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Where Harry and Helen Staley would sleep was obvious; Winnie would give up her full-sized bed and take the couch. She scrubbed the grimy black and white tile in the bathroom. She shopped for sophisticated snacks that would appeal to anyone: figs; a wedge of brie; a can of salted mixed nuts; two bottles of wine, one red, one white, each under six dollars, which would stretch her budget at that; and some sparkling water. New York had the best water, she heard people say, and had learned to repeat it. Harry wouldn’t mind drinking from the tap: he was originally from Brooklyn, and when he wanted to amuse the students in his James Joyce class in Albany, he spoke like he had marbles in his mouth, shaking his jowls, “Ahm from Brookluhn.” When he did that, Winnie, who sat on the left side of the first row, imagined him as a little boy in tweed knickers, knocking a ball out of a scrappy baseball field with a wad of age-inappropriate tobacco in his cheek. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure if Helen would drink tap water.

It was Harry who had been her professor. Semester after semester she took every class of his that was on offer: The History of the English Language, its centuries of root words tugging at her; James Joyce, if only for the dirty Molly Bloom bits; Romantic Poetry, and how romantic it was when he read to them, Keats, of course; Shelley, of course.

Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,

which makes thee terrible and dear–.

Their visits began in his office. Winnie would drop in, enraptured by a line from a book or poem, and flop down on the spare chair in his office hoping to get him talking. He would slip back and forth between his Brooklyn rogue and his Irish brogue. He smiled first and twinkled second and welcomed her back anytime third. One time she went to visit him, and another student sat in that same chair to talk about an actual paper. She listened outside the door, searching for the same fondness in his voice, and was comforted that it was nowhere to be found. He was wearing her favorite sweater of his, a sea green stitched wool with a moth hole in the elbow. If she could, she would have borrowed it to wear down the second elbow. On his desk were pads written on with a slanted Palmer-trained handwriting in stubby pencil, not pen.

Their visits continued at the Monday night open mic poetry readings at the QE2 bar on Central Avenue where he turned up to read poetry about his Irish heritage and Catholic upbringing.

I attended children’s mass,

lulled by Latin, carefully Young Father Smith revealed the host,

omnipotent and bright,

larger than a quarter.

 “But not a drop of the blood to pass my lips,” he said later, winking at her. She was sure he’d seen her outside earlier smoking, and she’d felt mortified, and stomped out the filter, aware of her stench. The feeling was a knotted mess: getting away with something, but craving approval. Maybe it was the poetry, maybe it was the moth hole, maybe it was the stubby pencils. Maybe she wanted to get too close.

And finally, they met across his own threshold in a historical building on State Street, in his formal parlor, a baby Steinway with no sign of play and lots of upholstery and creaky wooden floors and mouldings and furniture. During her first visit, Helen buzzed about the background of their pre-war galley kitchen, making tea. Until she didn’t hang back. She was small, but her presence formidable. She drove a long white Chevy Impala, and at 4’11” her hands reached up to the steering wheel like a young child’s. It was impossible to see her little head behind the wheel unless she was wearing her formidable black fur hat.

It didn’t take long for Winnie to understand herself to be witness to the strange dynamics of a marriage. Before her visits to State Street, marriage hovered in her mind like an abstract dollhouse that she’d never fit into, only with car payments and a shared bank account. Most often, marriage looked like divorce.

With a cup of tea balanced on a saucer that was balanced on her knee, Winnie noticed that for every word that Harry uttered, Helen uttered twelve. At first, she finished his sentences. Soon, she covered them over before they could get a running start. He sat like a scolded child with his hands folded in his lap, sulking in a deep chair. This gathering morphed into a strange triangulation, a daydream where Harry struggled to push open a heavy mahogany door, only to have it slammed shut by Helen. Winnie wanted to push it back open and leave it that way. She wanted a skeleton key, so she could push Helen into a dark hallway and lock the door and listen to him finish his own sentences for eternity.

*

It had been a couple of years since Winnie packed up a U-Haul after graduation and moved to New York City. “Don’t put an ad in the Village Voice!” she’d said to a former classmate who was leaving her cheap apartment to move in with her boyfriend. It was now a couple of years since she’d sat in the Staley’s parlor, and they were coming to stay with her.

It was dark by the time her doorbell buzzed. Winnie pressed the intercom and tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m gonna buzz you! Come on in! I’m on the 3^rd floor.” Helen appeared first, emerging around the curve of the stairwell, the same black fur hat covering her fiery red hair that always covered her fiery red hair. Her black wool cape dragged on the floor as she climbed the stairs. Her winter boots were from another time altogether, also fur, with embroidery woven across the seams, not unlike the arts and crafts displayed at the annual Ukrainian street fair in Winnie’s neighborhood.

She hugged them both and showed them to her room, apologizing about everything in no specific order (the size of her apartment; the box of cat litter in the corner; the narrow spiral staircase with hard metal edges that lead up to the bedroom—oh, be careful!—; and the firmness of her mattress). For herself, she made a nest on the couch with her black cat, Charlie.

*

When Winnie came home from work the next evening, Harry and Helen were out visiting friends. Helen made their friends sound so glamorous. A homosexual, in the theater. An artist who we met in Japan. Her bathroom was now a skyline of personal toiletries, including a canister of orange-flavored Metamucil. There was no turning back, she understood. The cracks that surfaced with intimacy would only spread from there.

At 10:45, the buzzer buzzed, and they climbed the stairs, Helen chattering to Harry nonstop. “But they didn’t stay for long, did they? That was a bore. At least the borscht was homemade.”

*

The second time the Staleys came to visit, it was to attend an art opening on 25^th Street, not for their friend the Japanese artist, Helen was careful to clarify, but for another wonderful friend, from Amsterdam. Would Winnie be able to break free from work to meet them for lunch at the gallery? “Yes, of course,” she said, wishing she could see Harry alone.

On the appointed day, Winnie waited awkwardly for them to turn up. From a large picture window, she watched heavy, wet snow fall. A yellow taxi pulled up and she watched as Helen exited onto the slushy curb. Her black fur hat fell into the snow, and she bent like an accordion to pick it up. What was left of her hair was freshly dyed red, long and wild, and blew into her face. Harry emerged next, wearing sneakers with no socks. A thin, white anorak was the only thing protecting him from the sharp Hudson River wind. When they came inside, it seemed a wonderful shock at seeing her there, even though they’d made plans three days earlier. Winnie quickly surmised that they’d forgotten her. Lunch wasn’t going to happen. Oh dear, it’s snowing, and best if we don’t spend the night. Best if we turn around and catch an earlier train back upstate.

When she left to return to work, hot tears spilled.

