Kimiko

This assignment was to choose a character prompt and write a page or so from that character's point of view. This is what I chose: 30-year-old Asian female, computer expert, black belt, has her tubes tied. I can't decide if I really like writing from prompts or if I just like the opportunity to write something short which I can actually finish in one sitting. (It makes me feel productive.)

***

Kimiko Ohki: Eggs, Bodies, Time

I've been teaching my husband Tetsuo how to speak English. It's important, he said. For the akachan. I told him akachan in English is baby. He told me he wants at least five baby. And they will all speak Engrishu, because we are Americans now. They can learn Japanese at school if they want to.

I started with food. These are eggs, I said. This is bread. Egguso, he said. No, eggs. Egguso. Ehhhhggs. Ehhhhhgguso? I wrote the word on a Post-It note and stuck it on the egg compartment in the refrigerator while he put two slices of bread in the toaster. Bureddo! he said. I was optimistic. I figured by the time we actually had any children, I'd at least have Tetsuo saying the word breakfast.

It started out kind of fun, something we could do together and laugh about. I had a new job at Intel (as in, your laptop has Intel inside), and Tetsuo had been fixing up our new house. As soon as I came home from work and started speaking to him, he would say, "Kim. Uso Engrishu, pless." I was always Kim when we spoke English, because that's what the Intel crew called me. He only called me Kimiko when he forgot he was supposed to be learning.

This is called a kiss, I'd say. These are your hands on my breasts. I'm spreading my thighs for you. And he would say, Hai, Kimiko, hai.

One day he asked me the English word for the small, jagged line of puckered skin on my belly, beneath my navel. Scar, I told him. It had happened ten years earlier while I was still living in Japan, working at Toshiba. This was before I met Tetsuo. I was taking a computer tower home to fix it when some maniac decided to mug me. He stabbed me in the gut with a pocketknife before he even had a good hold on the tower, and it hit the ground and busted into about twenty pieces before he ran off with just my wallet. I was alright when I came out of the hospital, but no amount of surgery could fix that tower.

I taught Tetsuo the word nursery after he painted it yellow and white. We'd been trying to get pregnant since before the move. I think he thought somehow that it would be easier to have children now that we actually had enough room for them, but it just wasn't happening. I finally went to a doctor to ask if something was wrong with my egguso. I didn't tell my husband.

Some intrusive tests and an ultrasound later, the doctor told me my eggs were fine. But I can't have children because my uterus has been invaded by scar tissue. The scar's just a tiny line on the outside, a bad memory and a shattered Toshiba, but on the inside, it's like half my womb's a hardened shell. There's almost no elasticity. It's physically possible for me to get pregnant, she said, but if I did try to carry a baby to term, my uterus wouldn't be able to stretch to contain it. The tissue would perforate, and I would bleed internally, possibly to death. Any akachan of mine would die, and kill me, too. It's a good thing, she said, that you haven't managed to become pregnant yet. Now we must take steps to ensure it doesn't happen in the future.

I made a follow-up appointment that day.

When I got home, Tetsuo was ready for his next English lesson. I thought about teaching him tubal ligation, but I couldn't make myself say it. I taught him units of time instead. Ten years ago, a man took something from me. The past turns our scars into nightmares. The future cannot be what we hoped. Today is happening while you hold my hand and look at me like I can teach you the meaning of everything. Tonight none of this will make sense.

Now I will tell you the difference between yesterday and tomorrow.

someone else's words

I'm sitting on Brice Jackson's patio at 4:36 in the morning watching Anna Hadley smoke a cigarette. The way Anna smokes is she takes one drag and then just waves the cigarette around to emphasize what she's saying. The orange tip draws little shapes in the air that seem to hang in the dark like neon letters. She's talking about Mary again.

Sometimes, Anna tells me, Sometimes I just don't understand what God was thinking, you know?

The only light out here is coming from inside, filtered out of the kitchen window through some pale green curtains, and from the moon, which looks like a chalk smudge on a blackboard because of the clouds in front of it. I can just barely see Anna sitting across from me at the patio table, but her eyes look enormous, all shiny and pink from crying. She's still crying, even though it's been weeks since the funeral. I can't see the stars, just the bright tip of Anna's cigarette and the thin line of smoke curling up from it that scatters every time she moves her hand.

You can't, I say. He's God. That's the point.

Yeah, but like. She gestures around with her cigarette. Taking Mary. I don't understand why he'd take her so goddamn young, you know? Twenty-five. Way too fucking young.

Anna and I are both twenty-five as well, but it doesn't feel that young to me anymore. Two of my friends died this summer. Yeah, I say.

She was only married for a few weeks, she says. That's fucked up. Only been married, like, four goddamn weeks. Anna's looking at me with those big eyes, waiting for me to agree with her that it's all wrong, the whole thing. And I'm trying to think of a word that means what her eyes look like right now.

You think there's a better time to die? I ask her.

Hell yeah. When you're old, she says. When you got all them fat grandbabies and shit. That's when you're supposed to die. She flicks the ash off the tip of her cigarette, pushes her dark brown hair behind her ear. The word is luminous. I think.

I tell her, Yeah, I guess. But really I'm thinking it's better to die suddenly when you're young and happy. I figure Mary was never happier than she was right before it happened. So I tell Anna that, too. I tell her that, you know, maybe Mary got a sweet deal, going out on a high note like that and all.

She takes a second to think about it, then says, Maybe you're right. And then she starts crying again. Her face scrunches up and she wipes her eyes with the palms of her hands, cigarette dangling between two fingers. After I found out about Mary, I stood in the shower crying until the water ran cold, because I didn't want anyone to hear me. But for as long as I've know her, Anna has worn her emotions like a new pair of boots, expecting people to notice them.

While she's crying, she says that Mary was an angel, and that God called his angel home.

Mary was, she was really, Anna chokes out, and the long ash on the end of her cigarette falls and breaks against the glass tabletop. One of a kind, she says. And now she's in a, she's in a, in a better place. Her voice cracks on the word place.

I just nod. It's what I've been doing since the accident, nodding along to the same damn things everyone else has been saying since it happened, the exact same damn words. The same words they said about Brandon, Melody, Angela, and the rest of our friends who've died. I'm nodding because that's what you do, even though I can't imagine those words helping at all, making any difference in the way we all feel about what happened to Mary.

I want to ask Anna, does saying those things make you feel better? Does it make you miss her any less? Does it help you stop crying? Because it’s not working for me, Anna. When I say those words, I feel nothing. They mean nothing to me because they're not mine.

Anna sniffs, wipes her eyes again, and smokes. She says, her voice still shaky, I read what you wrote about Mary. What you wrote online.

Oh, I say. I almost say I read what she wrote, too, and what everyone else wrote: R.I.P., Mary. You were truly one of a kind. We never realize what we have until it's gone. You will be greatly missed. Words can't express... Reading those things made me wonder what I would say to Mary if I had the chance. So I made a list, called it Things I Didn't Tell Mary, and posted it on the Internet. That's how I learned Shakespeare.

I didn't want to read it, Anna says. I saw it, and I thought, that girl's gonna fucking make me cry again, and I don't think I can. Been crying too goddamn much already.

I'm sorry, I tell her.

No, it was, she says, and gestures with her cigarette. The smoke disappears into the air. Beautiful. I fucking cried through the whole thing, but what you said was damn beautiful. Her eyes look so big while she's telling me this.

Thanks, I say. And because she seems to expect more, I tell her, I, uh, I cried while I wrote it.

Yeah? she says. She looks surprised, like she can't imagine me crying over anything. She says, But I bet you felt better afterwards.

I did, a little. I tell her, It's how I learned Shakespeare.

She gives me this look across the table, one elbow resting on the glass top. The tip of her cigarette glows for a moment and then she blows smoke out of the side of her mouth so it won't drift towards me. The smoke looks green in the light from the kitchen window. What, she asks, the hell is that supposed to mean?

Shakespeare, I say. You know. The writer? Romeo and Juliet?

I know who he is, she says. I'm not a fucking 'tard. What does it mean you learned Shakespeare writing about Mary?

