grandmother would sing. One day they brought home a radio. The radio remained on whenever they were home, helping tune out the Schramms.
But even the radio could not block this argument. It sounded like Mr. Schramm was killing Mrs. Schramm. Although it had been what she wished for, my mother didn’t want Mr. Schramm to survive his wife. She didn’t like the way Mr. Schramm looked at her. He frequently talked about how he hated children. He’d let my grandparents rent the apartment on the condition that the children were kept out of his way. But lately Mr. Schramm was looking at my mother in a creepy way.
They had to share a toilet with the Schramms on the second floor. It was actually a small closet with a filthy toilet, and a tank hanging on the wall. My mother would hold her nose. She and her sister would drink as little as possible so they didn’t have to use the toilet.
In the evenings, after my grandparents cleaned up from a dinner of fried fish and mashed up hardboiled eggs with potatoes, my grandfather would go downstairs to play pinochle with Mr. Schramm and two other men. They drank something that lingered on their breath in a way that made my mother feel like she had to throw up. Mrs. Schramm must have felt that way too, because she’d leave their apartment when the pinochle players came.
Mrs. Schramm sat at my mother’s kitchen table, talking to my grandmother. My grandmother served her tea in a jelly jar. She would have preferred to have the evenings to herself, to catch up on housework, to darn socks or cross-stitch a tablecloth, but felt beholden to Mrs. Schramm.
On the afternoon when it sounded like Mr. Schramm had murdered his wife, my mother wondered whether she should check in on Mrs. Schramm. In the end she decided she’d let someone else find the body, but she did have to use the bathroom. Quietly, on tiptoes, she made her way to the second-floor water closet. The door was slightly ajar, and Mr. Schramm was inside. My mother tried to slip away before he saw her, but it was too late. “Hello little girl,” he said, turning around, not even bothering to zip up his pants. There was a sneer on his face as he exposed himself.
She ran back up to the third floor and closed the bolt on the door. It wasn’t a very strong bolt—Mr. Schramm could easily break in if he wanted to. My mother stayed pushed up against the door for a long time, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. She only let go so that she could find a tin can to pee in and then wash it down the kitchen sink.
When my grandparents came home, she told them that Mr. Schramm had killed Mrs. Schramm. They looked at one another and then at my mother. They didn’t say anything. Soon Mrs. Schramm was at their door.
After that, Mr. Schramm would come home in the afternoon and knock at my mother’s door. She would remain quiet, under the covers, with the door bolted. “I know you’re in there,” Mr. Schramm would say. My mother told her parents, and they would just look at each other. My mother was terrified of using the bathroom.
My mother was 12 years old when she developed tonsillitis and had to stay home in bed with a fever. My grandmother would take periodic breaks from the store to check on my mother. When Mr. Schramm offered to check on her, my grandparents were powerless to stop him. He let himself in with the master key as my mother slept off her fever. When she awoke, he was sitting beside her on the bed, his hand on her breast. She was too terrified to scream, too weak to run. His hand made her pain even worse. At that moment, she wished she were dead.
The next day, though barely better, she forced herself to get out of bed and go back to school. She didn’t tell her parents what happened. She knew they would just look at her and stare down at the floor. “Beholden” was the word they always used.
She was afraid to tell Morris or Anita about Mr. Schramm. Would they believe her? Maybe they would think she was sick for thinking up such things. Or maybe they would think she had done something to provoke it.
One day, Morris came to tell her he was moving away to Long Island, a real island.
“You drank the magic potion,” she said. She wished for some, too.
Feeling as she imagined the sea witch had felt—before she turned into the sea witch—my mother went for a swim in the sea. Looking back at the shore, so far in the distance, she felt free. Free from the Schramms, from her beholden parents, even free from the loss of her best friend. Swimming was like flying, she thought. She could swim forever. She could swim to another continent and never grow tired. Her body was meant for swimming. Suddenly her legs melded together, her feet turned into a fin, and her body was covered with shimmering blue-green scales. Basking in the sun and surf, she formed bubbles on the curl of her tongue and blew.
My mother loved being a mermaid, and as long as the weather was warm, she would swim out to sea for hours. She had to swim beyond where anyone could see her, in order for her fins to form. As long as she was a mermaid, she didn’t have to be beholden.
One afternoon, during lunch, the Schramms started in. There was yelling and screaming in Yiddish, words my mother had been taught never to use. She turned up the radio—she loved listening to The Shadow and The Inner Sanctum, but she could barely hear it over the cacophony of the Schramms. She made it louder. Suddenly the shadowy figure in the bungalow next door opened the rag-patched window. Ray revealed himself, a bald man, shirtless, with a hairy belly. “Shaddup in there!”
Terrified, my mother ran out without even turning off the radio. She didn’t have time to grab a bathing suit. She ran the three blocks to the beach, took off her shoes in the sand, and waded out in her skirt and blouse. She swam the distance she needed and as her fin formed, she felt soothed. She thought long and hard about what it would be like to stay out at sea, a mermaid forever. There was no reason to go back.
This time she began to feel cramps. She’d been warned not to swim after eating, but she ignored the pain, focusing instead on how good it felt to be wild and free.
She got caught up in the tide, which was dragging her out, but didn’t fear drowning because mermaids don’t drown. Her clothes were weighing her down. She thought she was alone, and then a man appeared, carrying her back to shore. Back on land, her fins and her tail disappeared. She was a girl again.
“You could have drowned,” the man said. He was kind. My mother blinked to make sure she was seeing right. The man was Ray.