On the floor of the small elevator in her office building, a brass stamp was engraved into the floor that read “Staley.” It might have been the elevator maker; it might have been an elevator distributor, if there was such a thing. Every time Winnie rode up or down, she meditated on the “S” which swooped with a lovely serif at each end. Sometimes it looked tarnished, barely noticeable under the scrum of shuffling feet. Other times, a fresh new shine drew her eyes towards it. Always, out of an odd respect for the randomness of its placement, she did her best to sidestep it altogether. If she were alone, she might articulate an S sound, connecting it to another word. Serendipity. Snake. Sunshine. Sadness.

*

The years ticked on and they fell out of touch. Occasionally, she spotted a book of poetry on her bookshelves by Harry called Lives of a Shell-shocked Chaplain. Winnie had perched it next to a book Helen had self-published, about a cat. She wondered if they were still alive, living in their grand, but down-at-the-heels apartment on State Street in Albany. The last time she’d been there, Helen was doing a furious “lightening up.” She came out of her kitchen holding a set of opaque, rose-colored aperetif glasses, and a sake set. “I carried these on my lap from Japan when we came home from our honeymoon. We would love for you to have them.” Harry sat upright in his faded green armchair, smiled, and nodded with approval. Winnie’s heart cracked open. They were like grandparents, but that wasn’t right. He was like an old love, but that wasn’t right, either.

The last time she’d sat in his office, he’d tucked his chin in his palm, looked at her wistfully, and said, “Oh Winnie, if only I were younger.” Until that afternoon, Winnie had never asked Professor Staley for an extension on a paper. She knocked on his door and he gently pulled it open, surprised to see her on the other side. “Sit, sit!” In the warm glow of amber lamp light, his grin was crooked, his eyebrows two white caterpillars. He had no problem with her turning in her paper a day late, but asking him made her cheeks burn. She accepted that afternoon’s visit as a complex but beautiful inevitability, and it stayed with her for many years, like an extra button in a teacup.

*

Of all the places they ended up, the Catholic nursing home on New Scotland Avenue was not what Winnie imagined. A nurse explained that he and Helen had separate rooms. She asked for directions to Harry’s room. At the end of a long corridor, she found his empty bed made up with a mustard-colored shaggy comforter. On the bedside table, a hospital-issue plastic water pitcher, and a framed picture of he and Helen as young war lovers, she in crimson lipstick with that same unmistakable intensity in her gaze, and he jovial and goofy in his uniform. Winnie followed the musty smell of overly cooked vegetables to the cafeteria and found them sitting at the end of a group table. Both were in wheelchairs. Winnie leaned down to their height. Harry smiled, his remaining teeth protruding. Helen scoured, sending her painted left eyebrow into a sharp 90-degree angle. “I didn’t think we’d see you again,” she said.

Harry offered her his tapioca cup and patted her shoulder. “I know you, I know you!” She could have been his student; she could have been his daughter. Had Helen not been there, she wasn’t sure which identity she would have claimed. Artist from Amsterdam. Borscht maker. Daughter.

When she went back to work, she entered the elevator and looked downward at the brass stamp below her feet. Staley, with its two serifs.

-Albania, 1971-

            The prisoner would remain nameless as far as Besim was concerned. He had first learned his name months ago when he had arrived at the prison. Besim prided himself on knowing the first and last names of each one of the prisoners. He’d try to be generous—to the best of his ability and to the best of their circumstances, but he learned quickly that most of the prisoners had no interest in exchanging niceties with him and that most spit at the officers as soon as their backs were turned. Still, despite subtle displays of protest, they obeyed the rules, too weak and too tired to try their hand at debauchery.

            The prisoner coughed violently. Why, thought Besim to himself, why gamble with your life you simple-minded fool? His fist went numb and then stung as it made contact with the prisoner’s cheekbone. It was dim and cold in the room and the nameless one’s pain echoed off the walls as he grunted and moaned in response. He worked hard to breathe and Besim wondered if he had broken his nose.

            “Get up,” he muttered, as he shook his fist to make the pain go away. The prisoner’s head hung limply to the left and he could’ve passed for dead had it not been for the labored breathing.

            “Get up,” Besim repeated calmly.

            “Do you know why you are here?” Besim asked between breaths as he tried to pull him up and straighten him against the wall. The prisoner didn’t flinch at the sound of his voice. “You were sent to the camp because you cannot be trusted. You were then brought here because you proved us right.”

*

            Edi stopped running and bent over to catch his breath. His adrenaline was draining with the sunlight and in the silence of the forest; reality was beginning to envelop him. His mistakes rose to the surface of his consciousness and his body trembled in the cool evening air.

            I should have waited until after roll call, he thought to himself. I should have waited for darkness to run. The forest was thicker than he had anticipated and he was, at first, grateful he had not taken off into the night. But now he realized his grave mistake in not waiting for the dark, after each person in the camp had been called out and accounted for. He hadn’t been on the run for more than twenty minutes before he heard shouting in the distance, knowing instantly that the woods had been infiltrated with soldiers looking for him.

            Beyond escaping the confines of camp, Edi didn’t have much of a plan and found himself hopelessly lost with the onset of night. There was still a childlike and primitive fear of the dark that he secretly harbored; the old trees blocked out the late sun, and their tangled trunks and abandoned foliage below created a mausoleum-like effect and Edi only hoped he wouldn’t die in the vast wilderness, alone and remembered only as an afterthought, a cautionary tale. He tried to shake off thoughts of his mortality, certain he had left the worst behind him. But the evening’s cacophonous sounds echoed; the sound of snapping twigs and leaves scattering and a slight wind picking up. Edi looked around briefly before setting his aim on one direction and moving towards it.

            He thought about his only companionship at the camp, a priest he had befriended upon his arrival, and found himself wishing more than ever that he wasn’t alone. The priest was different from all the others. Educated and socially aware, he nourished a part of Edi’s mind that Edi didn’t realize had been starving. Their discussions at first were the usual: “Where are you from? Who is your father? Where is he from?” Eventually they began to carry on deeper discussions in broken whispers late into the night. In this country’s new era, religion had become the forbidden fruit—one bite of it and you were destined to a life of destitution, of punishment and deprivation. And while their conversations in daylight veered back and forth between family history and stories of their lives before the camp, after hours there were questions about the afterlife and salvation. Eventually, even those discussions would shift to ghost stories and old family folklore.

            At night when the last family name had been called and accounted for and everyone retired to their homes, Edi would make his way back to the priest and knock twice lightly on the door; twice—never three times. Three knocks foreshadowed an impending death. Quietly the door would open, the priest would smile and stand to the side for Edi to walk in.

            “Did I ever tell you about…” were the priest’s first words and suddenly the night would begin. Edi wasn’t the most enlightened man but he believed his presence had become just as integral to the priest’s life as the priest had become to his.

*

            Edi held his side as he walked in the darkness, the cramp deepening with every breath he took. The forest seemed to grow louder the later it got and Edi wondered how many different animals thrived as nocturnal beings. He tried to recall what made him decide to leave the semblance of security he had accidentally stumbled upon, but nothing seemed to justify his current state of hopelessness. The last discussion he and the priest shared was the first time Edi dominated the conversation, talking about his fears and his insecurities and what he worried would happen to them both if they stayed at the camp. Somehow, through his incessant ramblings, Edi decided he would escape to run through the woods and over the mountains to Serbia and seek asylum. He urged the priest to join him, referring to the trip as an adventure.