This is the first time I've said this out loud, so I'm not sure Anna's going to understand it. I'm not sure I understand it myself, but I start trying to explain anyway. Shakespeare used to write these poems, I say. About women, you know? There's this one poem you've probably heard. It's the one that goes, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" You know that poem?

Yeah, says Anna.

Well, the last part of it goes, "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." It's like he's saying, Now that I'm writing this poem about you, that means you're going to live forever. Because the poem, it'll be around for a long time, right?

Right, she says, right. And I'm noticing how thin her wrists are. Her wrist bones look like they're glowing in the dark.

I always thought it was kind of stupid, that he would say something like that. Because no, the woman's not going to live forever just because of some poem. I mean, when she dies, she's still dead. I didn't really get it. I just thought it was some cheesy line.

Anna nods. Her gigantic eyes are starting to tear up again. She should have been a model. She's even pretty when she cries.

After Mary died, I tell her, I finally sort of got what Shakespeare was trying to do. It makes sense when you realize it doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just between him and this woman, you know? He's telling her... he's telling her that it's okay. She doesn't have to be scared. Whatever happens, whether there's an afterlife or not, she doesn't have to worry because there will always be a piece of her in the world just the way he remembers her. I mean, imagine how comforting that would be. For both of them. And hundreds of years later, we know that there was a woman who had an impact on this man, this writer. She changed him, and now she has this legacy. And when I got that, I realized that it wasn't just a cheesy line. It was actually, it was actually kind of beautiful.

When I get done trying to explain it, Anna's crying again. I don't know why she is, though, because the more I say this stuff out loud, the better I feel about it.

I'm not trying to say I'm like Shakespeare, I tell her. But after I wrote about Mary, that's when I got it. I want to tell stories about her, you know? I want to get Mary on paper just the way she was when I knew her, and then I want to get those papers everywhere, so other people can know her too. So they can know there was this girl who affected me so much that it's important for them to know about her, even after we're both dead. Because she deserves that. And anyway, it does make me feel better. Less like I lost her.

Anna's got her palms pressed to her eyes, but she's nodding, and her cigarette is so short now that it's going out. She sniffs really hard and wipes her eyes, but when she looks over at me, her face scrunches up and she covers her eyes again. She's got tears smeared down her cheeks when she finally starts talking. Shit, she says. You're so. You're so goddamn lucky.

What do you mean? I ask her. And I have to wait for her to finish crying again before she answers. I rub my arms. It's a warm night, and there are mosquitoes.

She sniffs hard and reaches for her pack of cigarettes to get another one. There's already a little pile of butts on the concrete floor beside her flip flops. Because, she says in this squeaky voice, because you've got this, this thing you can do. This fucking beautiful thing, what's it called, a tribute and shit. I ain't got anything like that. Mary... you're right, she deserves it, you know? But I can't do shit. She was my goddamn best friend, and I got stories about her too, but I can't do shit with 'em. Except cry. That's all I'm goddamn good for.

I don't know how to tell Anna she's wrong about that. I'm watching her cry, and I'm thinking about that photograph I took of Mary in eleventh grade, the one where she's looking at someone off camera with this giant smile like she's got a secret she can barely contain. After I took the picture, I turned around and saw Anna grinning back at her.

Tell me one of your Mary stories, I say.

So she does. We spend the next two hours on Brice Jackson's patio together, me and Anna Hadley, talking about Mary until just before the sun starts to come up, when the sky turns pink and lavender. And I'm watching her luminous eyes through the smoke from her cigarettes, and she's crying in between stories, filling every sob with phrases like, She was our rock, and I'm just grateful for the time we had, and At least we've got our memories.

i wrote a limerick.

there once was a girl from dubai
who said "you" every time she meant "i."
the pronouns she used
left me really confused.
you're sure that i can see why.

the suicide kids (first two sections)

Chutlah Gorge ran alongside the southern edge of the town of Berry Branch. It was about two miles long and in some places got up to 150 feet deep. There used to be a river there but it had been diverted into a lake a long time ago, so the only water at the bottom of the gorge was a few inches of black mud when it rained. According to Levi's Georgia History teacher, chutlah was an Indian word that meant "beautiful hole." Levi's father told him it meant "fox."

The narrowest part of Chutlah Gorge formed the southern border of the old Keister property near where Levi and his father lived. The Keister property used to be a dairy farm, but it had been out of business for the last twenty years or so. Some of Levi's neighbors said it was cursed. Colt Hammond told him that one night thirteen of the Keister cows got possessed and ran right off the edge of the cliff into the gorge and died, and that's why everyone called that part of the gorge Dairy Drop. Levi didn't really believe there was a curse on the Keister property or the gorge, but that was before Jubal Buckley threw himself over the edge of that same cliff in November -- and before Colt Hammond's dad drove his truck into the "beautiful hole" early that summer and broke his neck.

Berry Branch Middle School had this policy that if a student's mother or father died, that student had to spend at least one entire semester in grief counseling. Colt was an extra special case since there was so much publicity about his dad being the only Berry Branch suicide in the last two decades. During Colt's first counseling session at the start of eighth grade, Ms. Underwood explained to him all the reasons why counseling was such a good idea and how it would help him so much with all the emotions he must be having. Colt listened to her speech, but when she was done, he made sure to point out that Levi Grady had never had to take counseling for his mother's death, and he was doing just fine.

Levi and Colt had been close friends ever since the time they dissected one of Colt's older sister's tampons together in third grade, but despite their long history of playing basketball in each other's driveways and sneaking down to Dairy Drop to share stolen beers, Levi never did forgive Colt for telling the counselor about his mother. "How could I know what she'd do?" Colt asked him later. "Dude, your mom died like seven years ago. How could I know she'd stick you in the Dead Parent Society now?" The "Dead Parent Society" was what Colt called the counseling sessions, although since Colt was the only other member at the start of the year, the "society" hadn't actually been a society until Ms. Underwood insisted that Levi join them.

They met twice a week in Ms. Underwood's office and filled out workbooks that asked questions like What is your happiest memory of your deceased loved one? and Is there anything you wish you could have said to your deceased loved one? Ms. Underwood always asked if either of the boys wanted to share their answers, but they never did. Levi's answers were all short: I don't remember her. No, there isn't. His mother had died when he was six and a half. Ms. Underwood told him six years was old enough to have some memories of her, but all he could remember were the few stories his father had told him about her and some vague impressions he got from looking at her photographs. Something about a bed. Flowery sheets. He wondered what it was that Colt wrote about his father in the spaces between the questions.

About three weeks into the semester, a stabbing out at Luxury Court Trailer Park landed another boy from their grade in Levi and Colt's counseling group. Boone Thigpen was a year older than them but had failed a grade and was even less enthusiastic about grief counseling than they were. He was tall with greasy dark hair, wore the same clothes to school almost every day, and was rumored to carry a condom in his wallet. Levi read Boone's stepfather's obituary in the Berry Branch Journal. It didn't indicate a cause of death, but the article on the front page detailed Boone's stepfather's numerous injuries and the subsequent arrest of Boone's uncle for murder. Ms. Underwood seemed pleased to have a third society member. There had never been three students in grief counseling at one time before, and now they could play a board game she'd modified to be more grief-appropriate. Boone called her Ms. Morning Wood.

Levi almost never saw Boone outside of Ms. Underwood's office. Under other circumstances, he figured that he and Boone could have been friends, maybe. He acknowledged Boone with a nod in the cafeteria once, but the older boy acted as though he didn't notice. In Levi's opinion, the dynamic of the Dead Parent Society had been well established by mid-September, which was when Hannah Buckley came along and changed everything.

***

The Buckleys lived three streets over and two down from Levi and his father. Although he and Colt often passed it on their bikes, Levi had only been inside the Buckley house once, when he'd first moved to Berry Branch and his father began working with Hannah's father, Barrett T. Buckley-you-can-call-me-Buck. The Buckleys had invited the two of them over for dinner. At seven years old, Levi and Hannah had been expected to entertain each other and Hannah's little brother Jubal while the adults sat in Buck's study and talked after dinner. When Levi read about Buck Buckley's death in the Berry Branch Journal, he tried to imagine exactly where in that room the body had fallen. He had a clearer memory of Buck Buckley's study than of the room where his own mother had died.

