Note from the editrix: In this issue your eyes will graze the lush landscapes of four alternate worlds disguised, for protection, as prosetext on a page. Abandon belongings and enter. -Kali
Contents:
Moons in Small Spaces.........................Jim Meirose
The Way it Might Have Been..................Luie Crew
Psyche's Hymen....................................Jenean McBrearty
Too Good to be Bye..............................Ria Burman
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Moons in Small Spaces
Jim Meirose
Marjorie and her brother Taylor sat at a card table in the common space. Jigsaw puzzle pieces spread across the tabletop. Marjorie was talking.
—moons in small spaces. Gravity’s avenging angel. No new moon full, raw, glistening in the black backgrounded by stars—
As she spoke, Marjorie looked at him with her large blue eyes and ran her hands along the table top and knocked the majority of the puzzle pieces onto the floor.
—raise the roof and make small talk—enough small talk that it makes a difference in your relationship—
Marjorie! Why’d you do that?
She shook her head like she didn’t know as she went on talking.
—the raising the roof part is metaphorical of course but you’ve got to talk, to share with each other—
Now come on help me pick up all these pieces.
—even if its only saying what you had for breakfast or saying what time you got up—
Marjorie—come down here on the floor and help me pick up these puzzle pieces.
—it doesn’t have to be anything deep or meaningful just true and tangible, speak of tangible things don’t just talk nonsense antic and playful but try and be somewhat serious—
She got down and helped him pick all the pieces up back onto the table, talking all the while. After she sat back down, she grinned and put three pieces of the puzzle edge together quickly.
That’s right, said Taylor to his sister. That’s the way—
—let the things you talk about be important but not too important where it brings down the conversation no don’t do anything to bring down the conversation—
Oh no, said Taylor—of course not. All right, said Taylor. Now let’s put this puzzle together, Marjorie.
Still talking, she twirled her fingers around on the tabletop mixing up the pieces.
—talk about that great apple you had for lunch yesterday it was just right you don’t get an apple like that every day and the coffee is important too—
Taylor took her by the wrist.
No Marjorie—we need to put them together not mix them up. Look—look. Let’s keep on working on this edge.
—once I was at a party where someone threw their drink into the hosts face it’s a good thing it was a cold cocktail or highball it’s a good thing it wasn’t hot coffee just from the newly made pot—
Oh, yes, said Taylor. I’ll say.
Her eyes widened.
—hey I make coffee every morning yes I used to anyway I would put in the baskets and put in the coffee and pour in the water, and it would bubble and pop and hiss after I turned on the switch—
Taylor searched for edge pieces, nodding as she spoke.
—you know they’ve got new votive candles down at the church that are electronic you push a button and a bulb lights and stays lit for eight hours and then it goes out, they don’t burn down to nothing like real candles would do—
Really, said Taylor.
They pieced the edge together as she nodded and went on.
—I don’t know how much I like the idea of electric candles do they do the soul as good as the old fashioned kind, they certainly don’t smell like a bunch of candles burning like the smell you get in the old churches—
Oh no, they wouldn’t, said Taylor. I love that old smell don’t you?
—yes but anyway I picked up a book and went for a walk and I went into the cemetery and sat on a stone and read my book—
Taylor interrupted, saying Look I have the edge of one whole side of the puzzle done.
—and there was another person in the cemetery and he did that bad thing to me—
His eyebrows rose. She would talk about it again. He was afraid of this.
Listen Marjorie—we don’t have to go through all this again. Just relax.
—and I been reading that book ever since its just scrolling up past my eyes inside, you know when I close my eyes it’s like a movie screen and the words are scrolling by—
Work the puzzle Marjorie. Just calm down and work the puzzle.
—and I left the cemetery and went home and told my mother what the other person in the cemetery had done and she said oh, oh, oh you poor dear, you poor baby—
Marjorie’s eyes were clear and dry and she looked through the wall across the room.
—what did he look like I said he looked like a man and that was all I remembered all men look the same down there anyway so how could I say what he looked like—
Taylor sat riffling through the puzzle pieces what could he say to this what.
—but anyway she called the police and they said there was nothing they could do can you believe that I couldn’t believe it—
A tear came in the corner of Marjorie’s eye and Taylor touched her wrist.
Marjorie. Stay calm. I’m here. Your brother. Stop talking about all this—
—so I started reading this book up behind my eyes and it goes on and on and I wonder how does a writer end a book?
She paused there and looked at him quizzically.
It ends when it’s over, honey. That’s how a writer ends a book.
She spoke faster and more sharply.
But how do they decide where and how to end it and if it ends sad or happy or someplace in between like I am all the time—
He gently squeezed her wrist.
Well don’t worry you’re here with me now—let’s just do the puzzle okay?
She pulled her wrist free and made a fist.