            “Have you read anything by Jack London?” He asked the priest. “Have you ever wished you lived in the pages of a story that was so powerful, so exciting, that your life feels like nothing in comparison? As if you’re just waiting for the real part of this existence to begin?”

            The priest studied Edi’s face in the dim light. Edi was a good but simple man. He listened to the priest’s stories like a child weighing every one of his mother’s words. He knew Edi respected him as an older man and as a religious man; this was the first time the priest found Edi sounding provocative. He worried for where Edi’s mind was going, and yet he couldn’t smother the small flame of admiration that he felt deep in his chest.

            “You have a surefire chance of being killed on this run,” he responded. “Stay here and remain with the rest of us. We don’t have it as bad as the others, you know this well. It could be alright.” The priest vowed he’d never forget the look of disappointment on Edi’s face, replaced just as quickly with a look of utter determination.

            “I wasn’t born to be treated like cattle. Neither were you. Neither is anyone else here. I’m leaving whether or not you come with me, but a man can always use a friend on the road.”

            The discussion died down soon after and the priest regaled him once again with stories of the times before the quick rise of communism. He talked and talked until Edi was no longer laughing or responding in return and he realized Edi had fallen asleep, and the priest hoped by morning Edi would wake with a clear mind and a laugh, telling him how he was just overly excited the night before and was kidding around with his talk of running.

*

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim said after taking a long drag on his cigarette. He sat in a chair across the room from the prisoner, who was still slouched on the floor. He was conscious now, however, and he stared back at Besim from where he sat.

            “Tell me one thing,” Besim repeated. “Where did you think you’d end up? What did you think would happen?”

            The prisoner coughed once in response. One, two, three knocks against the concrete wall; he scraped his knuckles on the rough surface before smirking at the officer and found Besim smirking back.

            “You smug son-of-a-bitch. Did you think you’d make it out of the woods alive? And if you did, did you think the Serbs would welcome you with open arms?”

            “Leaving the lion’s den to walk into the wolves’ den,” responded Edi. “Wolves can at least be tamed.” Besim only stared at him.

            They sat on opposite sides of the room studying each other as if they were underwater and the sounds of the outside world were everything on the surface. There was a kind of freedom in Edi’s situation and he realized he was untouchable. He knew they were both killing time until he would be led outside to be lined up against the wall. Perhaps this was the ultimate freedom a person could obtain. The adventure he had so passionately talked to the priest about could be this, and this life was merely a preparation for what lay beyond.

            When he was being carried across the camp after being caught, Edi refused to make eye contact with the priest. He saw him in the distance, amongst the small crowd that had gathered quietly but turned his head and looked straight in front of him as they passed through the crowd. He didn’t want to the priest to see defeat on his face or the sense of regret he harbored. Edi’s final thought before they carried him indoors and shut the door behind him was: well, isn’t this a bitch? And he spit blood on the ground.

*

            Luckily the night sky was clear enough for the moon to shed some light for guidance. Edi felt like an intruder in the wilderness each time his feet disrupted the quiet. He was too large, too loud, and too clumsy to permanently exist there. The deeper into the forest he thought he was going, the deeper he dug into his mind to dust off conversations he’d had with the priest. If he focused enough of his energy on those inner dialogues, he could almost pretend the priest was with him.

            Somewhere in the distance he heard a twig snap. And then another twig. And then another. He stopped and caught his breath, waiting to hear more. In the few moments of silence that followed, Edi quickly tiptoed behind a tree and crouched slowly until he squatted with his head resting on his knees.

            Fuck, they found me, he thought to himself. Fuck. Fuck. They can’t take me. And he began to think about God. He wanted to believe that his close relationship with the priest would grant him protection. He kept his head on his knees and closed his eyes, praying for invisibility.

            Suddenly Edi sat up straight and listened closely. It wasn’t a twig snapping or the sound of footsteps. He listened closely and wondered exactly how dehydrated he had become in the last several hours. Just before he resigned himself to absolute madness and sleep deprivation, he heard it again, clearer and closer. It was his name. Someone said his name. From somewhere in the distance, a voice was calling out to him. Not the priest. Not the officers. It was a voice he knew; the soft, crackly voice—like glass cracking under pressure—of his grandmother who had long since passed. He felt a lump in his throat as he battled with himself; the desire to reach out to her and respond—fighting with the knowledge that he must keep quiet, followed by the realization that he was, in fact, facing his own mortality.

            The corners of his eyes filled with tears as he remembered the endless talk of ghosts and folklore with the priest.

            “Have I ever told you about a neighbor of my mother’s,” began the priest, “who swore she had heard names being shouted one night as she walked home from visiting her sister? She didn’t think anything of it until she realized the names being called were those of the dead.”

            Edi felt his body break out in goosebumps the first time he heard it and again now as he sat bewildered behind the tree. He knew enough not to respond; his grandmother had told him the same lore as a child. A superstitious warning meant to scare children into silence before bedtime, you never respond to your name being called by someone who was deceased.

            The third and final time he heard his name, it caught in the wind and disappeared around him. He didn’t know how long he remained behind that tree, frozen in terror, but when he finally moved, he ran. He hardly noticed the sky beginning to lighten or the tremendous noise he made running through the brush and tripping over roots. Nothing seemed like fantasy anymore, like the folktales he and the priest relished sharing with each other.

            He stopped to briefly catch his breath and squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the possible sight of anything he shouldn’t be seeing. The memory of all those stories and superstitions crept into his mind and when he opened his eyes, Edi thought he saw a movement off to one side of him. He wanted to yell out his grandmother’s name but was scared he might actually be experiencing the impossible. He had always believed in listening to your body and his heart was now fluttering in his chest.

            Why is she doing this to me, he thought as he stood in the middle of a clearing. He heard another twig snap somewhere behind him before closing his eyes and putting his hands up to his ears. In his mind, Edi saw his grandmother as she used to be, long gray hair pinned up into a tight bun. He had always been close to her and wondered if coming face-to-face with his grandmother would be the worst fate to encounter. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times to get rid of the floating dots hovering there. In the distance, in the forest’s darkness he saw a figure moving slowly towards him. Edi choked back tears as he walked towards it, arms back down at his sides.

            “Grandmother…” his voice shook.

            “Over here! I got him! I got him!” Edi recognized the man’s voice from the camp.

            “Please. No,” was all he could mutter while taking a few steps back before he was grabbed and pushed from the side, and he went flying.