The obituary didn't say how Buck died, but the front-page article said he'd been shot in the head, and that the wound appeared to be self-inflicted. Two suicides in a place like Berry Branch within four months of each other was an unprecedented coincidence. An investigation would follow.

According to the article, eight-year-old Jubal Buckley had discovered the body.

Levi had been in the habit of reading obituaries for as long as he could remember. He read them first, even before the front page news. Often he didn't even read the rest of the newspaper, which he divided over breakfast with his father three times a week. While Levi’s father had been one of the first people Mrs. Buckley had called with the news of her husband's death, no one had mentioned it to Levi, and so Levi found out by seeing the obit and the article two days later over a bowl of Lucky Charms.

"This," he said to his father, "this says that Buck Buckley died. Did Buck Buckley die?"

"Mm," said his father. "Night before last." He took a sip of coffee and looked down at his section of the paper. "It's too bad," he added. "Terrible thing."

Levi reread the obituary. Survived by his wife, Linda Harrison Buckley, and two children, Hannah and Jubal. "Hannah Buckley's in my Georgia History class," he said.

"That so?"

"She wears all black. Every day."

"Mm. Georgia's had a dark past."

The obituary included a picture. Levi looked at it. "What are you going to do? About work? Buck's cases and all."

"I'm taking it one day at a time, son." His father took another sip of coffee. He didn't say anything else. Levi didn't bring it up again.

Hannah Buckley wasn't in class for the rest of that week, but when she did come back, Ms. Underwood had signed her up for grief counseling. Levi had been expecting this, but what he hadn't expected was how distracting it was for her to be there. She sat beside him at the round table in the counselor's office wearing all black, her pale arms crossed over her chest, dark hair absolutely straight down to the middle of her back and tiny freckles scattered right across the bridge of her nose, and she didn't say very much, but Levi could hardly concentrate on his workbook questions when she was in the room. His answers got even shorter. Hers were always long paragraphs, and she wrote them in purple ink. He didn't read what she wrote, but her letters all looked fat and perfectly round or perfectly straight, like a string of binary code. In the tradition of the other members of the Dead Parent Society, Hannah didn't share her answers.

It was different with Hannah in the counseling group, different from her being in Georgia History with Levi. In Georgia History, she sat all the way across the room and slightly behind him. He couldn't smell her shampoo in Georgia History. In counseling, the table was so small that Levi and Hannah had to sit very close to each other. Their knees sometimes bumped. He almost never looked at her face during their sessions, but he couldn't look away from her hands. She wore dark fingernail polish. The way she held her pen was different from the way he held his.

Levi had never really enjoyed counseling, but once Hannah joined, he began to dread it. Every session seemed to last longer than the previous one. Ms. Underwood's startlingly high voice hurt his ears, but the silences were even worse; he always seemed to be breathing too loud. He was thrilled to get out of there at the end of each session, but whenever Hannah slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked out, Levi found himself wishing they’d had more time together. Since their dads had worked at the same law office, he kept meaning to say something to her about what had happened, that he was sorry or something. But he never managed to do it, and the longer he went on not saying anything, the less likely it seemed that he ever would. He watched Hannah leave four times without once speaking directly to her.

On the day of Hannah's fifth session in the Dead Parent Society, Levi was the last to arrive in the counseling office. Hannah, Colt, Boone, and Ms. Underwood were already seated around the little table. They each had a different colored balloon floating in front of their faces. The balloon strings were taped to the table to keep them from floating away, and each string had a small slip of paper tied to the end. Levi took his seat in front of the last balloon. It was pink.

"Today we're going on a little fieldtrip," Ms. Underwood told them. "I'm sure you've all noticed the balloons."

Hannah sat with her arms crossed, staring straight over the counselor's shoulder as usual. Boone sprawled in his chair with a bored look. Colt was tapping his pen lightly against his balloon string, making the blue balloon bounce a little. He looked over at Levi and then at Levi's pink balloon and tried to suppress a grin.

"We're going to use these balloons for a closure activity. Remember last week when we talked about how important closure is?" Ms. Underwood looked around. "Remember? Boone, remember when we talked about closure?

"Sometimes when we lose a loved one, there are still things we wish we could tell them. Things we never got to say while they were still with us, or even things we said that we didn't mean and want to take back. So what we're going to do today is write those messages for our deceased loved ones on the um, the little papers there. See? On the end of your string? Does everyone see? You write whatever you want to say, and then we're going to go outside to the soccer field and let the balloons go. Alright? This is your chance to say anything you want to your deceased loved one. You could say 'I love you' or even just 'Goodbye.' If you want to write a longer message, that's fine too. Does everyone understand? Boone, do you understand what we're doing?"

The assignment was stupid. Levi didn't even remember his mother, so what could he possibly have to say to her? Seven years seemed a bit late for goodbye. And anyway, it was just a balloon. It wasn't some kind of pandimensional delivery service. Dead people didn't get letters by balloon. He stared for a while at the little paper on the end of his string, holding his pen over it as though writing something.

Boone had scribbled something on his paper and was leaning back, balancing his chair on the back two legs. A moment later, Colt put his pen down and began folding the message he'd written. Hannah was still writing her fat purple letters. Even Ms. Underwood was writing something.

Levi looked at Hannah's hands.

When Hannah began folding her message, Ms. Underwood said, "Is everyone finished? Levi, are you finished?"

Levi quickly folded his blank slip of paper in half. He nodded.

The five of them untaped their strings from the table and filed out of the office with Ms. Underwood's yellow balloon leading the way. When they got to the teachers' parking lot, Ms. Underwood told them to wait there while she checked to see if the soccer field was being used. "I just want to make sure we have privacy," she said.

After the counselor walked away, Levi said to Colt, "Why does it matter where we stand when we let these go? It's not like we're aiming for anything."

"Maybe she thinks the soccer field's closer to heaven," said Colt.

Boone leaned back against a dusty parked van. He was holding his green balloon by the rubber instead of the string. The message was touching the ground. "Your balloon looks like a tit," he said to Levi.

"Your face looks like a tit," Levi said.

"Don't say tit," said Hannah. She was leaning against the car in the space next to Boone's van with her arms crossed, the string from her purple balloon extending up from the crook of her elbow. She didn't appear to be addressing anyone in particular. Levi watched the side of the parking lot for Ms. Underwood. No one said anything.

“This is bullshit,” said Boone after they’d waited for a while.

Levi leaned against the car beside Hannah. He held his string near the top and then let the pink balloon pull it up through his fingers. Over and over. The empty message fluttered around at the end. Now would be a good time, maybe. To speak to her.

Just when he’d decided to say something, he saw Ms. Underwood reappear at the far end of the lot. Her balloon swayed back and forth as she walked. Levi watched the yellow ball bounce and weave at the end of its tether. He wasn’t paying attention to his own balloon, and as the string slid up between his fingers, he forgot to catch it. The balloon kept going up. Shit.

He jumped once and batted at the paper tied to the end, but a sudden breeze swept the balloon and its empty message away. With neutral expressions, Colt, Boone, and Hannah watched it sail off.

“Shit,” said Levi. The other two boys looked at him.

Hannah kept her eyes on the retreating pink balloon. After a moment, she unfolded her arms and let her own balloon go. It floated up a little more slowly than Levi’s had. He imagined it was because hers was heavier with all the words she’d written on it. He looked at her. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, watching the balloons. “They’re not really going anywhere.”

Ms. Underwood was only a few yards away now. She was frowning at them as she walked forward. Boone glanced at Hannah, shrugged, and let his green balloon go. He actually gave it a little push into the air.

“Wait,” Ms. Underwood called.

Almost immediately, Colt let go of his balloon as well. “Oops,” he said.

“Wait, I—” Ms. Underwood stopped a few feet away and looked up at the sky, at the purple, green, and blue balloons floating off, the distant speck of the pink one. Her shoulders slumped. Then she released her yellow balloon. “They were using the soccer field anyway,” she muttered.