My mother eventually wandered far from Coney Island, spending her adult years in California where she swam every day, albeit in a lake. And perhaps because she feared turning into Mrs. Schramm, she never fought with my father, though so many times I wished she would have stood up, but she always felt beholden to him for rescuing her from her childhood.
When I was 5, my mother took me to the library. There on the shelf were books written and illustrated by Morris. I grew up reading tales of sea monsters, mermaids and sea witches. But the story of my mother’s near drowning, and being saved by that strange and reclusive man, was only recounted in the final days of her life. In all the years of watching her swim back and forth across the lake, we had no idea. In finally telling it, it was her way of letting us know she was ready.
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About the author:
Ilene Dube grew up in Brooklyn and spent much of her childhood in Coney Island, hearing about its glory days from her parents while witnessing its demise and then resurgence. She recently illustrated a children’s book, Smell Coney Island. Her short stories, poetry and personal essays have appeared in Atticus Review, Corvus Review, HerStory, Huffington Post, Kelsey Review, Foliate Oak, The Grief Diaries, The Oddville Press, Penny Shorts, Unlikely Stories and U.S. 1 Summer Fiction.
Doo Wop 1961
At fifteen years old, running out the front door and cursing my father
again, promising never to come back, I wondered if I was as bad
as he said I was. I climbed the steep hill and rocks below
Palisades Amusement Park, crawled under the bandstand
then ran up the aisle and blended into the crowd of fans to watch
my favorite Doo Wop groups up on stage – “The Flamingos”
“The Five Satins” “ The Turbans” “The Cadillacs”-
beaming young black men, their conked hair slick with brilliantine
trying hard to please their adoring young fans. The singers were
resplendent in purple and white, hot pink, canary yellow and glittering
periwinkle tuxedoes, hips grooving as they did a syncopated stroll,
their gospel honed falsettos and deep basso harmonies like salvation
lifting me out of my gloom, showing me how I’d like to feel, look
and sound. And in my mind I saw myself gliding across a stage
microphone in hand, my blonde pompadour polished back
with pomade, a pronounced roll to my gait, my father almost forgotten
as the audience clapped and cheered me doing the Hand Jive and the Madison
and hitting the soaring high and low notes, the Doo Wop she Doo be Doo be Doo Wops.
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About the author:
Steve Smith is a Poet/Artist from Pennington N.J. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, he is retired Theatrical Scenery Painter.
At seven, I had a creative mind without a firm grasp of consequences and there was a monster in our basement.
The monster’s name was Maytag. His shiny white cubed body was elevated on four legs tapering down to tiny wheeled feet. I liked watching the colors of clothes swirl in the sudsy water of his belly. They would dance and have fun until life was squeezed out of them by the monster’s toothless and terrible turning wringers.
My mother fished out each sacrificial garment and fed it into the perpetually hungry rolling jaws. The clothes dove into the rinse water tub to be swished by hand. Then it was through the wringer in reverse and into the wicker basket balanced on her hip. She sighed at the occasional cracking sound that signified the need to replace another broken button.
I played with my dolls but was really watching each step of the familiar cleaning process. Mother smiled as I poured pretend tea and awaited my chance to be a hero. I knew she wanted to ask me to come outside but didn’t because I was having a nice picnic with my dolls.
Mom carried the basket of stiff, damp, lifeless laundry up the stairs to the pulley clothesline that ran from the back porch to the big tree on the other side of the driveway.
I had been told not to touch the washing machine, but not today. Today I was almost invisible. Mom was worried about my sister. Carol had the measles and was wearing a harness that kept her in bed. If she stayed in the darkened room until she got better, she wouldn’t ruin her eyes. Mom and I waited until Carol was asleep to do the laundry.
Mother was outside. Carol, my shadow, was asleep. I was alone. I reveled in the freedom to do what I wanted. I removed my doll’s dress, picked up some washcloths that I’d used as picnic blankets, and marched to the monster’s lair. He slept, but I knew the location of the lever that would bring him to life. I used both hands to move the bar and shivered with happiness as the monster awoke. I heard the mumble, the rumble, the whir as the monster taunted me with words I couldn’t quite understand but knew to be a challenge.
I accepted.
Waving a green washcloth, I moved closer and closer, lightly touching the turning cylinders with the fabric until they bit. The fiend was strong, but I was stronger. I snatched the green square from the jaws of death. I felt my heart dance. I tried again with a white washcloth. Victory, the hero wins. I raised my arms above my head and kicked imaginary balloons into the air.
I picked up my doll’s dress, a pretty pink one with tiny white flowers, two snaps in the back, and lace around the hem. The dress fit on my hand like a puppet, I waved my arm back and forth in tantalizing dance movements. Closer and closer I inched. I was teasing. I was twirling. I was testing. I was caught!
My fingers hurt. I screamed. My wrist. I’m being squished. I screamed louder. My elbow. The rollers spun round and round.
“It hurts, it’s hurting me. Mom, mom, mom!”
Can’t she hear me? Why isn’t she coming?
Mother heard and rushed to my sister’s bedside. Carol was still asleep. My screams reached a crescendo punctuated by quick hollow thuds of mother’s feet on the cellar steps.
She shrieked when she saw what I had done. She unplugged the menace.
“Oh no, oh no. What have you done? What have you done?” she said.
My screams became sobs. Mom pulled the release lever on the wringer, cradled my arm, and surveyed the damage. It wasn’t pretty.