*

            He could feel the sunlight even though he saw only darkness. Prior to the walk to the wall, he was blindfolded and led outside. His shoes, worn and thin, created a poor barrier between his feet and the ground. He pressed his toes into the pebbles and ground them around until he created a little crater. He found a strange sense of comfort in the gravelly texture and in the sound the dirt and stones made rubbing against each other. The sound of pebbles skipping and feet being quickly shuffled let him know he was not alone.

            Edi felt a hand press his shoulder roughly, until his tied hands scraped against the wall behind him. He brushed his fingertips lightly against the rough surface and felt the warmth of the sunlight soaked up by the concrete. He pressed his palms against the wall as if gaining energy from the heat, as if he could melt into the structure and hide away there forever. Edi heard words but didn’t process them, didn’t want to give them any weight. Instead, he rubbed his hands against the wall and ground his toe into the ground and used up his last thought on how inanimate objects don’t feel or do, they just are. He felt, for the first time in his life, jealous of something that wasn’t alive.

*

            The priest, though at first considered a prime candidate for relentless harassment and random searches of his home, was diligent about keeping to himself and completing his work to the best of his ability. And because of this—over time—he was eventually left alone and considered one of the more decent prisoners the officers dealt with. His reputation was his ticket into Edi’s home where he was being kept, just before being taken away to the prison.

            He knew he shouldn’t have been shocked by Edi’s condition: swollen eye, blood crusted over his nostrils and upper lip, but he just stared. He let the heat of anger and hopelessness wash over him without flinching and without giving away his sadness to Edi.

            “Well,” whispered Edi, his voice hoarse. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t come?” And he smiled. The priest walked over to him and sat down on the floor.

The priest did something he wouldn’t have risked otherwise, if it hadn’t been for Edi. Leaning forward, he held up his hand and made a small, swift cross in the air and began to murmur a prayer.

            “Tell me something, Father,” Edi interrupted. “Is there really such a thing as Heaven? As Hell?”

            “Whatever you believe there is, there is,” whispered back the priest. “I can’t tell you how exactly those two worlds exist, I’m only certain of the fact that they do. I believe they do.” Edi simply nodded.

            “I heard my grandmother,” said Edi. “Out there. In the woods. She said my name. Just like your stories, I heard my name from someone who was dead. I’m meant to die here,” and his voice caught on the last word and Edi broke down. The priest could do nothing, only blink quickly to keep his tears from falling and put his hand on Edi’s shoulder.

            “You will be alright, Edi. Trust me.” And he squeezed his shoulder.

            As he had promised himself he would do, the priest took out a small piece of paper from his pocket and a pen.

            “Do you want me to write or do you want to do it yourself?”

            “You write, I’ll tell you what to put in there,” responded Edi.

            He began to quickly write down Edi’s words as he spoke them. In this task, he found a purpose he thought he had lost when he first arrived at the camp. It was minor and yet it was what he’d expect of a priest; a final sense of comfort to a man in his final moments. He was going to miss Edi and their nightly talks. Sometimes the priest couldn’t help but wonder if he could’ve prevented him from this fate, but he knew well the stubbornness of man, of that inescapable sin—pride.

            Dear mama, baba…the letter started and continued on to the backside of the page. When they had finished, Edi took a breath and put his head back against the wall. The priest folded the paper and placed it carefully in his pocket. He knew he only had a few more minutes before someone was going to get him.

            “So,” said the priest. “Tell me about your favorite Jack London story.”

After having sex with her husband, Sabi left him in bed for the Frenchman on her laptop. Usually, the wireless connection would buffer halfway into a clip, but tonight the signal was strong. Despite needing to get some rest for her third oncologist appointment, Sabi stayed up the rest of the night. In the morning, she would know if the chemotherapy was working. She didn’t want to think about the results of the PET scan or the chemo. She didn’t want to brace herself for another assault of fatigue, nausea, constipation, and that damn metallic taste in her mouth. She only wanted to watch the Frenchman have sex with women.

He appeared on her laptop screen with a beautiful, young brunette. They were in a white room with white furniture. On top of a white leather couch, the brunette sat astride the sitting Frenchman, his floppy, brown hair clung to his sweaty brow as he sucked her perky, dark nipples. She lifted a curtain of silky hair from her shoulders then a jump cut to her kneeling in front of him.

Nick bought Sabi the laptop so that she could watch movies while having meds pumped into her Mediport, a small, metal disc about the size of a quarter that sat under her skin below her collarbone. A catheter connected the port to a large vein. The meds were injected through a thick needle that fits into the port. After that first painful puncture, Sabi reached for the laptop and lost herself in movies. She watched French films mostly. During the first month of treatments, she watched two, sometimes three movies as six hours’ worth of drugs were pumped into her Mediport.

The films ranged from old to new. Historical to arty ones. Films with little plot, some that made no sense at all. She watched philosophical love stories and musicals with tone-deaf singers. She made use of her high school French and turned off the subtitles. She liked how serious yet relaxed all the French actors appeared.

Nick hated the French films; said he couldn’t stand the apathy on display. She tried to convince him that what he was watching was the opposite of apathy. “Don’t you see? There are no pretensions. They are dealing with life and not getting all emotional about it. Emotional reactions are superficial,” she said. “They only help us avoid our fears when in fact we should be facing them.”

Treatment days were grueling, long, nine-hour days, which began with a needle inside the Mediport and a nurse filling seven different sized vials for blood testing. Then Sabi had to report to her oncologist, who reviewed the results of her blood work to determine if she was strong enough to endure the scheduled chemo treatment.

Nick and Sabi would spend their time in the waiting room looking through Better Homes and Gardens, staring at perfect couples inside quaint country homes, looking chaste, untarnished, undamaged by life. Looking as far removed from a sticky, sweaty orgasm as a patient in a coma.

After her last appointment, Sabi and Nick took a long bath together. Nick sat behind Sabi in the tub and carefully sponged her back, arms, neck, breasts, and inner thighs. When he was done, she kissed his soapy hand, felt him grow hard behind her, and then he slowly turned her around, so that she sat facing him. With her legs wrapped around his waist, he slipped his dick inside her. In the 15 years they’d been together, they’d never made love this way; fucking slowly in the bathtub, skin slippery, no sounds coming from their mouths.

That night while Nick slept, Sabi squirmed in bed, wanting badly to dig in and rip out the Mediport. Instead, she tiptoed out to the living room and turned on her laptop.

Still thinking of their lovemaking in the bathtub, Sabi searched for “couples having hot sex” on the internet.

It was astonishing to find so many free porn sites featuring plastic women moaning and groaning while wooden men grunted behind them, on top of them, underneath them, to the side of them. Impossible sexual positions where the men jackhammered away as if they were competing in an Iron Man competition.

And then she found the Brit. He wasn’t the greatest performer. He puckered his mouth when he mounted a woman and exhaled in a whistle when he came, but he had a cute accent and a nice, muscular ass. His belly rippled when he fucked, and he had nice hands. He seemed to enjoy touching the women he was with. It was through watching the Brit that Sabi found the Frenchman.