—I remember the first time a man touched me down there it was because I wanted it and no it wasn’t in the cemetery it was in a car, a big long wide car and we were at the movies—
Marjorie—let’s do the puzzle. Come on.
—and the Abominable Doctor Phibes was playing it was a drive in movie do you remember drive in movies—
His eyebrows rose and he smiled.
Drive in movies—you bet I remember drive in movies. They were great—
She waved a hand as though to quiet him as she went on.
—we were in the back seat we didn’t watch the movie but I saw that part of him like I saw later in the cemetery—in the cemetery was when I realized that all men look alike in those parts—those parts are really their faces, you see—
He waved his hand before her unfocused eyes.
Marjorie, come on, snap out of it will you?
—and it was as though there is a whole world full of men with faces like that and the only thing that might be different is their color or their size, but they all do the same things with those awful faces—
Taylor held her wrist and it slid down to her hand and she squeezed his hand as she went on. The puzzle pieces lay forgotten between them.
—and sometimes it’s when you don’t want it like in the cemetery or when you want it like in the back seat, the cemetery is a fitting place because it is the final place of rest for all people and the old life ends and the new life starts.
She paused a moment and touched the puzzle with her finger. He said Marjorie, that’s it. Let’s knock out this puzzle—but she went on.
For me a whole new life started when I left the cemetery that day—
Taylor straightened and tried to speak brightly.
Well—it’s all over now honey you don’t have to go over it all like this.
She lifted a puzzle piece and waved it at him with her head tilted.
—and the only thing I regret is that I left my book there, on that stone, why I did that I don’t know because I was enjoying the book—
Oh? What was the name of the book. Maybe we could get you a new one—
—oh no no I want to forget that book—that book would make me think of that day you know.
She frowned at him.
Yes—I understand.
But I picked up where the book left off and I been writing my own book in my mind behind my eyes ever since did I cry you ask did I cry no I didn’t cry that was the strange thing—why are you asking me this?
No, I didn’t ask you that I mean I asked you that the first time you told me the story, but I’m not asking you now.
She narrowed her eyes and nodded her head.
I ought to really start writing all this down you know but here in this place they don’t let you have pens or pencils they are too sharp they’re afraid you might stab yourself or somebody else—
Oh that won’t happen that’s foolish you wouldn’t hurt a fly. Maybe I’ll—I’ll ask them if I can bring you a laptop you could write things down on that—
She looked through him pointing.
—like that man in the cemetery shouldn’t have had that little knife, he might have stabbed himself or somebody as a matter of fact no one should have knives like that to hold to other people’s throats—
No. Nobody should. Hey listen Marjorie—we’ve a puzzle to do.
—and make them do things—I didn’t want to get cut that’s why I did what he wanted, all I remember thinking is that knife and how I didn’t want to get cut—
Nobody wants to get cut, you’re right Marjorie—
—so yes I did what he wanted and then he left me and went away and I saw him going out of the cemetery and the sun was up over there—
Her eyes were growing wet. He held her hands. He bit his lip as she went on.
—and he was wreathed in golden light because it was just before twilight when the light is golden and I never went back to that cemetery again—
Taylor could tell she was seeing something up behind him he shuddered to think what it might be but he stayed with her.
—I wonder if my book is still there no it’s been too many years, someone probably found the book and took it with them and I wonder if they read the book and if they did did they get past the part where I got stopped—
Yes somebody probably picked up the book. I bet they did—
She looked him straight in the eye.
—the part about the moon and the stars and you know I haven’t been able to be out at night under the moon and stars, when we go out someplace in the car and I come back I run in the house—
I know it Marjorie. You run in the house. And that’s a shame—
—I don’t want to be under that sky where it’s still a little blue and the stars are just beginning to show you know it’s beautiful—
Yes it is beautiful.
She pulled her hands away from his and laid a palm on the puzzle pieces.
—you know, there are so many things in the world that are beautiful but not twilight no I remember his taking the knife away and putting it in his pocket with that thing still hanging out and dripping from the tip—
Taylor looked away. What to do? What to say?
—and I remember how he had yelled faster bitch faster and I didn’t know salty if I wanted to sour and sweet but he pushed it back in his pants all dripping like that—
She pushed the puzzle pieces around as she kept on.
—and he left and I keep seeing him seeing him leaving that cemetery and every man’s face I see now is one of those things, and every man’s hand that I see is holding a knife—
He began wondering if he should go get a nurse—but he held back.
—and every man’s face that I see is all twisted with pleasure being extracted from me all my pleasure was taken, all the good things—I just have this book rolling up behind my eyes and it keeps playing what had happened over and over and I wish I had my book the one I was reading I just know if I could start from where I left off and finish that book I’d be cured—
But you said before that book would just remind you—I can get you a copy of the book if you tell me the title, if you think it would help.
—oh I have forgotten the name I have forgotten the god-damned name—
Who wrote the book? Do you remember that?