My elbow bone stopped the wringer. A friction burn from the roller, that continued to turn in place, created a patch of angry red mush on the side of my arm.
Still screaming, mother improvised. She tied my arm to a Sear’s catalog using diapers. This seemed to be the only idea she had.
When she completed this task, she just held my arm and made loud wounded cat noises.
She isn’t helping me. She needs to help me and she isn’t. I will never be like this.
I stopped crying and put a finger on a tear on my mother’s cheek.
“Mom, it’s okay. Let’s call dad,” I said.
She did.
Although I was only seven, I climbed into the driver’s seat of my life and made a decision that formed my character. I resolved to be calm.
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About the author:
Judith Salcewicz has lived in Mercer County for over forty years and is a retired teacher. She is on the Board of Trustees for Lawrence Historical Society and is a member of the Lawrence Writer’s Group. Her work has appeared in The Kelsey Review, Horse Network, and Women’s World Magazine.
You could always count us on one hand.
As usual I dressed with care,
saved two seats per high command,
my coat and pocketbook in their chairs.
The back room was small,
piped in music set-up for exactly forty people—
four rows of black linens, tables sat cheek by jowl.
Those used to privilege complained steadily, bitterly.
Tinny taps on water glasses to quiet the din.
Perfumes, colognes cloyed the night
as the lecturer went on too long, again.
When he finally came to an end,
I craned my neck, but no I hadn’t missed anybody—
only us three blacks in the room of forty.
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About the author:
Edith McGowan’s work has been published in U.S. 1 Newspaper Summer Fiction Issue three times and U.S. 1 Worksheets 2018. She attends several poetry workshops. Edith is retired and lives in Princeton Junction, NJ
“You have to clean the toilet today, Marion.”
“Why me, I’m the worst at it and I hate it the most.”
“Tough cookies, Marion. It’s your turn. You can’t get out of it this time.”
At P.S. 36, the Bronx, as in every other junior high school in all the boroughs of New York City, girls in 8th grade had to take a class called Apartment. In the 1950’s we had to participate in this as part of a three segment series that included cooking and sewing. The boys had shop all year.
The wicked old maid marm who taught the class had a wiry hair coming out of the mole on her chin. She was always dressed in black and was anorexically thin. This woman promised to prepare us for marriage.
This was accomplished by teaching us all the intricacies of cleaning an apartment. It included lessons on the importance of cleanliness and the joys of neatness. I don’t know how this teacher was able to dirty the apartment for each class meeting, but it was always a filthy mess, the bathroom especially grimy.
Of the three segments, I liked cooking class best. I especially loved putting huge globs of mayonnaise in the tuna fish, egg salad and green jello molds. None of which I ever had at home. The aroma of delicious chocolate chip cookies was followed by stuffing as many as we could into our mouths before the bell rang.
“Those are my cookies, I know the ones I baked.”
“Yeah, yours all have weird shapes.”
“Now girls, they all taste delicious.”
I loved the little mandarin oranges peeking out of cool whip ambrosia. We hated cleaning up there too, but we giggled hysterically as we all pitched in. Not so when it came to Apartment.
The struggle to master the treadle sewing machine was almost as bad. Thread kept getting stuck and stitching was always crooked. It was impossible to get the rhythm of your feet on the treadle and the push pull of the wheel all at the same time. We had to make jumpers in preparation for making our own graduation dresses. Mine was a, not too ugly, green waffle patterned cotton which hung crookedly, with lumpy pockets and twisted bodice. My girlfriends and I decided to wear our jumpers all on the same day and suffered the raucous laughter of the boys.
When it came to the graduation dress I was at a complete loss. Mom bought me a few yards of beautiful white piquet material and helped cut out the pattern. The actual sewing was another thing entirely. I ended up with a torn, gathered up mess. Fortunately, when I came home crying, my mother took me and the dress upstairs to 5B to Mrs. Becker, the seamstress. At times like this I really appreciated living in our apartment in Parkchester. Our building held the wonders and talents of a hundred people.
“Oh boy, this is quite a challenge. But don’t worry, I can fix it.”
She tore the dress apart, pinned me up with what was left of the soft white cloth. In two days she made me a lovely, capped sleeved graduation dress. I proudly wore it on graduation day with several crinolines and felt gorgeous.
Back to the Apartment.
In the beginning I had no idea what “Apartment” was. It was in the basement of the building down a dark sinister hallway. It had an old dingy door which creaked when it opened. We were always frightened to enter, tiptoeing in the dim light. You were assigned to “Apartment” with nine other girls in order to learn how to clean house, not to mention ironing and proper dress.
On the first day we were given a lecture by our old, stiff necked teacher about how important it was, when dressing, to put your skirt on first and then your freshly ironed blouse, which had been on a hanger. After the skirt was on you could undo it and tuck in the blouse very carefully. We were all choking and gagging to squelch our laughter. A demerit here could mean detention.
I am dying to know if the curriculum was exactly the same in as far away as Brooklyn.
Each time we met in “Apartment” we had to decide among the group who would team up for kitchen, bedrooms (hospital corners), living room, closets and bathroom. Who would Hoover and who would dust. Somehow there were always old clothes in the closets and dirty dishes in the sink. Did someone actually live here?
You never wanted to get the bathroom with its rusty faucets and rank odor. In the corner stood a plunger to be used every time, for the stuffed toilet, bathtub and sink. Why were there always wads of hair stuck in the drains? Who actually used this bathroom? An old gray mop was used with Ajax cleanser for the floor.