It was a threesome scene, which began with the Brit making fun of the other man’s accent.

“You a Frenchman, mate?”

“Oui, and I have a bigger dick than you,” he said.

A buxom, older woman entered the room. The two younger men took off their clothes. The woman kept one occupied while the other lost himself in her lush ass. The Frenchman didn’t whistle when he came. He kissed the woman instead. A long, passionate kiss that seemed to take the woman by surprise. Sabi imagined what it would be like to be overpowered by the Frenchman. She wondered if he would kiss her passionately and then slap her tits. She wondered if she would be okay with that.

__

After treatment, she was too weak to eat, too pissed off to talk about how she felt. The Zofran and Ativan helped with nausea, but after a couple of days, the drugs made her moody. On the upswing she was vocal, laughing, singing, talking non-stop about how great she felt. On the downswing, she touched her body, felt for lumps, placed ointment on her scars, and patted the Mediport. “Scar tissue is building around it,” she told Nick, thinking if she said this out loud, she would escape the deep state of paranoia that now invaded her every thought. Sex was what kept her sane.

__

The beautiful brunette had a bush, a rarity in cyberporn. She pulled on it and the Frenchman went wild. He pulled her legs so that her ass hit the edge of the white leather sofa and began to masturbate over her stomach. She tugged harder on her bush. He moaned, grabbed one of her feet, and sucked on her big toe. He yanked on his large, uncircumcised dick as the brunette rubbed herself. The Frenchman took her from behind and whispered French words in her ear as she climaxed.

Earlier tonight, Nick had screamed, “You’re amazing!” as Sabi fondled his balls then played with him until he was hard enough for her to climb on top. Weird that she could be so sexually aroused yet feel so unattractive. Her body felt old and tired. Her ringlets cut short in an uneven bob. Her once thick eyebrows now faint lines over her dark-circled eyes. Her lush eyelashes now wispy nothings.

She hit the pause button when she heard Nick’s heavy footsteps. “Sabi!” he said, walking into the living room. It was five in the morning and still dark out.

“What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Sabi closed the laptop and smiled. Nick looked so young and cute and loving. His glassy brown eyes softened; he ran his hand over his floppy, brown hair. He used to tell her all the time he could never live without her, but he didn’t say that anymore.

__

Last November, nothing had prepared Sabi for her apathy over the whole cancer thing. The oncologist had reached over his desk to squeeze her hand after the diagnosis. He said, “Go ahead and cry if you want to.” But she didn’t want to. She pretended to cry. Gave the oncologist what he wanted.

Before Sabi left the oncologist’s office, she had to do a bone marrow biopsy. The nurse instructed her to remove her clothing, don a paper robe, and leave the opening towards the back. She was told to lie on her side. She felt the cool alcohol on her back and the burn of a local anesthetic. The oncologist said, “Take a deep breath.”

She felt a pinch near her vertebra. “I’m sorry,” the oncologist said as he drew a sample. A preemptive apology for the sharp pain that followed. She imagined a metal string extracted slowly from the middle of her femur, through her hip bone and up her spine.

The metal scraping each nerve ending as it left her body.

Nick didn’t go to the oncologist with her. She didn’t want him there. Later, when she told him the diagnosis, she said, “No crying, no feeling sorry for us, and none of that ‘Why us?’ please.”

He’d fallen in love with a vibrant, healthy woman who’d read more books than he ever knew existed. And now she was sick, but it could be worse. She was stage two. The likelihood of a remission was 80%.

Now it was December, and they would know if the drugs were working. If the cancer is reactive, her chances for remission would go up to 90%. She was undergoing an aggressive treatment program. She risked infertility, dangerous scarring to her lungs, breast cancer, leukemia, thyroid disease. She might get an infection. She might catch pneumonia. She could have a fatal reaction to one of the drugs. But she could be cured and alive. Healthy once again.

__

When Nick stepped inside the kitchen. Sabi was still in front of her laptop, with the volume on mute. She wasn’t fooling Nick. He had walked in on her and the Frenchman before. He always made a face but didn’t voice his disapproval.

She looked up her favorite scene with the Frenchman, “Manu Loves Dana.” She fast-forwarded through the first five minutes, skipped the lovely Dana’s strip routine, which concluded with her on all fours.

Sabi found the right spot on the six-minute seven-second mark. Manu was on his knees in front of a spread-eagle Dana with his nose and mouth buried in her pussy. They fucked on a chocolate velvet sofa. Manu held Dana’s head and kissed her eyes and nose, mouth, and tits. He pounded into her; said she was beautiful. So foocking beautiful.

Dana didn’t look anything like Sabi. She had olive-skin and almond-shaped eyes. She looked petite next to the burly Frenchman. He deftly maneuvered her into a reverse cowgirl position, his head and torso disappeared behind the lovely Dana, his large hands on her narrow hips, lifting her pelvis up and down over his very large dick.

If Sabi’s PET Scan came back clear today, if the cancer cells were gone, then she would still continue treatments; four more months of chemotherapy followed by three weeks of daily radiation treatments to her chest.

“You should shower and get dressed. Our appointment is in a couple of hours.”

Sabi turned up the volume on her laptop. Dana moaned, “Fuck me!”

“Come on,” Nick said. He slapped down the laptop screen and took it away.

Sabi stood up and hugged him. She buried her nose in his neck and sucked on it.

“Sabi.” He pulled away, but she held him by the waist. “We have to go,” he tried again.

“Please fuck me, Nick.”

“We don’t have time for that, sweetheart.”

Sabi gave up, grabbed her laptop, and carried it to their bedroom. She placed it on top of their bed, opened the screen, and stared at the frozen image of the Frenchman plowing into Dana’s ass. His face caught in a grimace, his hands digging into her hips, and Dana looking straight into the camera, biting her bottom lip.

Sabi opened her closet, pulled out a long tunic and a pair of leggings, dug through her pile of high-heeled boots and grabbed a pair of black Converses.

Take a shower. Get dressed. Wear a nice bra and panty set.

She would have to strip at least once for the oncologist and Nick because Nick insisted on accompanying her to the exam room. “For moral support,” he had said.

He didn’t trust her. Nick would sit on a chair across from the exam table. The elderly oncologist would gently knock before entering the room. He’d give Sabi a warm welcome and coldly say hello to Nick.

Nick hated the oncologist. He also hated when the oncologist felt for swollen nodules on her throat, the sides of her neck, along with her collarbone, under her armpits, and her groin. It was because of Nick that Sabi always kept her bra and panties on.

Nick came into the bedroom. He smiled when he saw the clothes on the bed but frowned at the laptop. Not too much, but enough to let her know that the sight of two people fucking was not alright, not helpful, not funny, and not appreciated.

After her shower, she spotted Nick on the bed, watching something on her laptop. She recognized the Frenchman’s voice. Come for me, baybee.

“Why do you like this guy?” Nick spoke without taking his eyes off the laptop.