The five of them stood there for a while with their heads tilted back, looking up until the last four balloons were just tiny dots. The pink one was already invisible behind a cloud.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Levi said.

Hannah didn’t say anything.

***

prompt: when i woke up

I'd had this really violent dream the night before, so that night I was just lying there on my bed with the ceiling fan going, not wanting to fall asleep, when my sister Sara came in. She shut the door very quietly and made her way towards the bed with slow and careful steps, her arms held out in front of her like people do when they're sneaking around in the dark. I'd been in there with the lights off long enough that I could see her, though. I watched her feel around for the bed and then felt the mattress sink and bounce a little when she crawled up beside me and plopped onto her side, sighing. I handed her a pillow, and her breath caught for a moment before she whispered, "Did I wake you up?"

"No," I said. "I was just thinking."

"Oh." She yawned and shoved the pillow under her head, and then a moment later shifted around to get under the covers. Whenever either of my sisters came home from college to visit and we had to share a bed, they always complained about it being too cold in my room to sleep. Sara would have stayed in the guest bedroom that weekend, but she'd brought her boyfriend Scott home with her, and he got the guest bed instead. Our mom would've had a fit if she'd known Sara'd been in there with him this long.

I watched the ceiling fan turn in the dark, trying to follow one blade with my eyes. It wasn't turning at the rate I thought it would, but I couldn't tell if it was going faster or slower than I'd expected. I could follow it all the way around six times before I lost track of the blade I was following and had to start over. I could hear Sara breathing, even and deep, and I figured she'd fallen asleep already. Between listening to Sara breathe and watching the ceiling fan turn, I was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about that dream I'd had.

And then out of nowhere, after having not said anything for several minutes, my sister murmured, "I love you," in this real sleepy voice that was half spoken into her pillow.

I was surprised, because it's not something that we said very often. In fact, we never said it - at least not to each other. I think by that point in my life I'd only ever said "I love you" in undelivered letters to boys or in crappy teenage poetry or to my cat in that babytalk voice you use with animals. But the way Sara said it to me didn't sound forced or unnatural. It was just a simple statement of fact, a phrase that came easily to her even while half-asleep, apropos of nothing. And hearing her say it to me in that half-asleep moment, as she sank slowly into the state that I was trying very hard to avoid, struck me as kind of beautiful.

So I said, "I love you, too."

At the sound of my voice, Sara's body jerked a little like she was waking up. Then she said my name like it was a question, and started to laugh quietly.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, and laughed again. Then she said, "I thought you were Scott."

Sara fell fully asleep again within moments, and when the blinds over my windows started to lighten at sunrise, I finally fell asleep, too. I dreamed about screaming and about sharp things cutting my hands and about having bony wings that broke against the force of the wind.

When I woke up, like always, it was just before hitting the ground.

the woman who lived in defiance

One day this lady comes in to the church where I work, says she needs help buying gas. I got to get to Atlantic City, she says. Ran outta gas on the interstate.

I tell her we can help but I need to see her ID. I have to photocopy it for our records. She gives me her license and while I'm copying it, I look at the name of the city. It's Defiance. Defiance, Ohio.

Sounds like a fun place to live, I tell her, Defiance. She says she don't know because man, she used to live there, but she never really lived there, know what I mean? And I tell her yeah, I know just what you mean.

She ain't got any family in Atlantic City, she says when I ask. No friends neither. I just got to get there, she says, because I had this dream one night that I lived in Atlantic City, and everything was alright there, know what I mean? I got to get to Atlantic City because then everything'll be fine. I just need some gas, she says.

Things aren't so bad here, I tell her. You could stay here; Georgia's not so bad. She says it ain't Atlantic City though and she laughs like don't I know it? And I do know, but I've never been to Atlantic City so I can't be sure it'd be that much better. I never had a dream like hers.

I ask her, how'd you end up in Georgia anyhow? Pretty far out of the way. And she tells me her son died here, and she gets real quiet. I'm sorry, I tell her. That's gotta be hard.

She says one day she's fine, everything's alright and Ohio ain't so bad, the next day her son's dead in Georgia and she's got to go be with his wife. She says they're all crying, sitting together after the funeral in his old house, and someone's talking at them and her son's wife is looking away, then she gets up, excuses herself from the table. She's says she'll just be a little while. Next thing, they're calling an ambulance for the wife too, but she's already dead.

Went to the bathroom and shot herself, the lady tells me. Shot herself in the head. Never expected it. That girl was strong, she tells me. But she's dead all the same. I tell her I'm real sorry, that's gotta be hard.

That night she dreamed about going to Atlantic City. It'll all be alright, she says. I got some living to do there, know what I mean? I just need to get me some gas first, then I'll be gone.

how to write a love story

kicking around a nonfiction story idea about my undergrad writing professor/mentor who died about a year and a half ago:

In my mind, I can't separate the memory of my father telling me that every song is essentially a love song and the memory of PC telling me that every story is essentially a love story. But maybe PC didn't say that at all; maybe I only remember it that way because when I wrote about my father PC told me I'd written a love story, and that's the only way I can make myself understand what he meant. I want to believe it, though. I want to believe that all the things worth saying about people come from a love place somewhere closer to the surface than we think, and that listening to music with my father is like polishing up our hearts for further, deeper use, and that everything PC ever taught me about love was the God's honest truth.

the sugar war (first draft of first part)

This is all true: the August after Sweet Stuff Sugar Substitute went on the market, I lost my virginity twice, the youngest Knox boy almost got arrested for stealing a sock full of quarters, Harvey Senior died of severe insulin shock, and Resa took my hair. Those last three all happened on the same day. I sometimes call that day the last battle of the Sugar War, but by that time it was already pretty obvious that we had lost. We lost the day Gurley's Grocery started using dimes.

I was 19 the summer of the Sugar War and living in the bricked-off section of my grandma's garage. I had moved there after I flunked the first semester of art school because moving back into your parents' place after you'd already moved away was pretty embarrassing, and Gran said she could use the company. I had my own bathroom, but I still had to go inside Gran's part of the house whenever I wanted to use the kitchen, and every time I saw her, she asked me if I'd found a job yet. I finally told her I was working part-time down at the Harvey's on Lee Street just so she'd leave me alone. But after a week or so, I started feeling guilty for lying about it, so I walked the three blocks to Lee Street to apply for a job at Harvey's. That's how I met Resa.

Berry Branch only had two grocery stores, unless you count the Super Wal-Mart, which was right on the edge of town and technically closer to Fernville. We always shopped at the Harvey's because it was close to the house, but Berry Branch was so small that our house wasn't really that far from anywhere in town. It would take maybe a minute longer to get to the Gurley's if we went in the other direction, but Gran also knew Harvey Senior's wife from church, and I guess she thought shopping at Harvey's was like supporting their family. She didn't realize the name thing was just a coincidence. Harvey Senior didn't even work there anymore.

Harvey's was the last store at the end of a little shopping center beside a Chinese restaurant called Great Wall. There was a coin laundromat on the other side of Great Wall, so the parking lot always smelled kind of like deep fried dryer sheets. There were always five or six scrawny cats hanging out in the shade under the cars, and if they saw you carrying anything out of any store in the building, they would run up and crowd around your feet and make a lot of noise, waiting for you to drop something they could eat. They were a sad little gang, we all thought so, and more than once I saw Resa "accidentally" bust open a cheap bag of catfood on their behalf. She fed them behind the dumpster around back, and Junebug always pretended not to notice.

The first time I saw Resa was the night I went in to apply. She had bright orange hair, and was standing behind the fifth register in her green Harvey's apron, hooking paper clips together. The whole place was completely silent and smelled a little like Mop N Glo. I would have thought they were closed if she hadn't been standing there looking so bored. When I walked over and asked her for an application, I saw that her nametag had a piece of masking tape over it with the word Pumpkinhead written in black Sharpie where her name was supposed to be.

She didn't say anything for a moment, just tilted her head to one side and looked at me. She was thin, almost bony, but her face had a roundness to it that made her seem like she would be soft all over. The first thing she said to me was, "Your hair would make a good wig."