Lucky for me I had one good chubby little friend who I could bribe to do my bathroom duty.
“Sandy, if you do it today, I will take you to the candy store after school.”
“I don’t know Marion, you only got me an egg cream, a pretzel and three marshmallow twists last time.”
“How about I add to that four chocolate jelly rings and a coffee ice cream cone.” I calculated it would all come to fifteen cents. So worth it.
“Ok, Marion, but don’t ask me ever again, or else I’ll tell on you.”
We have come a long way, baby! Can you imagine our daughters ever actually taking a course in house cleaning? It is, of course, obvious that they haven’t.
It makes me feel very old to think that we were segregated and subjugated in that way without complaining. We did have an inkling that this was ridiculous, causing lots of joking and laughter.
We wondered too, what went on in the awesome, brightly lit wood shop where the boys made birdhouses and bookshelves, and sometimes came away with bloodied fingers. They would show their wooden objects and war wounds with pride. We never even thought to even ask if we could try it.
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About the author:
Marion Pollack is a memoir and poetry writer. She is a therapist at Aroga Behavioral Health. Marion lives in Lawrenceville, NJ with her husband Bob. She has two grown children and six grandchildren.
Look how she’s oppressed and abused
Stuck behind walls how could she refuse
Smothered in the heat, not at all amused
The poor thing silent and ugly
Left without a voice after being treated so roughly
Left without a choice
A weak terrorist acting toughly
A stain in the crowd, a menace to society
Look how she smiles horridly
What plot is she scheming as she passes so calmly
It seems as though Halloween must’ve come a little early
As the children scream monster and point horrifyingly
Adults burst with laughter or anger as they glare accusingly
Demonized by the very journalists who were supposed to show sympathy
Reveal the truth and leave aside all mockery
But they used freedom of expression to spew hatred and agony
When it was only supposed to be used for spreading compassion in humanity
She’s right there but they can’t see
Not because of the veil she wears but because of the ignorance they adopted blindly
Refusing to question, or hear her side of the story
Dumbfounded when she speaks, that’s not her voice in reality!
She is supposed to be silent so her voice is just imaginary
Warned about her kind in the news so she is more than what she seems apparently
It’s only a lie, look how she tries to prove otherwise so cunningly
It’s the 21st-century, must she be so backward?
Publishing fake stories claiming to free the caged bird
Only harming humanity in the name of moving forward
Too headstrong to check for facts
Too brave of a coward
It’s not your fault, forgive me, I’m sorry
Apologies for not being there to explain
When the media bashed my cause with disdain
I forgive them for the animosity they could not contain
And from the fear-mongering from which they could not refrain
I’m sorry you had to hear everything that was wrong
And took it to heart as you sweared at me but for God, I stayed strong
I made excuses for you because it’s not your fault
I’m sorry you were fed with lies that surrounded you like a vault
You couldn’t escape what you were surrounded by,
As your glares dug deep, though I know you didn’t try
Like innocent lambs, you conformed to the news of the wolves and silently you stood
As she was stabbed to death and her scarf portrayed red riding hood
In a world screaming for justice how sad was her fate
But the continuous ignorance is an even sadder state
The very platforms that were supposed to raise awareness against hate crimes made them go viral
Now many hide their faith only for survival
Like Aasiyah (Upon her be peace), the true believing wife of Pharaoh
Who rescued baby Moses (Peace be upon him)
Her life was an example
As she stood up for the truth and refused to be trampled
I hold no grudges nor do I blame
I speak for every woman who chose modesty as her name
Who chose to let her intellect speak before her body
Who decided to break free from the immoral shackles of society
And live a life that was inspiring and Godly
Let go of the false notions I plead
In a dark world, only the enlightened one will succeed
Ignorance is truly the greatest cancer
Just walk up to her and ask her
So respectfully she will give you an answer
That will free your tortured heart from its anger
And perhaps save another life in danger
Another beautiful stranger
I will stand with you to condemn, mourn, and share the pain
I refuse to apologize for every demon who uses my name
Who uses Islam to shame and defame
A plague on the earth about whom our Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) warned and prophesied
Informing that he who stands against them would have surely done a great deed
Your concern is mine so please take heed
And every time evil things on the news you read
Just remember, that we share the same needs
Believe me or not I wear this veil independently
To preserve my dignity
For my God loves a modest lady
Those who follow in the footsteps of Mary (Upon her be peace)
The mother of Jesus (Peace be upon him),
They tried to tear her to pieces
Attacking her chastity
While she was the pinnacle of piety
Khadeejah (May God be pleased with her), the wife of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), the epitome of faith and loyalty,
A lady of nobility
Beautiful and brave she sacrificed everything she had for God willingly
Fatima (May God be pleased with her) daughter of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) who gave precedence to others over her own life
She remained patient and grateful through every strife
The perfect daughter the perfect wife
She donated her only bread for the next beggar at the door
And she continued to give every time she received more
Women so beautiful and selfless
A reminder for those so selfish
Women remembered for their beauty but whose actions made the world prouder
So applaud them and the through your actions applaud louder
Now Forgive me if I chose role models who were not plastic
Over airbrushed models with lifestyles so drastic
Whose actions and features weren’t edited and painted
Pioneers of women’s rights
Pushed behind the unrealistic models that are tainted
And teen prodigies who forced girls to conform to body images that out of starvation they fainted
Accept me for who I am and not for what you’ve seen on the news
So what if it hits one billion views!