Grabbing a wide-tooth comb from the dresser, Sabi combed her hair, making sure not to pull too hard on the few knots or scratch her sensitive scalp. “I don’t like him. I don’t even know him.”

“You could have fooled me. I mean, he’s got a baby-arm size dick, so I can see why.”

“Oh god, are we really going there?”

“Is it the anal? We’ve never done that. Do you want that?”

“No. Look.” She slapped down the laptop screen. She wanted to yell at Nick, tell him to stop asking so many damn questions. “It’s just a way to distract myself, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with the Frenchman, or his big dick, or the fact that every woman he touches convulses in orgasmic bliss.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“What I mean is I don’t watch the Frenchman because I want to fuck the Frenchman; I watch him because I wish I could be the Frenchman.”

Nick grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I love you, Sabi.” He tugged at the towel wrapped around her body.

On her back, she looked up at his serious face, feeling surprised. He covered her lips with his.

It was not the kiss of a loving husband or a frightened man. This was a darker, more deliberate kiss. Not emotional, but raw and carnal, like he couldn’t get enough of her. She gave herself up to it. Let him take her. He pushed his way inside her. It was like nothing they had ever shared before. It was rough and dirty.

Sabi left the bed after it was over and took another shower. She dressed and threw some mascara and blush on her face. She picked the Monet print silk scarf to wear, the one with the water lilies.

“You look pretty,” Nick said when she walked out into the living room.

“We should get going,” she said, stopping by the mirror on the wall to put on some red lipstick. She put the laptop inside her tote bag and reached for Nick’s outstretched hand.

“The Frenchman” was first published as “Sex for the Living” in Literary Orphans. Year Two, Issue 8.

“You shall find me again, and you shall lose me…”  – Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle

2034

We might be crowded in cells. Who’s to say? There are no walls. No edge to reach. The guards snatch us from the green darkness. The victims wail and plead. When it’s my turn, I hear your voice again: Remember everything and find me.

2007

Jennifer and I set out the telescope for the kids the morning Orpheus would be visible. While we waited for Angela and Emily to wake up, Jennifer and I took turns looking up at the morning sky. “This is historical,” I exclaimed. “We’re part of history.” Jennifer set down her coffee and scooted me out of the way. She adjusted the telescope and stood still for a moment. Her mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe what I’m looking at right now. It feels unreal.” “What are you seeing?” “It’s blue,” she said shakily. 

The girls appeared at the sliding glass door. “Good morning, Em!” I swooped our youngest into my arms. “Are you ready to look at this new planet?” Angela went to her mom. “I wish Ryan could see this,” Jennifer said. Emily looked up toward the tiny shimmering dot. “What if the people on Ominous—” “Orpheus…” Angela corrected her. “Yeah, whatever, what if they were looking back at us?” It wasn’t a totally ridiculous question. NASA had said there were signs of life on the planet, but no indications it was life like ours. As I explained this, I watched Jennifer fall back onto a deckchair with a deep sigh. We caught each other’s eyes. I’m fine, her face seemed to say. 

1969

“Pass me a beer, mijo,” Aunt Maria said from the front-seat of Mom’s green Pontiac. I pushed my little sister Rosa’s sleeping head off my lap and passed the ice cold can to the front. “Where are we, Mom?” The car lurched slowly left then right and back again, climbing higher and higher into the mountains. “We’re almost there, mijo.” Mom’s eyes sparkled in the rearview. “I’ll give you a lemon drop if you stop asking.” “I want one,” Rosa whined, now awoken. “You’ll get one if you stop begging.” Rosa squirmed up and pressed her face to the window. The trees were black and red. Bolts of sun flashed between the canopy of fragrant limbs. 

Mom and Aunt Maria spoke in whispers. “Has he called you?” my aunt asked. Mom shook her head. I stared out the window and caught Rosa’s and my reflection. She’d fallen asleep again.

1980

I was out on a jog approaching Casper’s Cafe. The road and air were all mine, new and hot from a late fall heatwave. My legs and lungs might have conquered the world. The previous nine hours of hunching over car engines existed in some other life. I got to 16th Street and watched the sun set behind the university buildings.  

Up ahead my friend Paul, who it was rumored might leave school early to play for the Warriors, stepped from his lime green Charger, and as I approached, stuck his hand out to give me a high five. As our hands were about to meet I heard screeching tires and then there was sudden darkness. When my eyes opened, I saw my legs tangled up between aluminum spokes and a body splayed out over me. Paul lifted the person up. “Are you alright?” he asked them. Then looking down at me, he said, “Robert, don’t move yet. Hang on.” He bent down and carefully moved my legs away from what I realized was a bicycle. “Shit, man…it looks bad.” My right foot was badly twisted, bleeding, and already swelling. “I think it’ll be okay,” I lied. The pain was only partially overshadowed by the rising anger I felt for this stupid person who had run me over with their bike. I couldn’t even bring myself to look up at them. Until I saw her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was looking at Paul and thought he was waving at me, and I just didn’t see you.” In an instant, my anger drained away. Even the pain disappeared. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She swiped her long brown hair from her face and hid a slight laugh. “Are you laughing?” I asked. “No, sorry, this isn’t funny. I feel terrible.” One of her socks had fallen from her knee down to her ankle. I pushed it back up, for a moment touching her golden brown skin. But that was enough. I was in love.

“You’re not going out like that!” Mom shouted at Rosa from the kitchen. “You haven’t even seen what I’m wearing…” Rosa was in the front living room with me. My room away from my room as I nursed my broken leg. Rosa was dressed how she typically dressed: torn black jeans and dirty white sneakers. She had tucked her Clash t-shirt into her jeans and over that she had a black leather jacket, pins and patches and spikes covering it from collar to collar. “I can smell that leather from here!” Mom shouted. Rosa sat at the opposite end of the couch as me. “How’s your leg feeling?” “How do you think?” I tilted my head back, miming the agony for her. “Stop. You’re faking…” Rosa slumped further into the couch. “Mom said I can only go if you drive me. She has to stay here for her friends.” “I can’t drive like this.” I pointed at my leg propped on the chair. “Robert,” she begged. “If you don’t take me, we’ll both be stuck here for her party. Do you really want that? You wanna play cards all night?” “No, I’m going to watch TV until my eyes fall out—” “You’re not going unless he takes you, Rosa!” Mom shouted again. My sister and I marveled at how Mom somehow stayed part of the conversation without actually being close enough to hear us. “Where do you have to go?” I asked. “We’re seeing the Looters at the Golden Garage.” “They let fifteen year olds in there? You know it’s a strip club—” Rosa shot up and threw a pillow at my head. “Sshhh…she’ll never let me—” “Robert,” Mom shouted again. “You’re taking her. And stay out. I don’t want you ruining my party if you’re going to sit on that couch all night being lazy.”