I don’t remember how I had my hair that day, but back then I usually wore it in two French braids or two enormous buns like Princess Leia. I didn't wear it down very often because it went to my butt and got tangled up in everything I tried to do, which, admittedly, wasn't much, but it was less hassle to put it up every morning than to try to hold it out of the way whenever I had to pee.

I didn't really know how to respond, so I just said, "Thanks."

She dropped her paper clip chain on the counter and crossed her arms, leaned against the cash register. Her nails were painted bright orange to match her hair. "You wanna be a stockboy?" she asked me. "We ain't got room for any more cashiers."

"I'll do whatever needs doing," I said. "I just need a job."

She didn't get me an application. She just picked up the phone next to the register, pressed a button, and said into the receiver, "Hey Junebug, come up here. There's a guy you need to talk to." Her voice was broadcast all around the empty store.

The manager of Harvey's was Harvey H. Hartley, Junior, but everybody called him Junebug. He was something like twelve years older than me, so we didn't really know each other yet, but when he came walking over, I recognized him right away on account of his picture was up all over the high school for scoring so many touchdowns when he played for the Berry Branch Bucks. He was still built like a football player, except that his middle was starting to get soft. We watched him hurrying over with a frown that made the little white scar on his chin stand out. "Now I told you," he said, looking at Resa, "you can't call me Junebug over the intercom. During store hours, I'm Mr. Hartley." He pointed at his nametag. It said H.H. Hartley, Jr., Manager.

"I found you a new stockboy," Resa said. "Feel free to thank me with money."

At the mention of a stockboy, Junebug's square face seemed to brighten up. He looked all around, not paying much attention to me. "Well, where is he? Think he can start right away? The truck came today and both the Leroys are out sick. I still got two pallets of sugar and flour that need to be shelved."

Resa nodded toward me. "He's right there."

"Hi," I said.

When he looked at me again, Junebug's expression caught itself somewhere between confusion and disappointment. "Oh," he said. He looked from me to Resa and back again. Then he turned to her and, quiet like I wouldn't be able to hear him even though I was standing right there, he said, "Sweetheart, that ain't a boy."

"Don't you call me sweetheart, Junebug Hartley," she said. "During store hours, I'm–" She looked down at her nametag as though she'd forgotten what was on it. "Pumpkinhead. And so what if he's a boy or not?"

Junebug turned back to me with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Miss, but we're only hiring guys right now. It's just that the job requires a lot of heavy lifting and–"

"Wait a second," Resa interrupted. "You're not hiring him because he's a girl? That's outrageous! This is an outrage. I am outraged, Junebug."

He kept talking to me. "We don't need any more cashiers either, but I can put your application on file, and if an opportunity comes up–"

"You think women can only be cashiers?" Resa demanded. She reached behind herself and untied her green apron strings. "That's so sexist! I can't believe I even work here! In fact, you know what? I quit." She pulled the apron off over her head and handed it to Junebug.

He rolled his eyes but took it from her anyway. When she bent down to grab her purse from underneath the register, Junebug said to me, "Well, it looks like a position just opened for cashier. You want it?"

Resa straightened. "You think I'm that easy to replace?"

"Hell, I wish you was that easy to replace," said Junebug. "But you don't ever leave."

"I'm leaving now!" she said, and began storming away toward the sliding glass doors that led outside. "And don't you try to stop me!"

"Why would I want to?" he hollered after her. "I been trying to get rid of you for two years!" When the doors slid closed behind her, Junebug said to me, "Sorry about that. She's a drama queen."

"No, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean for her to quit over me."

"What? Oh, no, that's what Resa does. She quits a couple times a week. Always shows up again for her next shift." He looked at his watch. "It was almost time for her to go home anyhow." He picked up the phone beside the register, pressed a number, and said into it, "Break's over, Darlene. Resa quit again."

"So there's not really an opening for a cashier, then," I said when he hung up.

"No, not really." He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, eyeing me. His shirt had a round wet spot in the armpit. He said, "Are you strong? You look kinda skinny."

I shrugged. "I helped my cousin with his furniture when he moved to Atlanta last year, so."

Darlene came out of the break room and took her place behind register two, already looking just as bored as Resa had.

"It was, you know. Couches and stuff. A bed frame. I didn't drop anything."

Junebug nodded. "Well, I didn't mean to assume nothing. If you can carry heavy boxes around every day without hurting yourself, you can have a job. Think you're up for it?"

"Sure," I said.

Just then, the doors slid open and Resa came right back inside like nothing had happened. "Hey, Junebug," she said. "I think I saw some Happy Cat back there with a hole in the bag. You mind if I take it?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Can't sell it with a hole in it," he told her. "Hey, I think I'm gonna give your friend here the stockboy job, see how it goes. What do you think of that?"

"Good," said Resa. "But she's not my friend."

I'm not sure why I was disappointed when she said that, since I didn't even know her yet or know if I wanted to be friends with her in the first place, but then Resa flashed me a smile for the first time, and I remember thinking that even though we'd just met, that smile was like we had some kind of secret between the two of us, and I couldn't help smiling back at her.

"I just have a thing for strays," she said.

***

The whole reason the Sugar War started in the first place was because of Sweet Stuff. They had this jingle that got stuck in your head like crazy: It won't be sweet enough unless you add Sweet Stuff! Every third TV commercial or radio ad or billboard was for the Stuff, and that jingle, man, it was catchy. People were buying it like a good lie, no doubts or questions. I even tried some myself in a batch of Harvey Senior’s homemade cupcakes that Junebug brought to work one day. Tasted just the same, and it was good for you too, much better than regular sugar. Zero calories, zero carbs. The only problem with the Stuff was it got so popular that, after a while, I think we all forgot it wasn't the real thing. I guess Old Harvey's proof of that.

The first strike came on the Sunday after the Wal-Mart in Fernville began stocking Sweet Stuff. I never went to the Wal-Mart since I didn’t have a car and it was too far to walk, but Junebug explained what was going on when he showed me and Resa the weekly sale paper. Gurley's had lowered the price of a five-pound bag of regular sugar to 59¢. Junebug said the idea was to offset the attraction of the pricey Sweet Stuff and keep people from going out to Fernville for their groceries, but I could tell he was offended personally by what the Gurley's sale paper was calling the Weekly Manager's Special.

"Knox thinks he'll take our business, too," Junebug muttered. "Bastard wouldn't know what loyalty was if it bit him in the face."

Kenny Knox had actually bitten Junebug in the face once. Resa told me it was during a wrestling match in P.E. when they were seniors in high school, and that's how he got the little scar on his chin. But she also said that Junebug didn't like to talk about it, so I never asked him if it was true. I don't even know how Resa found out, seeing as how she wasn't even from Berry Branch in the first place and would've been too young to see it happen if she had been. But apparently, the Hartleys and the Knoxes hadn't gotten along since then, and it didn't help that Kenny was managing the only real competition Harvey's had in town.

I had only been working at Harvey's for a few days when Gurley's launched that first attack. The job didn't require much thinking, but my arms and shoulders got a good workout from toting boxes around and stocking the shelves. I think Junebug took it easier on me than on the other stockboys since I was a girl, and sometimes when I looked up he was even helping me out at the other end of one of my aisles, which was definitely not the manager's responsibility. But I didn't complain about it. I liked having him there to talk to, and it was nice having him around even when we weren't talking, like how I imagine it would be to have an older brother looking out for you.

So far my work schedule had almost exactly matched Resa's, so we were sort of getting to know each other, too. We were the same age, but in some ways she seemed a lot older than me, more worldly and experienced. And she was so damn confident. If I didn't know better, I'd say she had never been afraid of anything in her life. Sometimes the customers were flat-out rude to her on account of she had such a unique style, but their comments didn't seem to bother her one bit. Every time someone called her a name, she'd just write it down on a piece of tape, stick it on her nametag, and own it. I admired the hell out of Resa, and I would've told her that if I'd had half the guts she did. But since I'd always been too chicken to say what I felt to anybody, I ended up just watching her all the time and wishing I could be like her, or at least close to her.