—no the author is an enigma with one of those faces too that’s all I know he was a man with a man’s face just like all the other men and he wrote Moons in small spaces. Gravity’s avenging angel. No new moon full, raw, glistening in the black backgrounded by stars. Raise the roof and make small talk—that’s the last thing I remember from the book—
Well maybe I could look up some of those lines on the computer and find out the name of the book that way, said Taylor as he picked up a puzzle piece.
—no—no—behind my eyes it all rolls forward from there those were the last words I read before the man came to me in the cemetery but after I got away from the cemetery I started reading the backs of my eyelids—no books, who needs a book, why would anybody want a book—
What does the book rolling up behind your eyelids talk about?
—oh anybody can do it if they want to you know it’s a lot like eating corn on the cob its delicious like that how many things in life are more delicious than eating corn on the cob with one on one side yelling in your ear and one on the other side holding a knife to your throat—
Taylor had no idea what to say, or what she was saying. She just went on, waving her arms and smiling as she talked, dry-eyed now.
—and I want to slide downhill on a sleigh reading behind my eyes is like sliding downhill on a sleigh, to get away from the knife, the knife, so begin—Moons in small spaces—
Marjorie. What are you talking about—
The words from the book—Gravity’s avenging angel. No new moon full, raw, glistening in the black backgrounded by stars. Raise the roof and make small talk. That’s what it’s all about.
She stopped, leaned back in her chair, folded her arms before her, and began again, but now more softly, nodding slowly.
And you know, the truth is all men look that same in that face down there and all women look the same in that face down there and there are only two kinds of faces in the world separate and distinct and different but the same—
He leaned on the table looking her in the eye nodding and listening.
—and they are supposed to come together yes those faces are designed to come together to interlock and make one face with two bodies—and they are supposed to come—that is what my book tells me bottom line the real point the fact of the ages, the cruel truth—there is one kind of face in the world and that face is ugly.
Abruptly she sat up and turned her attention to the puzzle. As she sorted through the pieces she started up again. Taylor simply sat watching her he might as well not have even been there. She had said a lot of things before but all of this was new, and fascinating.
—it is the face of a man and woman combined into one as it was intended to be by God the creator, the way he made people, the way he made reproduction work—
Taylor nodded at the odd logic of all he had just heard, as she concentrated on the puzzle while she went on talking.
—but enough of this it’s gentler and cleaner to think good thoughts like all people are individuals, there are both good and bad, and there are far more good people than bad people but knives—what about knives?
I don’t know—what about them—
Look! I got a piece!
Well good for you Marjorie—
No. It’s like—are there enough knives in the world for there to be one for each person to use to innocently whittle away the wood into shapes of good things like Disney characters, dogs that never bite, cats that never claw, birds that never peck, snakes without venom?
She worked quickly and intently on the puzzle now, as Taylor answered.
Yes—I suppose there are enough knives in the world for everybody to have one—
She slapped a piece into place and spoke darkly.
Idyll in the woods with all the little creatures who never do bloody ghastly things but in real life that’s not true life is full of bloody ghastly things and the woods are a terrible place. Don’t you think so?
I don’t know, said Taylor, risking disagreeing with her. I rather like the woods.
She shook a puzzle piece at him.
Cemeteries, she said—I loved cemeteries when I was young because there were only people mourning or there were funeral services at the graveside with everyone acting quiet and respectful but that last day I went it was different—
He looked at her blankly as she went on.
—I have not been in a cemetery since, I did not attend my parents’ or grandparents’ funerals because I was afraid that I would see my book face down on the ground by that stone where I had left it—and though I don’t know the name of it I don’t want to know the name of it , I know I told you I do but I don’t now—
Changed your mind again, Marjorie? You’re really something—
—yes because if I knew the name I might buy it and then get to the words past where I had read to that day—
And what would be wrong with that, he said, as he fitted another two pieces into the edge of the puzzle. The entire edge was almost done, as he had been working on it steadily.
—I don’t really want to know what those words say maybe they will say what happened to me there maybe what happened to me there was because it was in the book, you know—
I really doubt that Marjorie.
Oh yes yes yes maybe it’s all written up in there and I remember the covers were green and the writing was black on white like you’d expect in a book but it was a magical book, I just know, because it tells the story of my life and the only words I know for sure from it are moons in small spaces. Gravity’s avenging angel. No new moon full, raw, glistening in the black backgrounded by stars. Raise the roof and make small talk.
She stopped abruptly and glared at him, just as he put the last piece of edge into place.
What’s wrong Marjorie why are you looking at me like that?
She waved her arms and talked faster.
Now what could all this possibly mean tell me what could all this possibly add up to what is going to happen to me tell me will I be in here reading off the back of my closed lids until I die and then my lids will be closed forever and maybe that’s what death is the book scrolls by forever and ever but you don’t ever know what it says—until you get to the end.