The millions watching a movie doesn’t make it real
Hear my story from me, for I endure and I feel
I will never be defined by the expectations of society
For I will always give the Lord priority
Empowered to spread light even in the bleakest of times
He granted me freedom to live as I choose in a world that’s not even mine!
I hope that my message will not go in vain
And as I continue to speak up for all those in pain
I pray my determination will never wane
Let the world hear
My voice so loud and clear
That I am free
This is me
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
About the author:
Ayesha Sultana wrote her poem as an autobiographical spoken word piece based on her own real-life experiences growing up as a veiled Muslim woman in the United States. The poem is meant to raise awareness about the false images and misconstrued ideas that surround Muslim women and their roles in Islam. This is the full-length version of the poem, and a condensed version of the poem was published in the print edition of Kelsey Review 37.
Not one among the thousands standing in the rain that day looked surprised to find the Nevadan desert sodden and gray. After all, this was Area 51 and these were conspiracy theorists. The unexpected was—as a matter of course—expected.
They were here in response to a classified ad:
Tag Sale: Groom Lake Test Facility. Fri 9am-2pm.
Parts electronic and otherwise. Parking $5. No early birds.
Of course, they recognized Groom Lake as Area 51, that infamous repository of government secrets. And, of course, they arrived early. Days early. They camped along the roadways in RVs rigged with satellite scramblers and filled the registers of Las Vegas-area motels with pseudonyms and pseudo-addresses. They had parsed the ad for hidden messages, argued over possible anagrams, but only agreed on two points:
“Weather machine!” insisted the wild-eyed little man standing too close to Arthur in the crowd outside the gate. “Global warming? Propaganda! The Establishment’s stupidest cover-up yet.”
Arthur hadn’t expected his casual remark about the rain to trigger a spit-spattering tirade about top-secret weapons responsible for rising sea levels and violent weather. But then he looked around and realized he might be the only attendee not plotting to expose a bureaucratic lie or substantiate a pet theory. His only objective was to make it through his first adventure without Marcy.
Before retirement, she had always set their itineraries—and set them at full throttle. She rented the Ferrari to race along the Amalfi Coast; he sat in the passenger seat with a grin plastered to his face. That’s how he’d pictured their retirement: an exhilarating ride with Marcy at the wheel.
But something changed last October when she retired. No plans materialized to hike the Himalayas or sail the Seychelles. Marcy spent her days watching television in the living room of their North Las Vegas home. Her only regular outing was a nail salon two blocks away.
“Isn’t this nice,” she would murmur when Arthur joined her on the sofa. She would snuggle closer and sometimes fall asleep on his shoulder. She was always tired. (Heart trouble? Depression? Cancer?) He would put an arm around her and hope he radiated serenity, not anxiety. Or restless discontent. Or shame about his restless discontent.
Arthur checked his watch. 8:32AM. The wild-eyed little man—who reminded Arthur of his terrier Bailey launching himself against the front window at the mail carrier—stepped closer and thrashed his arms. “Tornados! Hurricanes! Floods! Whatever it takes to scare the populace into submission!”
The man’s breath smelled of celery. Arthur stepped back. He tried to appear interested, but the man’s intensity embarrassed him. Or perhaps he was embarrassed by his own inability to match the crowd’s fervor. Despite the dreary weather, the gate area outside Area 51 was festive. One bushy-bearded group sat in camp chairs under a tarp swapping tips for living off the grid. A couple in matching camouflage jumpsuits marched past sharing a packet of freeze-dried venison. A fistful of young men in combat boots argued passionately about the role of Freemasons in the New World Order. Ladies with lime-green beehive wigs hustled through the crowd hawking “J-Rod for President” t-shirts depicting an egg-headed alien with beady black eyes.
Arthur imagined whispering to Marcy, “Compared to these characters, we’re the aliens.”
She would have laughed.
8:40AM. The weather man’s diatribe ground to a halt. He glared at Arthur with fierce disgust and then huffed off, likely in search of a more excitable audience.
Arthur was left alone with his damp shoes. Uncomfortable, but he was still glad to be there. He hadn’t made up his mind until early that morning after a long night of indecision. A government tag sale a few hours from home, he finally concluded, was tame enough to attempt on his own yet adventurous enough to appease his restlessness. And not exotic enough to seem disloyal to Marcy.
While following Bailey’s waddling backside on a shortened version of their morning walk, he had dithered over what to tell Marcy, if anything. Maybe he should say outright how much he missed their adventures. But then she might accompany him out of a sense of obligation. Maybe it would be better to first show her the newspaper ad and gauge her interest. Or would that make it more awkward if she wasn’t interested and he went anyway? An invitation might even prompt her to sit him down and reveal some terrible medical prognosis.
Better not to know.
To his relief, there was no need to decide. By the time he and Bailey reached home, Marcy was engrossed in a recording of yesterday’s Today Show, her most concerning preoccupation. (Early-stage memory loss? Dementia?) She acknowledged his return with a cheery wave of her lavender nails. He left a note and fled before he could change his mind.
Why lavender? She had never been the pastel type. Why nail polish at all? She had never been the manicure type. Or was he reading too much into this harmless new interest? Maybe she simply never had time before.
8:51AM. Arthur looked up. The carnival atmosphere outside Area 51 had vanished. People pressed toward the entrance, gazing into the gray distance to appear nonchalant while jockeying hard for position. They were no longer comrades; they were competitors.
Arthur joined the crowd at the chain-link fence and flimsy tollgate. Las Vegas had cheap apartment complexes with better security. But the two armed guards in their dust-colored fatigues were impressive. In their mirror sunglasses they looked impervious to the incongruities around them—the rain-soaked desert, the crowded wilderness, the inconsequential gate protecting immensely consequential (allegedly) state secrets.