After Gurley’s put their sugar on sale, Resa's the one who suggested we ought to take counteractive measures. When she said that, Junebug's eyebrow went up right in the middle. He only had one thick eyebrow and it went over both his eyes, so when it moved, his whole face looked different. "Like how?" he asked.

A little while later, he came and found me shelving bags of dried peas. He had four blank posterboards with him, along with some markers and tape. "Hey, Pippi," he said. He had started calling me Pippi Longstocking because of my braids. "How good are you at making signs?"

"I flunked out of art school," I told him.

He handed me the supplies. "That means you're better than the rest of us," he said.
While Junebug took over stocking my shelves - which could have waited until I was done with the sign, but I guess he wanted to have something to do with his hands - I taped the four posters together and drew a giant bag of Southern Snow granulated sugar on it. It was the cheapest sugar Harvey's carried. Beneath the bag of sugar, I wrote, "Southern Snow, 5-Lb Bags, Only 49¢!" Across the top of the huge sign, I wrote, "MANAGER'S SPECIAL." It was exactly what Junebug wanted. As soon as I was done, he took the sign up to the front of the store and stuck it in the big plate-glass window facing the parking lot, whistling the whole time.

So that's how the Sugar War got started. I still don't know if it was Kenny Knox's fault for lowering his price first or if it's Resa fault for saying we should fight back, Junebug's fault for agreeing to retaliate, or my fault for making the humongous sign. Hell, maybe it's Wal-Mart's fault for selling Sweet Stuff in the first place. Whenever I try to figure out who to blame, though, I always end up blaming Sweet Stuff itself. As far as I know, it's the only thing that actually claimed any casualties.

***

Resa had different colored hair every day, and not one of the colors was something people could naturally grow, unless they'd maybe been exposed to radiation or something. Her fingernails and eyebrows usually matched her hair, although the day after the Sugar War started, they were both lime green while her wig was lemon yellow. She was in the break room when I went to clock in. The masking tape on her nametag already said Freak.

"Been busy today?" I asked her.

"Old ladies," she said, retying her green Harvey's apron which had come aloose. "We're gonna need more sugar." All the yellow and green made her look sort of like a bottle of Mellow Yellow. "Hey, Pip," she added, "are you the one who drew that sugar in the front window?"

The first time Junebug called me Pippi in front of Resa, she wrote it down on a piece of tape and stuck it on my nametag like the way she always did with hers. It didn't take long for everyone at the store to start calling me Pippi, although Resa was the only one who shortened it to Pip. "Yeah," I said.

"It looks pretty cool," she told me.

It was just a stupid drawing of a bag of sugar on a bunch of taped-together posters. After Resa complimented it, though, I started feeling like maybe it was kind of good. It made me happy that she noticed. "Thanks," I said. "Junebug asked me to do it, so."

"You ever do people?"

"Sometimes." One of the art classes I'd failed had had live models. "But I'm better at things that don't move."

Smiling a little, Resa came over close to me and put her hands on my shoulders. I'd already learned that personal space was an alien concept when it came to her, but it was still startling how close she sometimes liked to get when she talked. That intensity made everything that she said or did seem more important. She didn't even blink. "If I promised to hold really still for you," she said, "would you draw me sometime?"

Resa didn't have eyelashes. I'd known from the start that she didn't have eyebrows because they were a different color every day and obviously drawn on, but it took me a few days of knowing her to realize that her dark lashes were fake too. The only reason I even noticed is because she liked to get right up on you to talk. That day, I remember thinking how odd it seemed that her eyes were plain brown like mine when everything else about her was so interesting and vibrant. She smelled sweet, like apples. If I'd put my hands on her waist, we could have been dancing.

I don't even remember how I answered her, but it must have been something like a yes. She was the kind of girl that you didn't really say no to, even if you wanted to, which I didn't. I had this inexplicable desire to do whatever it would take to please Resa. I'd never been so desperate for someone to like me before.

Whatever it was that I said made Resa smile bigger, and we were standing there like that with her smiling at me when Junebug walked into the break room talking on his cell phone. I hurried and pulled away from her like he had caught us doing something wrong, but he wasn't paying us any mind, and Resa just chuckled at me. She said, "See ya later, straight girl," like I had told her I was straight even though we hadn't talked about it at all, and then she left the room to go back to her register, and I stood there watching her leave, not really getting what had just happened but wondering suddenly if Resa maybe liked girls. It hadn't occurred to me before.

In an irritated voice, Junebug was saying to his phone, "No, Mama, we ain't gonna start selling that stuff, but we got a good price going on real sugar right now, and... Well, I know he's not supposed to have... Yes, but we... Isn't the medicine supposed to...? Alright, well, you're gonna have to get it at Wal-Mart. Gurley's don't carry it either."

***

We had a truck come in the next day, and I spent my entire shift unloading boxes. I didn't see Resa at all except when I first walked in, and then again when I was getting ready to leave. Her hair was a dark blue bob, and she had a shiny gold star right at the corner of her eye like an anime character. She was standing at register five talking to Junebug when I walked by, and she stopped me to ask where I'd been all day. Her nametag said Rainbow Brite.

"She's been building up those skinny arms of hers, right Pippi?" Junebug said. He bumped his big fist against my arm. "A couple more trucks, and we'll make a man outta you."

I gave him a smile, but Resa's drawn-on blue eyebrows pulled together in a frown. "You mean to say," she said to him, "that you've been forcing this poor girl to haul big ole boxes around all day for minimum wage while you've been sitting up in your office eating brownies? Junebug Hartley, just who do you think you are?"

His eyebrow went up. "Now hold on a minute--"

"Oh, he helped with the truck," I said. Junebug had in fact done the majority of the heavy lifting that should've been my job and only stopped after I assured him I could do the rest. The other stockboys had rolled their eyes, but I thought it was nice of him to want to help me, if unnecessary.

"You're the one who said I oughta hire a girl as a stockboy," Junebug pointed out. Then he added, "And they were blondies, not brownies." All the Hartleys had given up chocolate when Harvey Senior found out he was diabetic, but Junebug still had a mighty sweet tooth.

"I can't believe you," Resa said anyway, reaching back to untie her green apron. "Making her tote all those heavy boxes - and in this heat! That's exploitation, Junebug. Poor thing's clearly exhausted. Just look at her!"

Junebug looked at me. I shrugged.

Resa pulled the apron off over her head. "Well, I won't stand for it," she announced, thrusting the apron toward Junebug. "Consider this my resignation."

Junebug looked at his watch and then took the apron from her with a sigh. "Fine," he said, "I'll see you tomorrow. But you keep doing this, sweetheart, and one of these days I'm not gonna take you back."

"One of these days, I'm not coming back," Resa replied. She grabbed her purse and came out from behind the register, then hooked her arm through mine. "Come on, Pip," she said. "Let's get off this plantation."

Resa practically dragged me out with her as she marched off. It was about two hours to closing time and already dark outside. As soon as we got to the parking lot, the stray cats came running up to Resa like they expected something from her, but she didn’t seem to notice them, and one almost got kicked in the head when she stepped over it. I assumed Resa would let go of me to go to her car, but she didn’t. She just started walking me in the direction I normally went when I got off work, towards Gran’s house, her arm around mine the whole time.

"I saw that little Knox kid in the store today," she said. "Betcha he tells Kenny about the sugar sale." That little Knox kid was Kenny's youngest brother Chet, who was fourteen and not actually little in the traditional sense. He was almost as tall as Junebug. Resa had told me that Kenny sent his brothers into Harvey's sometimes as spies, but I didn't really see why that would be necessary. A grocery store was always just a grocery store to me. I'd never been to Gurley's, but I imagine it didn't differ that much from our store on the inside.

"You think Kenny'll be mad?"

"Oh, livid!" She laughed. "You watch; as soon as he finds out what we did, he's gonna drop his price again to beat us."

Forty-nine cents was already really low for a five-pound bag of sugar. I couldn't imagine Gurley's selling it for less. "And then what? You think Junebug'll want to drop our price again?"