Then what, Marjorie?
And the end’s just that; nothing.
He placed his hand on her wrist. She sat silent.
Enough for today, said Taylor. Let’s go do something else. You’re not interested in the puzzle. Maybe we’ll paint—yes, that it. Let’s paint.
And they rose from the card table and walked away leaving the puzzle lying there with just the edge put together, all empty on the inside, except for a few scattered pieces seeming to be drifting across the void.
_________________________________________________________
The Way It Might Have Been
Louie Crew
I didn't join until Ronald Reagan became President in November 1984. The plans seemed silly until then. I mean, what was the bother? Gov. Anita Bryant in Florida was surely no real threat. Besides, the FFF (Furious Fiery Faggots) seemed a rather adolescent idea, “neo-Fascists” I would have called us then, in my days of political naivete.
First, Max Rafferty, Reagan's HEW chief, reported that lesbians who had been on the boards of the defunct and outlawed NOW and NGTF had been responsible for infiltrating the American Cancer Society and subtly mixing the Society's files to undermine every major cancer research project in the country. Attorney General Ed Davis brought indictments against 57 women saboteurs.
Within three weeks, Daniel Goldberg, former publisher of The Advocate, which had been banned by the President in the first week after his inauguration, on grounds of potential sedition, announced from an obscure outpost in the South Pacific his formation of Homoliberia. Several members of Congress rushed through measures granting amnesty and free exit-permits to all homosexual males who would sign up under Goldberg’s contracts for passage. The program was so successful that Goldberg's corporation began looking for an island for a new Lesbos, this time in the Indian Ocean.
Earlier all U.S. lesbians and gay males had been refused the right to own property or the right to be physically present with another person outside the surveillance of police. These stiff measures were enacted in 1982, when the effort to place embargos on all OPEC products was “discovered” by the CIA to be a homosexual and Jewish conspiracy. Goldberg, however, led what seemed a charmed life by continuing to hold his editorship for two more years after all of the other known lesbians and gays had been placed under house arrest and deprived of all property, and he was rumored to have moved his holdings to a Swiss bank only one month before the property was confiscated. Two years later, when Reagan's executive order closed The Advocate, Goldberg fought briefly on grounds of the still operative First Amendment (itself nullified six months later by a new Constitutional Convention); but when Chief Justice George Wallace announced the Court's unanimous ruling to sustain President Reagan's order, Goldberg vanished in a flash.
So the purge of '86 did have its precedents, but somehow before then our people always avoided panic. Each new mass assault seemed to activate in us more patience. Even as scores of our folk were taken off to prison under a rash of new and stiffer sexuality statutes, we were always quick to say that these pressures were uniting us, giving more of us a sense of our being “a people.” Our leaders steadily exhorted us, “Remember Dade County!” observing that only in that 1977 defeat had we found a massive awareness that our community extended beyond nocturnal parameters.
Lesbian and gay male religious groups thrived as they never had, surging with new members after each new wave of oppression. Although Troy Perry had been kicked out of MCC when he joined with Jill Raymond, Janet Cooper and Charley Shively to form the FF (Fierce Faries, not the same as its offspring, the FFF) in the autumn of '82, Troy's efforts to keep the FF nonviolent in its resistance to the police state were the most redemptive considerations when MCC posthumously reinstated Troy after Tory and Jill, unarmed, had been mercilessly gunned down in May of '83 by the CIA in confrontation at high noon before the Justice Department. Within a week, Charley, Janet, Julia Stanley, John Kyper, Jean O'Leary, Eldon Murray, Charlotte Bunch, Winston Leyland, Rita Mae Brown, and Dan Curzon met in a Dallas motel to form the more militant FFF as a secret society to train persons in other lesbian and gay male groups to respond aggressively to the real dangers of our genocide.
Anarchistic terrorism thrust itself upon us as our only hope for survival. Dancing and consciousness-raising had not been enough. Singing and praying were not going to sustain us, but rather set us up as easy stooges, the better to be picked off individually. The heyday of our reasonable efforts through public education was soon to end with the '85 censorship laws and Reagan's reign; and even in the earlier, more open statements of our causes, few who were not lesbians or gays changed their minds about us; we were mainly talking to one another, discovering our own vast literacy in a country of so much hetero privilege that the masses of the heterosexuals had become functionally illiterate subscribers to what brother Auden once pronounced as major to their Decalogue: “Read the New Yorker, trust in God, and take short views.”
The FFF discovered our most efficient weapon, the match. The common, ordinary match. With only three highly inflated cents any of the quietest of us anywhere can level an entire stronghold of the police state.