“Bad Girls” was on the stereo when I got to Paul’s house for his New Year’s party. A gaggle of girls surrounded him in the kitchen. “Robert,” he smiled. “Good to see you, man. How’s the leg?” I shrugged. “It’s funny you came actually.” “Why’s that?” Paul threw his arm over my shoulder, spilling some of his beer, and turned me around. “Because Jennifer’s sitting right out there…” He pointed toward the backyard. “Who?” “The girl who hit you, man…” 

I clumsily pushed my way through the crowd, my heart racing, hands sweating like you wouldn’t believe. She was sitting in a plastic lawn chair beneath the yellow porch light, staring toward the back fence. “Would you like to dance?” I said. She shook herself out of a daze and looked up. Her eyes were red. “I don’t feel like—” She stopped. “Robert? How’d you find me?” “I’m friends with Paul.” “I know, but I meant…nevermind.” She wiped beneath her eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m here.” She looked up at the sky. “I’m really happy to see you again.” She grabbed her rainbow-colored shoulder bag with a sad looking daisy pinned to the strap and started to leave. “Wait, no,” I stopped her. It took me a while to think. “Do you have a ride home?”

Thankfully, Casper’s Cafe was still serving food, though I’m sure the waitresses would have preferred the night off. “Let me buy you something?” Jennifer asked. “I feel terrible about your leg.” I waved her off. “I can’t let you do that.” I looked down at her bag and noticed the sewn-on patches. I pointed at the peace sign. “I like that one.” “Oh…” She picked at the patch and blushed. “We don’t have to stay…” For a split second, I feared I had offended her. Or maybe I had embarrassed her? With too much eagerness, I blurted out, “No, I want to stay. I could eat a horse, I think.” She laughed. “A horse?” She searched Casper’s menu above the counter. “I don’t think they serve that here.” 

We ordered hamburgers and waited for them at a booth near the front window. Sixteenth Street was filling with college kids readying for the countdown. When our food came, Jennifer took the meat from her burger and set it on the edge of her plate. “You don’t like meat?” She dipped the bun into ketchup. “Not all the time. Do you want it?” I took the patty and placed it on my burger. “So do you go to school with Paul?” “Yeah, this is my first year…” She paused to sip from her soda. “…Paul’s in my accounting class. How do you know him?” “High school. Are you studying to become an accountant? You don’t look like an accountant.” “What do I look like?” “I don’t know. Dancer or some kind of artist?” She crinkled her nose and sipped from her soda again. “Honestly, I hate accounting. I don’t know what I’m there for yet. I’m really the worst student. What year are you?” She waited expectantly now. I had known this question would come up, and though it didn’t bother me at all I wasn’t in school, I was hesitant to tell her. “I actually don’t go to school. I’d be in my second year though, like Paul.” “So you work then? Where do you work?” “At an auto shop—” “And you run…” “Yeah, I used to.” I faked a frown and nodded toward my leg. “I’m so sorry. You have no idea how terrible I feel. Are you on a track team?” “Well, yeah…cross country team. The Club Championships were last month but I missed it obviously.” I knew there was bitterness in my voice but I wished there hadn’t been. “Our team did fine without me so it wasn’t a big deal.” I lied. We had actually been ranked in the top ten but without my low score, and because it was unseasonably warm the morning of the race, we finished closer to last. 

Jennifer stared at me, on the verge of saying something, but then she stopped and turned to look out at the street. “Listen,” I said. “You seemed like you were crying at Paul’s. I don’t want to intrude, but if you wanted to talk, you know, I’m basically a stranger, so it might be easier to talk to me about whatever’s going on.” She slumped in her seat and toyed with the straw in her glass. “I don’t think you’re a stranger.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a small red book with library tape disintegrating across its spine. She leafed through the pages randomly. “I shouldn’t have gone out really, but my roommate said I should.” She breathed slowly, her eyes glossy with tears. “My aunt died last week. That’s it. I was—I am just sad.” “Were you close to your aunt?” “My Aunt Carolee, yes.” She was still flipping through the red book but then stopped. “Have you read this?” She pushed the book over to me, but I couldn’t make out the title. “What I wanted was to read poetry. So first, I borrowed this book by Oscar Wilde. Then, a few weeks ago, as I was reading it, I realized I had no idea what he was even talking about because he’s always referencing gods and goddesses. So I went back to the library and asked the librarian about the Greeks, and she gave me all these plays by Plato and Aristotle…” I recognized the name Plato and looked down at the book. “Have you read any Plato? That one is the Phaedo. I really don’t understand it at all. I want to, but I just don’t. And it really irritates me because when I started school, I just wanted to read something beautiful. I wanted to hear a poet’s voice in my head and feel what they felt—” She stopped with an exhausted sigh. “Maybe you should write the poems.” Jennifer considered this for a moment and scribbled quickly in the margins of the Phaedo. “What are you writing?” “Just what you said.” She finished and returned the book to her bag. 

From the kitchen, the workers started the countdown. Jennifer leaned over the table. “So what’s your resolution going to be?” Her eyes stayed on me, waiting for my answer. I detected in them a faint suspicion. As the workers’ countdown reached 1, I knew I had missed my chance to say anything remotely smart or romantic. What seemed most important to me then was not my plan for the future, but my wish that the countdown would not end. That we could stay suspended in the countdown for any amount of time longer.

2003

Jennifer poked her head over the second floor landing. “Hey, could you turn the TV down a little?” I grunted and grudgingly turned the volume down. But, as soon as I heard the door close, I turned it back up and laughed to myself. A few minutes later she came downstairs and went into the kitchen. I could hear her pacing around, opening and closing cabinet doors. She washed the dishes then came out. “What’s your deal lately?” “Give me a break…” I muttered and turned the television off. Jennifer stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed. She was breathing heavily, sucking in her lips. “Why do you always stare at me like that?” “Jesus Christ…” I threw my hands up and rubbed my face. “I’ll be in bed in a few minutes. I just want to watch some TV.” “You know I have to get up early tomorrow. I shouldn’t have to come out here—” “Then don’t fucking come out here…” “I have to drive all the way to San Francisco tomorrow, you know that.” Jennifer turned for the stairs, stopping at the first step. “You could come too, if you wanted.” Her voice had softened. “I have work.” I picked up the remote. “I’m not one of your hippie friends that wants to protest the war.” Jennifer stomped up the stairs and slammed our door closed. I held the remote in my hand, weighing it, and tapping it against my leg. Why were those people wasting their time? Nothing they did would make a single difference. I hoped they’d all be arrested.