9:00AM. If there was a signal, Arthur missed it. The crowd surged forward, and he found himself shuffling among the crush and jab of shoulders and elbows, backpacks and handbags.
The tag sale had begun.
Armed guards directed the swell of people through the jet-sized doors of a hangar set apart from the other buildings. At the sight of the laden tables, attendees dropped any remaining restraint and sprinted down the rows.
Eventually Arthur was swept into the back of the hangar, where the crowd was sparse enough that he could inspect the merchandise. The nearest table held scrap metal pieces. Unrecognizable but nothing to excite speculation. Other tables were piled with office electronics: obsolete computer monitors, printers, and rotary phones.
Arthur wasn’t the only one disappointed. The people around him stopped shoving. Individuals melded into groups, and groups huddled between tables, muttering.
Where are the disassembled U.F.O.s and reverse-engineered spacecraft?
The technologies that control people’s minds through digital television?
Proof that human-alien hybrids are running America?
An acne-pocked young man in a black trench coat approached a guard. “Hey, what’s all this stuff supposed to be? Where’s the good stuff?”
The guard’s face remained expressionless behind his sunglasses. “This’s it. Take it or leave it.”
The questioner turned to those watching. “Can you believe this junk?”
“Yeah,” a woman yelled out. “Why’d you let us in if you don’t have anything good?”
The crowd’s murmured agreement was broken by a gaunt, shaggy-haired man with a shrill voice. “Oh-ho, I know why. It’s a ploy! These are all parts of something huge—let’s call it X—that They’re trying to hide. So They busted X into a million pieces, disguised the pieces as boring stuff, and are selling ‘em off, one by one. Once X is scattered, no one can prove it ever existed!” He looked around in triumph. “They want to use us to hide X!”
The audience quickly found truth in this. “Aha!” “I knew it!”
The young man in the trench coat swept aside a box of battered staplers and stood on a table. “Wrong! I’ll tell you what’s really going on. They know we figured out what They’re up to, so They lured us here to get rid of us. I, for one, won’t be surprised when the floor drops out and we’re buried alive with all this junk in an underground nuclear missile shed!”
The audience gasped. Someone screamed.
“Ha!” countered shaggy-hair man. “Where’s your proof?”
“Proof!” scoffed trench-coat man. “As if anyone here needs proof.”
The crowd rumbled. The guards stiffened and began muttering into their walkie-talkies about “Code Jaundice” and “Situation 51.”
Arthur, whose general policy was to avoid conflict, moved toward the nearest door.
A guard stepped in front of him. “Exit’s that way,” he said gruffly, pointing his chin toward the open hangar door at the other end of the building.
“Bathroom,” Arthur replied, watching his own earnest reflection in the guard’s mirror lenses.
The guard paused, distracted by the warring factions forming among the tables. (“They’re using us!” “They’re after us!”) “Left, then down the stairs.”
The restroom was truly restful after the scene upstairs, but Arthur added its institution-white walls and fixtures to his mental list of Area 51’s disappointments. However, while washing up, he noticed a pair of mirror sunglasses nestled among the balled-up paper towels in the trashcan. One earpiece was bent, but they fit. The bathroom mirror showed a Man of Mystery. A Man of Adventure. A man of baldness and slight paunchiness but one capable of finding his own way out. Doing his own reconnaissance. Arthur straightened the sunglasses on his nose and soundlessly opened the door.
Outside the bathroom, guards shoved past, ordering use of the hangar’s sprinkler system to quell the growing upheaval. Arthur, hurrying in the other direction, wondered what the wild-eyed man with the weather machine theory would make of this method of crowd control.
The long underground corridor was silent except for the squelch of Arthur’s shoes and the chill buzz of the fluorescent lights. He shivered. Government ploys seemed more credible down here. What if the guards were alien hybrids hiding their glassy insect eyes behind mirror sunglasses? And what if the owner of the bent sunglasses wanted them back…and wasn’t far behind?
Arthur’s sense of adventure vaporized. A door up ahead was open a crack. He would turn himself in.
His knock pushed the door open further.
“Hello?” he whispered, only half hoping for a response.
The room was dimly lit, made dimmer by the sunglasses. He could make out a large space with a shiny linoleum floor. In the center stood a beige, closet-like structure with an open door.
Arthur circled it cautiously. “Hello?”
The structure was dark and empty. It looked ordinary enough, but—after watching hours of cable television movies with Marcy—Arthur firmly believed that one should never enter a dark, empty structure. Never. Which is why he was shocked to find himself bolting into it after hearing a faint noise in the hall: a drip or a blip or a footstep. Or nothing at all.
The latch clicked shut and an overhead light blinked on. Arthur yanked at the door handle, frantically, vainly. He was standing in a cramped space constructed of molded plastic, reminiscent of an airplane lavatory but without the emergency exit instructions or service call button. He was desperately skimming the long list of posted restrictions (“No smoking. Not for use by pregnant women. Do not operate while intoxicated.”) when the whirring began.
A female voice overhead, tinny and distant, startled him. “Hello? Is someone in there?”
Arthur froze.
A second voice, this one booming and male, joined the first. “What the heck! This’s my mission!”
“I— I’m sorry,” said Arthur. “It was an accident. I wandered in by mistake.”
The female was quick to soothe. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll talk you through it. You activated the next E-NOW mission.”