A sister closeted as a dispatcher of the LAPD made our first headline when she set the fire that destroyed the Los Angeles City Hall with merely three matches and a trash can full of shredded old Ed Davis memoranda in the quiet of a ladies room during the late shift. Steve Bell on the Today Show ignited national fear when he announced the next morning:
“The $35-million blaze which took 38 lives and destroyed irreplaceable public records is claimed to be the work of a new homosexual liberation group calling itself the 'Furious Fiery Faggots.' Within only twelve hours, similar fires have been started in major municipal buildings in each of the first 45 cities that rescinded their gay rights laws created in the 1970s. With each fire, the pattern was the same: an anonymous caller telephoned a prominent city official and said, 'The FFF set the fire: end the oppression of lesbians and gays unless you want more burnings.' Florida has been hardest hit, with seven fires, and Governor Anita Bryant has called up the National Guard. Meanwhile, in Washington President Reagan announced that he is sending to each city fifty government arson specialists. The Council of Florida Mayors urged that special attention be given to the dangers of fires in the orange groves, particularly in the wake of the current severe dry spell.
“In a separate development, the government of Homoliberia in the South Pacific has issued a statement urging the United Nations to develop the new 'Homo Counter,' a device on the order of a Geiger Counter, which when successfully manufactured will identify all homosexuals within a 10-foot radius and enable more rapid government detention of them. A spokesperson for Texas Instruments commented that the United Nations should not enter the private arena, especially as Texas Instruments expects to perfect such an instrument any day now. Some members of Congress have said off the record that Goldberg is merely trying to increase his empire and they cited the New York Times investigation last month that alleged that immigration officials in Homoliberia enforce sexual obligations upon indentured servants who have been dumped there by US. Detention centers under a seven-year work obligation to Goldberg's corporation, which has paid their passage...”
All those fires in little more than half a day!
The first seemed to come in spurts, about every six weeks. The second round leveled thirty cathedrals (21 Roman, 9 Anglican), including St. Pats in NYC, set by an FFF monk in the kitchen. Church officials became especially alarmed when they learned that the 25 largest U.S. insurance companies are discontinuing all fire coverage on ecclesiastical properties as of the terminating date for any policy currently in effect, and no new fire insurance will be issued for those properties.
Immediately the governing bodies of the churches held meetings with the lesbian and gay male groups within their denominations, such as Dignity, Integrity, Affirmation, Lutherans Concerned, UCC Lesbian-Gay Caucus, et al. In Los Angeles the local chapter of Dignity was offered the exclusive use of one of the wealthiest suburban parishes even after the Dignity leaders, stripped of their own personal property as had been all others, explained that Dignity has no known affiliation with the FFF and certainly no real influence over persons inclined to participate in any terrorist activities. The Episcopal Bishop of New York bought prime time on ABC to urge reconciliation and to deplore the government retaliation against lesbians and gays. He joined his priest, The Rev. Ellen Barrett, in her appeal for an end of the arson. The next morning President Reagan deplored the wickedness in high places in several of the churches and blamed episcopal impropriety “for having started the whole mess with a series of rash ordinations in the fist place.” The President said that he strongly supported the private sector's efforts to develop the Homo Counter, and he called on the nation to brace itself for a “real confrontation against the forces of darkness.”
Meanwhile, I kept perfecting my fires. I learned to breeze through buildings as one who belongs there. I carefully studied structures to locate the places most vulnerable to my matches. Long ago I took vows of celibacy and vows to be fairly exclusively hetero social, the better to avoid all risks and to enhance my effectiveness as a member of the FFF isolated by wartime conditions. I know only two other FFF members personally: the first is the one who initiated me and the other is the one whom I was obligated to initiate. All FFF members pledge ourselves to Lieutenant....
This is all that remains of the defendant's paper. We have thoroughly ransacked her lavish apartment and her summer home. You will note that the last page of her manuscript is only a half sheet charred unevenly at the bottom. Perhaps she destroyed the other portion when she heard us coming, or perhaps the other FFF members alluded to burned it before cutting out her tongue? You know how these folks are. – Sergeant James P. T. Spain (signed)
_________________________________________________________
Psyche's Hymen
Jenean McBrearty
Sister David Marie sat at her teacher's desk and was staring out from the second story window of St. Philip Neri school. She was listening to a small radio, one that wasn't there during class, on an old book case. Tommy Edwards was beginning to sing "All In The Game" with the line, many a tear has to fall…So lost was she in her thoughts, she didn't hear me come in to get my forgotten lunch sack, at first. I was only a sixth grader, so I only knew she wasn't praying – well, maybe she was but it wasn't a holy prayer.
Finally she realized someone else was in the room and she turned toward me. Her face turned pale, then pink as our eyes met. From that day on, she hated me. Her face was framed in an antiseptic clean white starched head cap crowned by the black veil of the Dominicans; her body was hidden by a long white habit adorned with black rosary beads hanging from her waist cinch. Everything about her shouted conformity, anonymity and denial, but her eyes gave her away. They looked at me as though I was an insect. Repulsive. But something to be feared because I'd glimpsed her guilt.