"Of course," said Resa. She gave me that smile that looked like we were in on something together. "We couldn't let them win."

Resa walked with me all the way to the corner of the parking lot. I kept thinking she'd let go of me, but when I turned the corner and started heading down the road, she just came along, talking the whole way. First she told me everything worth knowing about some of the other cashiers, Darlene and Keisha and Mary Beth, and then she started on the stockboys, Jeb and Leroy and the other Leroy and Catfish Hanson. She didn't know much about Catfish except how he got his nickname, which was pretty disgusting, although she laughed the whole time she was telling me. Resa had this amazing laugh that got inside your chest and shimmied around until you couldn't help laughing with her. And her voice, when she wasn't arguing with Junebug, was low and soft and feminine, and everything she said sounded like a secret. By the time we got to Gran's, I felt like I'd known her for years.

My little space in the garage didn't have a lock on it, so every time I left, I rolled an old push-mower in front of the door to discourage people from wandering in. It was embarrassing having to move things around to get to the door, as though no one had been there in a long time and I was just taking Resa to somebody's storage room in their garage, but she didn't say anything about it. When I opened up the door, she walked right into the place and plopped down on my red beanbag chair like she came there all the time and nothing was weird at all about her following me home. I looked around to make sure I didn't have anything embarrassing laying out in the open, and then I sat on the edge of my bed facing Resa.

She was looking back at me, the star at the corner of her eye glinting in the light from my lamp. "So, where are we doing this?" she asked.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but as soon as she said that I felt my stomach get really cold, which is what happens when I'm nervous. I had this sudden feeling like me and Resa were about to do something important. It was a lot like how I felt when I was fifteen years old, sitting in David Cantrelle's jeep parked behind the Dairy Queen after a football game, right before he kissed me for the first time. Like I was about to lose something and find something both at once. I said, "I don't know. What are we doing?"

I must've looked as anxious as I felt, because Resa laughed at me. "Relax, straight girl," she said. "Yesterday you said you'd draw me. I just want to know where I should sit."

"Oh," I said, and exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. I don't know if I was relieved or disappointed. "Right there's fine. Let me just. I need to get my stuff." I stood and went to the closet to get my big sketchpad and chalk pastels. I figured I'd sketch Resa in shades of blue because her hair was blue that day, but when I got everything together and turned back around, Resa was holding the blue hair in her hands instead of wearing it. I was so startled to see her like that I almost dropped my box of chalk.

Resa had this thing called alopecia universalis, which is some kind of rare disorder that makes you lose all your hair. Under those bright colored wigs she wore every day, her scalp was as smooth as an egg shell, and almost as pale. I'd known since I met her that she was always wearing a wig, but I guess I just expected her to have hair under it, maybe even just really short hair, not this perfect round smoothness. There wasn't even any peach fuzz, as if she'd gone over her whole head very carefully with a razor. I stared at her.

Resa snorted. "Pick your jaw up off the floor, Pippalotta. Ain't you ever seen a bald chick before?"

The truth was I hadn't, but that's not why I couldn't look away. "Sorry," I said.

She shrugged. "It's no big deal. I haven't had hair since I was thirteen." And then she folded her thin arms behind her head and leaned back on the beanbag chair, closing her eyes. She said, "I want it to look like I'm asleep."

I sat back down on my bed with my sketchpad and chalks and began to draw Resa in blue. I was glad she had her eyes closed because I found myself more than once forgetting that I was supposed to be drawing her and instead just looking at her hairless skin, imagining running my blue-smudged hands over the curve of her scalp. Somehow, without the wig on, it seemed like she was lying there completely naked. I wasn't sure why it affected me so much to see her that way. I hadn't even been this distracted when I had to draw an actual naked guy in art class.

While I drew her, Resa talked. She told me that she had moved away from home after her mother died when she was seventeen, that she'd been on her way from this tiny town in Florida to New York City but only made it as far as Berry Branch before she decided it was as good a place as any to stop and try to save up some money. She said she was still planning to move to New York as soon as she could afford it, that Berry Branch was just a stop along the way. A really long stop. When she got to New York, she said, she was going to be a dancer.

Resa's smooth head filled my page, her slender arms and neck, round face. Even though they were fake, I added in her eyebrows and eyelashes and the little gold star. I let her go on talking after I was done drawing her, just listening to her voice and watching her pink lips move while she told me all her plans. Even now, I don't remember ever seeing someone more beautiful.

When Resa finally opened her eyes, I turned the sketchpad around so she could see what I'd drawn. She sat up on the beanbag chair and took it from me. And then she just sat there looking at it for a long time. I was worried she hated it because she didn't say anything, so I said, "I'm sorry it's not very good."

"Don't be an idiot," Resa said. "It's gorgeous."

She asked me to sign my name so I did, and then I tore the drawing out of the pad for her and rolled it up. She gave me a hug when she took it. Resa was thin, but I was really aware of her small breasts pressing against mine when she pulled me close. "Thanks," she said in my ear, and tugged on one of my braids.

"You're welcome," I said.

I watched Resa leave my place that night with the rolled-up drawing in one hand and her dark blue wig in the other, and I probably wouldn't have admitted this at the time - hell, at the time I didn't even realize it - but by the moment she stepped around the old push-mower and out of my grandma's garage, I was about half in love with that girl.

***

the sugar war (ii)

so this is what i wrote for the love scene assignment for our fiction class. it's part of the sugar war, but it's not the part that comes after the part i already posted. (obviously. because that wouldn't make sense.) i think my class liked it when i read it out loud, and that makes me happy. :)

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Resa had this thing called alopecia universalis, which is some kind of rare disorder that makes you lose all your hair. Under those bright colored wigs she wore every day, Resa's head was as smooth as an egg shell, and that's including her eyebrows and lashes. I remember watching her draw on eyebrows with a purple eyeliner pencil one time, her bald scalp shining, the lavender wig still sitting in perfect order on its Styrofoam head beside the sink. She caught me looking at her in the mirror and she grinned, blew me a kiss, and then stuck a tiny gold star at the corner of her eye like one of those cute little anime characters. I never did tell her how beautiful I thought she was, how I was always thinking about her pale hairless skin, wanting to put my charcoal-smudged hands all over it. I figure she must've known anyway. There's no way she couldn't know I wanted her all the time. She probably knew before I did.

For all the wanting, though, I only had Resa -- really had her -- once. It was four days before the end of the Sugar War, and we'd just found out about Gurley's dimes, so we were feeling pretty lousy when we got home from work. I think we both knew Harvey's had lost the War that day, but neither one of us wanted to say it, so we walked into the place not saying anything at all. I tossed my keys on the table by the door while Resa swiped the neon green wig off her round head and plopped it down on one of the empty heads facing the doorway.

Listen, I wanted to say. There's nothing we could have done. Who knew Gurley's could afford to sink that low? Not us. We couldn't have known. It's not our fault! But I didn't say that out loud either, because when Resa turned toward me again, she didn't seem too interested in words. She just came over and put her cool hand up to my cheek, ran the pad of her thumb across my bottom lip. I didn't really know what she was doing, so I just stood there noticing the pencil strokes of her dark green eyebrows and didn't move.

"Okay, straight girl," Resa said. "This is what's going to happen. I'm about to kiss you, and I don't want you making any noise about not being gay." She was looking at my mouth when she said that, but then she looked up at my eyes. "I'm tired of feeling so shitty," she said, "so we're just going to make each other feel good for a little while. Understand?"

I think I nodded, or at least I didn't push her away. She was the kind of person you didn't really say no to, even if you wanted to, which I didn't. I'd never kissed another girl before, but I think I'd been thinking about kissing Resa for a long time. When I didn’t protest, she smiled a little, and then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine.

It wasn’t like kissing a boy. Her mouth was so soft and small, and I could taste her green apple lip gloss on my lips after she pulled away and opened her eyes. Our kiss had only lasted a couple of seconds, and I hadn’t closed my eyes at all; I was probably worried that if I did, she wouldn’t really be there when I opened them again. She was smiling at me. She said, “Not bad, straight girl,” and then she slid her hand into my hair and pulled me toward her again, and this time she used her tongue. I closed my eyes.