“My E-NOW mission!” The intercom crackled with the man’s outrage.
“E-NOW?” Arthur desperately needed to sit but didn’t dare so much as brush against the structure’s sides.
“Expansion of a Naturally-Occurring Wormhole, moron,” snapped the man. “You know. Time machine.”
“But don’t get too excited,” said the woman. Her chuckle soothed Arthur. It reminded him of Marcy’s imperturbability. “It’s been classified as experimental for decades. Probably always will be. Too many paradoxes. And potential abuses. Right, Mike?”
The man—Mike—made an odd croaking sound that triggered in Arthur’s mind scenes from a laughably bad cable movie he and Marcy had watched one dull afternoon. Frog People wearing colander-like helmets emerged from underground tunnels to take over the world. Their croak-laugh after tricking the hero into their trap sounded like Mike’s noise.
Arthur stared at the door latch. What if he threw his weight against it?
The female reached the end of a long explanation. “So that’s why we’re studying it. We only have clearance for small hops back in time. Then we check that nothing substantial changed.” She paused. “Are you okay?”
Arthur nodded numbly at a chin-level aperture that might be the camera. Hops? He tried not to picture the two speakers as having moist, green skin and wide, lipless mouths.
“Good. Actually, this is a great opportunity!” A moment’s static couldn’t disguise the brightness in her faraway voice. “I’m convinced the E-NOW could spawn a revolution in work-life balance. I work a ten-hour day in thirty minutes! And it’s connected to the HVAC, so commuting takes seconds. So once you try it and see how great it works, you could tell the other guards and then all of you would benefit.”
Guard? She thought he was a guard? “Wait! Stop! Please! I’m sorry but I’m not—”
“Let me guess,” Mike interrupted with nasal sarcasm. “You’re not familiar with the HVAC either? (…bunch of idiots guarding this place…).”
“It stands for High-Velocity Alternative Conveyance.” Her voice cut in quickly, perhaps to cover the male’s rudeness. “You know, the underground train system with entry points across the globe? It’s not well-maintained these days, but it’s still a great system. You wouldn’t believe the places I’ve visited between projects. And at a moment’s notice. Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, sunrise in Patagonia, sunset in Zimbabwe—”
There was a cheerful “ping!” like a toaster oven. The door unlatched.
“So now what?” Mike sounded sulky. “I suppose you’re going to let him do my mission?”
“He might as well. It’s straightforward enough.”
Not knowing what to expect, Arthur decided to throw in his lot with the maybe-Frog People, at least until escape was possible.
He had to lean forward to hear the female’s instructions over Mike’s mutterings. “Now, when you open the door, you’ll find yourself at a press conference that happened yesterday. Earlier today, one of our agents visited the scene and accidently knocked into a big vase.”
“Nudged,” said Mike. “’Knocked’ makes it sound like the vase fell over. It just got nudged a little. Barely moved.”
“Still, the motion was caught on camera. And our mandate is to not take any chances with recorded footage of the past, no matter how minor. All you need to do is stand behind the vase—the one to the left of the stage—and hold it steady without being seen on camera.”
“Just stand there?” asked Arthur. “Like a normal human? I mean, like I belong there? Will anyone—any… being—be able to see me?”
“People at the press conference will see you, but that’s fine as long as you’re inconspicuous and stay out of the cameras’ views. That’s all Mike was supposed to do on this mission.”
As Arthur adjusted the volume knob on Mike’s complaints, he grinned at his own silly fears. Mike couldn’t be a Frog Person, because a Frog Person wouldn’t be inconspicuous at a press conference. Besides, who ever heard of a frog named Mike?
He had to increase the volume when the female voice returned. “It should only take four minutes. When the speaker says ‘This is all a conspiracy,’ that’s your cue to return to the E-NOW through the door marked HVAC. I’ll take it from there. Okay? Ready?”
“I think so,” said Arthur cautiously. “I mean, it sounds easy enough.”
“Great! You’ll do fine. After your visit, we’ll review the footage to see that everything is back to normal, okay? Now. Take a deep breath. When you’re ready, open the door.”
“And don’t interfere with anything else, or you’ll cause real problems,” Mike added. “Just hold the stupid vase still.”
Arthur took a deep breath and opened the door.
The brightly lit room was crowded with people. Regular human people, mainly reporters with cameras and microphones. They were facing a stage, on which a large man with a graying crewcut and navy suit was saying, “I deny all allegations of embezzling government tag sale proceeds.”
The scene looked vaguely familiar. Had he seen this on last night’s news?
Arthur straightened his sunglasses—grateful for the disguise—and located the waist-high ceramic vase filled with dried flowers. Avoiding cameras, he circled the crowd and—with a growing appreciation for his own inconspicuousness—stationed himself behind the vase. He gripped its lip with one hand and wedged a hip against its cool ceramic side. The dried leaves and flowers scritched against his raincoat to the beat of his pounding heart.
As the speaker, addressed by reporters as “Senator,” expounded on his devotion to American principles, Arthur took in the bewildering situation from his hiding place. If this event took place yesterday, what happened to today? Was it possible to be both here and home watching this on tv? If the news cameras panned over the vase, could he—if he had been sitting on the sofa beside Marcy yesterday (today?)—have glimpsed the rain-coated elbow or damp shoe of a certain Man of Mystery? Or would that count as being seen on camera? He pulled in his elbow and foot.
Suddenly, Arthur was knocked from behind with such force that he barely managed to keep the vase still. His head was thrown forward, and the sunglasses flew off and landed among the dried flower stems.