She didn't tell me to get out, but I left quickly without speaking – like I caught her in the girls bathroom the way I caught Sister Mary Paschal looking at herself in the mirror at St. Joseph's. Rumor had it, Sister Mary Paschal plucked her eyebrows. When she noticed my reflection with hers, she looked away. Since nuns never use the toilet, I concluded I caught her in the midst of vanity.
Yes, that was it. I'd caught Sister David Marie sinning. "He'll kiss your lips, and caress your waiting fingertips," Tommy was singing in his dreamy, wistful voice, and I knew.
Who among the sixth, seventh or eighth grade boys did she lust after, those boys whose blasphemous bravado advertised their budding manhood? Perhaps, the high school crush she'd left for God, for good. Or was it youth itself?
There are young nuns and there are old nuns. They come into the life dedicated, disappear, and, one day wake up desiccated. Their midlife crisis must truly be hell, asking not where has my life gone, but what life?
Sister David Marie looked like a young nun to me, but maybe I caught her on her turning old day because there is no other explanation for her relentless bullying that followed my inadvertent discovery except, perhaps, perfecting the soul of the poor and fatherless. It was called discipline in 1958 – that catch-all word that meant these romantically frustrated women could delight in squelching everything lighthearted from the souls of the young in the name of the heavenly virtue of humility.
"I thought I had a vocation when I was young," was all Mrs. Frye said. "But the religions I grew up with were always so cruel and—if you'll pardon my saying so—un-Christian."
Sr. Cabrini had heard many such litanies of woe. During her five years as intake Ward Nader for St. Catherine's. They were tiresome confessions, each of the old women who came to the retirement and recovery convent shared a tale of how their vocation was destroyed by another nun or priest in their childhood. Luckily, the postmenopausal postulates avoided eye contact, staring past her at the wall or down at the floor as though watching a movie in which they were the poor, put-upon star.
She never interrupted them. She doodled until they finally stopped talking and looked to her for… whatever. Acceptance. Understanding. Sympathy. Forgiveness. Validation. Approval. All the things they never received from anyone in their lives. All that was required from her was a nod and a softly uttered, "I think you'll find peace here at St. Catherine's" and the lonely old girls brought out their lonely old electronic deposit forms, and signed over their retirement funds in exchange for admitting evil costume and a spiritual community to sustain them until they died.
Ellen Frye, however, maintained obstinate eye contact. Cabrini looked down at the application before her and searched for Previous Occupation. "You were a teacher, I see."
"God loveth a well constructed sentence and abhoreth a comma splice."
Frye's remark sounded like blasphemy disguised as humor, but Sr. Cabrini wasn't sure. "The Holy Spirit Order is a contemplative one. We support ourselves by canning jellies and sewing vestments," she said. "We all dress alike, but the real nuns have spiritual duties beyond those of the tertiaries. You won't be required to rise at four or fast on Fridays. Things like that. It was explained in the materials we sent. Did you read them thoroughly?"
"The Bishop sent a letter explaining that I was to be admitted as a regular postulant. Did you read his letter thoroughly?"
Frye had been a teacher alright. Sr. Cabrini folded one page over another until she came to bright white stationery with the Bishops crest embossed on the letterhead. She hadn't read Fry's file this morning. Admission of a previously married sixty-five year old woman who would be almost seventy before her novitiate began was unthinkable; shed' be an eleventh hour worker who expected the wages of those who'd been in the field since dawn. But the letter looked authentic. Official. Final. She gave Ellen a Sister David Marie stare and smiled. "Well, welcome. I'll let Mother know you've arrived."
Five years later, Ellen Frye became Sister Margret Mary as she wedded for the second time. She chose a plain cream-colored satin gown with lace sleeves, the front half of which extended to a point over her wrinkled hands and were held fast with a thumb loop of satin ribbon, and caught one tear as the Bishop slipped plain gold band on her ring finger. She emerged from the dressing room in a flowing gray gabardine gown and nylon veil, her gray hair hidden by white linen. While the young newly professed sisters met their congratulatory families, she went to the kitchen where the tertiaries had readied the luncheon fare, and ate a chocolate tart.
"You'll have to confess a theft," Sr. Cabrini said as she stepped into the kitchen. Her hands were hidden under a long, narrow doublet that hung from beneath a white bib.
"And so I would if it I was stealing, Sister. I've as much right to celebrate as any of the other sisters. I belong here, whether you approve of not."
"I do not approve. And it's not your age, Ellen Frye. The women who walked down the aisle with you this morning have given up all earthly love—they'll never have an earthly spouse. Never have children. Their commitment is real. Their sacrifice is a true sacrifice."