I’d always been a little fascinated with Resa’s bald head. It was so smooth. There wasn’t even any peach fuzz, as if she’d gone over the whole thing very carefully with a razor. And I never would have asked her, but I wondered sometimes exactly how much of her body was affected, if she maybe had any hair further down. That day, the day Gurley’s won the Sugar War, I found out.

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Last Night on Earth

i wrote the first draft of this lyric essay in my first nonfiction workshop in milledgeville. karen told me it had potential, but i put it away for a long time and didn't look at it again for about nine months. i don't know why i pulled it out again and started revising, since i don't really have any plans to submit it anywhere, but now that i have done some revising, i feel like i should do something with it. so, into the blogosphere it goes! fly, my pretty!

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Last Night on Earth

1. Swallowing one at a time is easy. You're used to taking medicine this way, one round white pill and then one more, sometimes followed by a sip of water. Sometimes there isn't water, like sitting in church on Sunday mornings, or during the three-hour drive to Grandmother's house, and those times you swallow them dry, one and then one. You always have at least that many with you. They're in the giant white bottle in the kitchen cabinet, the first aid kit in the hall bathroom, a tiny green bottle in your mother's purse. In middle school, you started carrying your own travel-sized bottle of headache medicine in your backpack. You never knew when the pain was going to start.

2. Two at once isn't any more difficult than one, but there's a bitter aftertaste if you don't take them with water, if you don't swallow right away, if you're standing in the kitchen with them slowly dissolving on the back of your tongue, suddenly wondering how many you're going to take before you stop. There are two more pills in your hand, little round dots at opposite corners of your palm like on one side of a domino.

When you were little, your sister made a game out of spoon-feeding you the sweet purple milk left over after a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. She called it your medicine.

Two pills is the recommended dosage for adults and children over the age of twelve. You'll be fifteen in ten days.

3. You're counting. This is how you do everything. You count stairs as you go up them and you count footsteps from one room to another, from your bedroom to the kitchen medicine cabinet. You count the freckles on your arms and the number of blinds on windows and how many fence posts and telephone poles and blue pickup trucks between your house and the school because it seems important, like something you'll need to remember later, so you'll have the answer if anyone asks.

Three pills make a diagonal line down your hand, and you think about that line even after you've tilted back your head and let them fall into your mouth. You'd been doing your advanced geometry homework just moments before and now there are lines everywhere, the one you can still feel across your palm and one from your tongue to your stomach, where the pills are tumbling down. Thin pink lines on the kitchen wallpaper, the path you followed into this room from your bed, the line from your feet that comes out of the top of your head and keeps going up, keeps you standing. The line of motion your hand makes from your lips to the bottle sitting on the counter and back again.

You'll find out one day that you count because there's something broken in your brain, but for now you're pulling patterns out of this bottle, one pill, then two pills, then three pills, and it makes sense for you to do it this way. Next you'll have four. But you already know that you're going to leave some pills in the bottle. Your mother gets headaches a lot.

4. You can swallow them together easily, even without water. You're not drinking water because you didn't think about it before you started, and now that you've started you can't stop to get water because that would interrupt the pattern. Maybe you could stop for water after every fourth swallow, make it part of the ritual, but that's cheating and in your head it's a competition now. How many can you swallow at once without having trouble, without their little white bodies getting stuck in your throat? How many before you choke on them?

5. The first time you tried something like this you were eleven years old. The recommended dosage for you was one tablet, so you took three times that amount and waited all night for something to happen. When you woke up in the morning, you cried.

In about twelve hours, you'll be lying on a hospital bed telling a stranger about that night while your parents sit beside the bed listening. Your mother won't believe any of it, but it won't occur to you to care about that until later. When you tell the story, you'll be thinking about the pot of leftover chili that was sitting on the stovetop at home while you gulped down the pills. You'll be wondering whether or not anyone thought to put it away.

6. Two years from now, you'll be out at a restaurant with some friends, and they'll each order a Diet Coke to drink. The waiter will accidentally bring you a Diet Coke as well, and you'll take one sip, then clap a hand over your mouth and run towards the bathroom. You won't quite make it to the toilet before you start throwing up.

When your friends ask, you'll tell them you aren't feeling well. You won't tell them that Diet Coke tastes like rotten broccoli and sour milk to you because it's what a nurse mixed with the medicine they made you drink at the hospital when they wanted you to vomit. You won't describe the thick, gritty charcoal mixture they made you drink first that turned your teeth black or the way it makes partially-digested chili look like bubbling tar when it comes up. You won't say anything about the swirls of white pills throughout the black like little shooting stars, but you'll remember, while you sit at that restaurant with your friends, trying to count the stars on their dark background until a man in pink scrubs came and took away your puke-bucket.

7. You'd been arranging the pills on your palm the same way that dots are arranged on dice, but when you get to seven, you pause. You stare down at the tablets, trying to decide where to put the seventh one, and finally settle on rearranging them into a circle before you dump them into your mouth. Tomorrow night at the hospital, you'll dream about circles. Shapes and numbers and colors. When you get home in two days, your half-finished geometry homework will be lying on the floor exactly where you left it, and you'll pick up a pencil and start working on it again as though nothing had happened. Your hands will be covered in purple and yellow bruises from an IV needle that kept missing the vein.

8. Your throat is starting to get dry. You haven't even cried yet. Maybe you won't cry at all. A few minutes from now your mother will be screaming at you, trying to drag you down the hallway by the arms, and your socks will make you slip and fall on the wooden floor. She'll haul you into the bathroom and push you down to your knees in front of the toilet. She'll force you to stick your fingers down your throat, and while you feel how dry the inside of your mouth is, she'll tell you over and over how stupid you are.

When you don't throw up, she'll go and get the bottle of pills to see how many you took, if it's serious enough to take you to the hospital. But she won't remember how many had been in the bottle to begin with, whether it was a new bottle or an old one. She'll dump some pills into your hands. Was it this many? Then she'll add more. This many? How many? She'll dump the whole bottle into your hands, and the little white pills will flow over your fingers onto the bathroom floor with scattered tapping sounds as you kneel in front of her. They will look like they're jumping. More than this? she'll ask.

When you try to explain that you were saving those pills for her, she won’t understand what you’re talking about.

9. This time the pills stick to your tongue and you have to swallow twice to get them all down. The inside of your mouth tastes bad. For the rest of your life, any time you hold pills in your hand, you're going to think about this moment. You're going to remember the way it feels to have a mouthful of bitter, dry chalk and not be able to swallow it fast enough.

Now that you've broken the pattern, the only way you can think to make it right is try nine again. You'll just keep trying nine until you can do it properly.

9. You didn't know you were coming in here to do this until you were standing here doing it, so you're not sure what to expect. You're picturing your body with lines drawn all over it, dividing it into separate parts. You're picturing each part shutting down one after another, beginning with your toes and fingers. Is that how it works?

9. How many does it take?

9. When the stranger asks you why you swallowed so many pills, you're going to tell him that you had a really bad headache. He'll prescribe more pills and regular psychiatric attention, but you won't fill the prescription or go see a therapist. Six years from now, you'll come across the stranger's business card still tucked inside your mother's wallet. In seven years, you're going to try this again a different way.

9. You don't know what's going to happen. You have this idea that you'll collapse here on the kitchen floor and still be awake but unable to move your body, just a pile of separate parts that you can't feel, like the invisible line that keeps you standing was snipped with a tiny pair of scissors. You look around the kitchen and try to memorize everything. The way the magnets are positioned on the refrigerator, the number of dirty bowls in the sink, the smell of chili in the pot on the stove, the shape of everything. You think about drinking something. You think about going outside to look up at the stars. You think this is probably your last night on earth, your last opportunity. You don't know what's going to happen.

In the corner near the stove, the linoleum is peeling up a little bit. You'd never noticed that before.

9. If you can do all nine at once, does that mean you win? You stand there counting pills into your palm, arranging them into a circle. You count them and recount them and recount them. You're trying to remember the rules of your game. You're trying to remember if you're even still playing.

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