Arthur stifled a gasp and reached through the stems to retrieve his glasses.
His fingers closed instead on an envelope. It was marked SENATOR in block letters. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“This is a conspiracy!” shouted the senator.
His cue! Arthur frantically groped for the sunglasses. From deep in the vase he heard a gentle clink as they settled on the bottom. Now what? He stuffed the envelope in his raincoat pocket and scuttled toward the door marked “HVAC.”
As soon as the latch clicked shut and the overhead light flicked on, Arthur regretted his spur-of-the-moment decision to take the envelope.
“Hello?” he said, panting into the camera. “I think I made some mistakes out there. Some changes.”
A moment’s static, then the female voice returned from its tinny distance. “Oh my word!”
“I’m sorry. My sunglasses fell deep in the vase. And I took something.”
“You aren’t a guard! I thought you were a guard!”
Arthur touched the bridge of his nose in surprise. The mistaken identity had slipped his mind. “The sunglasses. I meant to tell you. I found them. I came for the tag sale and then needed the bathroom and…” He stopped. It was hard to explain.
“I’m sorry, I—” They both spoke at the same time, then broke off, leaving a silence that seemed to stretch eons.
“Look,” she finally said. “If I had known, I never would have sent you out there.”
“No, no. It’s fine. It’s good. In fact, it’s exactly what I needed.” Arthur felt the truth of this statement as he spoke. He had felt alive out there. Energized. Adventurous. Worthy of mirrored sunglasses.
“Well, it’s very kind and accommodating of you to say that, considering how much you… Considering you aren’t the type to…”
The aura of the sunglasses slipped away. Arthur grimaced in self-deprecation. “I don’t exactly look like a Man of Mystery and Adventure, do I. But I’m great at being inconspicuous.”
She laughed uncomfortably. “Well, that was exactly what we needed. Someone inconspicuous. You did great, by the way. Really great.”
Arthur’s blush spread to his ears and throat. He felt himself straining toward the warmth of her voice.
The E-NOW’s whirrings were the only sound for a few moments. It struck him that Mike hadn’t chimed in.
“Where’s your co-worker?”
“Mike? Oh. Bathroom. Meanwhile, I’ll say what he won’t: thanks for undoing his error. You probably already figured out he’s the one who knocked the vase in the first place.”
Arthur held up the envelope. “Then is he also the one who hid this in the vase? I hope I didn’t cause more trouble by taking it.”
“No, you did the right thing. Quick thinking. Great instinct on your part. Leave it in the machine, and I’ll take a look.” She made a sound that might have been a sigh. “I did suspect. He’s so cagey and possessive about his trips. Guess I should revisit the scene and see what else he’s been up to.”
The whirring changed to a whine. Her distant voice brightened. “Well. Guess I’m going to be short an employee. Ever consider this line of work?”
Arthur smiled at her joke. Wait. Was she serious? “I can’t!” he sputtered.
She laughed. “Just kidding. You’ve probably had enough adventure to last the rest of your life.”
“Oh, no. It’s not that. I was craving adventure. I need it in my own quiet way. But my wife. She needs me till she gets back on her feet. Then I’ll—we’ll—be off. She’s the leader of our adventures. She’s amazing. Fearless. She’s…”
Arthur blushed again and pretended to be interested in a glowing knob near his elbow. Why was he telling this stranger about Marcy?
“Well. You’re just full of surprises,” she said after a moment. “If you like adventure that much, want me to send you home by E-NOW? I can get you there before you left this morning.”
Grateful for the subject change, Arthur thought back over his morning: the drive, the drizzle, the dissension. It seemed like a different world—a bland world—compared to this one he had stumbled into. “Yes. Please.”
“Great! And, hey, I’m really sorry about the misunderstanding. I guess I… Well. I shouldn’t make assumptions.”
This time when Arthur stepped through the E-NOW door, he found himself outside in cool morning air. Bailey glanced up from leisurely sniffing a nearby utility pole.
Arthur shut the door behind him. On its exterior was stenciled, Glitzy Nailz HVAC Access. He was behind a strip mall two blocks from home.
He looked at his watch. 6:05AM. He would leave for the tag sale in ten minutes. Except he had already been there. What does one do with a morning the second time around? Maybe nothing. He was exhausted.
When Arthur arrived home, Marcy was, once again, sitting on the sofa watching a recording of yesterday’s Today Show. This time, Arthur collapsed beside her.
She squeezed his hand. “So. Did you buy me anything?”
Had he been supposed to pick up something for Marcy while walking Bailey? It was confusing to keep track of time the second time around.
He looked down at her hand on his. Marcy’s nails were bright coral. Hadn’t they been lavender before?
“You got your nails re-done?” he asked.
“I was at Glitzy Nailz anyway.”
As Arthur thought this through, the newscaster said, “Let’s go live to a press conference where Senator Jay Rodman is addressing allegations of government tag sale fraud.”
“I need to watch this,” Marcy said. “But, hey, want to come along tomorrow?”
“To the nail salon?” Arthur asked cautiously.
“For starters. But you’ll need these.” From the pocket of her quilted housecoat, she pulled out a pair of mirror sunglasses with a bent earpiece.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
About the author:
Sharri Steen lives in Rocky Hill, New Jersey, and splits her work time between medical writing for local pharmaceutical companies and teaching high school biology at The Wilberforce School in Princeton Junction. Her publications include short stories in The First Line and U.S. Route 1.
Kelsey Review 