Sr. Margret dipped her spoon into the soft brown sweetness held captive in the flaky crust, and brought it to her lips, and into her mouth, feeling the silky cocoa ambrosia melt on her tongue. "God revereth the hymen. Is that it?"
"You're disgusting," Sr. Cabrini said. "What are you doing here when you could be guzzling martinis at some lounge in Florida? I'm sure there are still men out there who appreciate the experienced."
Sr. Margaret rinsed her spoon and added it to the dishwasher. For five years the kitchen had been her bailiwick. She'd scrubbed it from ceiling to floor dutifully, wiped up spills, kept its sinks unclogged, it's garbage disposed of, it's stainless steel appliances free of finger prints, and its silver polished. All under the critical eyes of Sr. Cabrini who found fault and reported her daily to Mother Superior. "Do you think Jesus ever walked in Gethsemane before he prayed in agony there, Sister Cabrini?"
"What kind of a question is that?" Cabrini said.
"Of all the places he could have gone to pray, why did he choose that place? He didn't just stumble upon it. He knew where His happiness was. I can imagine him walking there in the spring, eying His Father's handiwork, watching the butterflies flit, listening to the hum and buzzes of life. Maybe scratching his head, wondering why Adam gave up his garden when it was so pleasant. Maybe He regretted not making love the Mary Magdalene. Maybe he thought of her when He asked to let the cup pass." She looked into Cabrini's horrified face. "It's not too late for you, you know, Sister Anne. Many a tear has to fall before we face ourselves. It's all in the game. I came in because my worldly life is over, perhaps you'll go out because your worldly life has yet to be lived."
She took the last chocolate tart off the silver platter, got another spoon, and handed them to Sr. Anne. "You're still a very beautiful woman Anne Cabrini. Somewhere, some handsome fellow is out there waiting to love you, to kiss your lips and caress your waiting finger tips..." She wiped the tray with a dry cloth and put it on the counter.
Sr. Cabrini turned away from her, and Margaret headed out the back door to the garden patio where the tertiaries ate their lunch on sunny days. She sat at a white wrought iron table, under a rainbow colored umbrella and tasted the tart. Her husband loved her chocolate cheese cake. Jesus would too. She glanced over her shoulder at the convent windows that caught the noonday sun. Yes, it was there. A gleaming round light, brilliant as the sun, bounced off the silver platter she'd polished to a mirror shine at four AM. Sister Cabrini was giving in to vanity with her David Marie eyes—staring at the Medusa inside.
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Too Good to be Bye
Ria Burman
I always knew she was leaving. The moment she arrived, I knew she would depart. She would fly out of my life just as she landed in it, like a captivating song heard for the first time which stills the mind and heightens an awareness of surroundings born from an unknown quietness. It takes the listener to new places awakening ancient ancestral notions before it returns to a striking silence.
I sit on her bed as she plays music and folds her clothes, placing them into a red suitcase which matches her fingernails.
“Are you happy to be leaving?” I ask, sipping tea.
“Yes.”
“Do you like America?”
“No, not really.”
“Why?”
“It is all big businesses, big companies, big corporations and that is it.”
She passes me books on love as she continues to pack. I flick through them, but see no words or letters. Just blurs. The pages fan the fire within.
“I do not know what to do with this,” she says sitting next to me on her bed. A white sock and a single battery sit between us. I take them. The battery remains in my pocket for days. “Now I shall take my shower,” she says.
She disappears. I reposition myself on her bed with my feet and legs stretching up the wall and my head hanging off the mattress. Johnny Cash is playing out. I listen to songs I’ve never heard before. I realize I’m not going to see her room again or smell her scent, or feel the soft sheets of her bed, or sit on the steps to her front door watching the twinkling lights of North beach, listening to the jingle hum bell ring of the cable cars slipping along Columbus. We won’t sit together as she smokes and we won’t talk of philosophy and love, or agonize over what to do or not do with old loves, or potential new loves, or friends and family, or glance casually out over to the distant bay together to see the prominent rock of Alcatraz and sigh at its solitude. There will be no more midnight walks together to the park after the coffee shops have closed, we won’t sit and talk about jealousies and curiosities on a bench in the still of the night, where once after parting, I witnessed a raccoon the size of a pig running through the silent park. No one was around to share the surprise and in that moment the magic of the city, the sweetness of walking alone in a park around midnight after talking of love with a Spanish girl friend left me spellbound, unable to move, mesmerized. That was then and these moments shall never come again, magnified now by the packed suitcase and the bare walls.
Still, the river flows on. Stepping from it, I wonder if perhaps I passively dance through those lives whose songs are short and sweet, where there is no opportunity for a replay, where good times roll and laughter flows and in these moments, these peaks, these times I wish would last forever people disappear and I’m reminded not to want anything of the future, not to ask for this again, not to become attached to anything because the water flows and each time I shake it off, collect and accept myself, and step back in. It is as cool and refreshing as the first time.
She comes back in, wrapped in her dressing gown. She plays Nacho Vegas’ La Gran Broma Final. I sit up and watch her get ready to leave. She sings in Spanish as she dresses. I’ve been here before, watching Man Arc of Seraph pack and leave, watching a sexy foxcat pack for the East. I sit in the rooms of the people I have grown to love, I help them pack, I watch them prepare to leave and fly away. The feelings are magnified in this moment, as a realization hits like a thunderbolt that I may never see her again. The thoughts swirl within, rising feelings of longing and tenderness and an urgency to remember her, which leaves my eyes thirsty to drink in every part of her face, her eyes, her smile, her movements, gestures, her hair. I become blurry eyed and light headed.
“I am afraid I will not wake up.” She says, biting a red, chipped nail.
“Stay up.”
“I am afraid I will fall asleep.”
“I’ll stay with you. We can watch movies.”
“Yes. There is a documentary I would like to see on the economy.”
I look at her. My lack of interest tries to channel her physic chord for an eighties comedy.
“It is supposed to be very interesting,” she continues.
Passivity saunters through the front door of a shrug.
She double checks the last of her things and gathers them together. She brings the computer into the front room with a blanket. We snuggle into it, underneath it on the sofa. It isn’t long before we drift into dreams, sporadically jolt-jumping awake, where sleepy eyes meet and say “not yet” before closing and slipping back into a realm where time and ego melts.
A symphony of alarms awakens us. She gets up and tells me to stay on the sofa until she’s organized herself. I snuggle down and drift off again. She wakes me suddenly saying she is ready to leave. This is not the loving slow cozy wakeup coo l I’ve grown to love and miss along the way from a sexy foxcat. This is the urgent, serious whisper of a woman who is about to fly back to her reality. This life she is leaving and all in it is nothing but a dream in her mind’s world.
I get up and fold the blanket.
“Do you want some help with the bags?” I ask in a husky whisper.
“No, I have to learn to do it on my own.” She almost topples down the stairs from the weight of the suitcase. She opens the door after the second one is down the stairs and takes them out. She comes back up again. “The night is so warm,” she says, smiling.
Her eyes gleam. Her words remain with me profoundly like she uttered wise words on how to live in a wonderful world.
We leave the soft yellow lit house. Outside, dawn is close to breaking. A taxi drives by. She runs up the street flailing her arms in the air. She is eager and excited to leave. A pang of jealousy hits me. A selfishness that goes against all I believe screams, “Don’t leave me!” It rattles around inside but fails to find its way out. She’s happy to be leaving the country and returning to her people, as she calls them, and her country, as she calls it. She is excited to be going home. It has nothing to do with me. The feeling fades.
The taxi turns around and stops as a man jumps out to help her with her bags.
“The two of you?” he asks.
“Just one,” I answer.
He puts a suitcase in the trunk and the other on the back seat and disappears back inside the cab.
“Bella,” she says, embracing me.
I hold her close. The distant bay becomes wavy as my eyes become glazy.
“Thank you for everything,” she says.
“You’re very welcome.”
“I will write you,” she says, shaking my arms side to side for the last time.
She disappears into the taxi. Before the door closes, I poke my head in. “I love you,” I tell her.
“You too.” She giggles.
She sits before me, but she has already left. Adrenalin has taken her away. I close the door and the taxi slips away. I’m surprised by the silence of the machine. The tail lights shine as the cab stops at the cross street before turning left and disappearing. I’m left standing in the middle of the street, tears stream my cheeks, watering, nourishing the earth of my heart. I walk down the alley way, uncontrollably balling my eyes out (thank you, Alanis) through the silent, sleeping streets of North beach and as I turn onto Broadway, the tears are gone. There is nothing but a sweet silence.
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Ria Burman merges word play with foreplay, which sometimes gets her into some deliciously sticky, hot spot situations. She is currently writing her first novel called LoveLove, which is filled with love, adventure, philosophy, self discovery and erotica, all wrapped in surrealism. She licks the bowl when she's finished eating.
Louie Crew, 75, is an Alabama native and an emeritus professor at Rutgers. He lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay, his husband of 38 years. Editors have published 2,224 of Crew's poems, short stories, and essays. See http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubs.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew.
Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University and former community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology. She received the EKU English Department's Award for Graduate Non-fiction (2011) and has been published in Main Street Rag Anthology—Altered States, Wherever It Pleases, Danse Macabre, bioStories, Cobalt Review, Dew of the Kudzu, Nazar Look, and Black Lantern, among others. Her novel, Raphael Redcloak, will be serialized by Jukepop in September.
Jim Meirose's work has appeared in numerous journals, including the Fiddlehead, Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Xavier Review, and has been nominated for several awards. Two collections of his short work have been published and his novels, "Claire" and "Monkey," are available from Amazon.