1981

Jennifer wove in and out of the graves at the Old Blue River Cemetery. It seemed like we were traveling back in time the deeper we went: Zsoka 1968 Morgenstern 1957 Joby 1940 Roydon 1911 Knaggs 1882 Hall 1874 Specht 1861…and then to the gravestones so blackened and hidden by moss, there was no telling who was buried beneath, nor in what year they died. “Why’d you take me here of all places,” I said jokingly. “Quiet! You said you’d let me take you anywhere…” 

We reached a part of the cemetery forgotten by the caretakers. A small iron gate whined its welcome as we entered the enclosed plot. “It’s the oldest part of the cemetery,” Jennifer explained somberly. “Some of the original settlers were buried here. Before there was Blue River, they called it Sutter’s Town, after an old miner-turned-shopkeeper. He’s buried over there. Indians killed him—supposedly.” Jennifer dropped her shoulder bag atop the decaying leaves and pine needles. “This is it,” she said. “Sutter.” She ran her hand over the small and insignificant stone marker. “How you know it’s his? You can’t see his name or the dates.” “It was in a brochure for the cemetery. Came with a little map.”

We sat near the grave without talking. At first, I had been uncomfortable with the tombstones. Death had always seemed like a frightening thing to me. And why not? Statues of the Stations of the Cross lined the walls of Saint Ursula’s, and I very clearly got the message that dying was an awful and terrible experience. I never wanted to die, or be anywhere near death. But, there in the cemetery with Jennifer, the solitude and quiet of the place was not scary at all. Even the dead needed company. 

“Would you mind if I did something?” Jennifer already had her hand inside her bag. “I wouldn’t mind. They might though,” I nodded at those beneath us. “Okay,” she said, pulling out a stack of cards. “These are my tarot cards.” She spread the deck out on the ground and looked them over. “What do you do with them?” She paused and closed her eyes. “I’m asking them a question…” After she opened her eyes, she reached out and grabbed a card at random. “Oh…” Her mouth hung open. “What does it say?” She passed the card to me, and I turned it over in my hand: Two of Cups. “What does this one mean? What did you ask?” Jennifer took the card back and set it before Sutter’s marker. “Jennifer? Tell me!” I pinched her blouse and wrapped her in a hug. “It told me I was right.”

1982

“What are you working on?” I asked as I shut the door to our room. Jennifer was hunched over her books and papers on the desk my mom had taken from the airbase. Jennifer had painted it emerald green and added silver stars and pink and purple swirls. “Well, I’m trying to figure this poem out,” she yawned and leaned back to catch me as I fell behind her onto our twin bed. “Is the poem for a class or is it one of yours?” I looked down at my hands and picked at the car grease beneath my nails. Now that I had been promoted into the office, I wasn’t going to be coming home so caked in dirt. “I should shower before dinner.” Jennifer turned and gathered up the papers. “It’s one of mine. I didn’t like some of them so now I’m cutting them up and taping them back together in different orders.” She held the taped up sheets of paper for me to see and then laid down on the bed, tugging on my shirt and breathing in. “I don’t want you to ever shower. I love how you smell.”

2008

Even though I was in the backyard, I could hear Jennifer’s car pull into the garage. She was returning from her double shift at the hospital. I watered the lawn, pulled the last of the weeds and tossed the clippings into the green waste. A little later I went inside, tired and thirsty. “Jen?” I called into the house. No answer. I changed out of my work shoes and went up to the second floor. Jennifer’s office door was open, and I could see the back of her head facing the computer, the news scrolling by. “Hey, what’s up?” I leaned against the door. She was still in her scrubs. “Reading,” she said flatly. Then swiveling in her chair, she faced me. “Why are you staring at me? I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. Do you mind?” She reached down and pulled out a stack of paper from her bag. “Why do you have to talk to me like that? I just came up to say hi.” She started writing something on the papers. “Talk to you like what? I’m busy.” There was no point in trying to talk to her when she was in a mood like this. I backed away and turned to go back downstairs. She called out, “Can you shut my door?” I pretended not to hear her and continued downstairs. 

Later that night when she came to bed, she lay next to me and in the darkness said, “I won’t be home until really late tomorrow because of the election canvassing thing.” I swallowed and grunted, “Okay…” “Okay…so you need to pick up Emily from cheer practice and make sure they get dinner.” She knew I would. There was so much I wanted to say to her, but it was easier to say nothing and let her sleep. Tomorrow might be different.

2013

Emily was in tears as she spilled through the front door. “What is it, Mom? What happened?” Jennifer and I jumped from the kitchen table, where we were having a hard time looking over our finances. “What are you talking about, Em?” I said. “Something happened up there, on the planet. I saw it on my phone—what channel’s the news?” She ran to the TV and turned it on. 

On the screen was what appeared to be an image of the surface of Orpheus, blue and shimmering. The reporter’s voice came on: I don’t know if you can see this, but this image, these satellite images have been given to us by PanGen, and they’re saying it shows in real time some type of explosion at or near the surface of Orpheus. The images are remarkably clear. You can see an object crossing into the frame here, and then a moment later, this bright green flash. 

Jennifer comforted Emily and tried to explain that everything would be okay. Maybe that wasn’t right? There was still so much we didn’t know about this explosion, yet what I found myself wondering was why had the images been provided by PanGen? Where was NASA?

1984

We were married at the Blue River court house but had the ceremony in her parent’s backyard. We didn’t have a wedding party. Just us in front of our closest family and friends. Jennifer’s Aunt Sofia recited a poem and my best friend Victor read a verse from the Bible. 

It was the middle of July so I didn’t bother wearing a tuxedo. Instead I wore a pair of white linen pants and a coral blue v-neck from The Fashion Barn. Jennifer wore a white cotton dress with a braided leather belt cinched around her waist. She insisted we go barefoot so we could experience as much of the world as possible. Her hair was long and golden brown, a bouquet of the tiniest forget-me-nots and other wild blooms as her crown. She smelled like the summer and like every common school boy, I prayed the summer would last forever. 

Near the end, Jennifer and I sat down in the grass beneath an apple tree her dad Jerry had planted years before. We watched our families and friends together, laughing and kissing, saying their goodbyes or whatever else they were saying. I noticed Jennifer had something in her hands. “What is that?” She passed the thing over to me. “I don’t know. I just found it right now when I sat down. I think it’s a bookmark.” I studied the long and flimsy piece of paper. “This looks old.” Jennifer took it back. “It probably is. Look, you can’t even make out where it’s from. It’s probably one I left out here, who knows when…” She laughed at herself. “I always read out here. You can throw it away.” I took the bookmark again, sliding it into my back pocket, and breathed in the summer night.

1986

Jennifer was waiting for me at the door with our baby boy straddling her hip when I got home from work. A fresh dribble stain on her jean shorts. “Thank god, you’re back,” she started. “Can you take him? I need to finish this exam before my class tonight.” All of her free time went to school those days. She would attempt to read the stacks of novels she checked out from the library, but the fines accumulated and accumulated.  

I took Ryan and kicked off my boots. “What’re you doing today, buddy?” I kissed his head and tickled his feet. Ryan never wanted to be without her though. He cried and reached out for Jennifer. “No, buddy. Momma has work.” I set Ryan on the ground to let him crawl and chased him around the living room for a few minutes. He chewed on the TV, the carpet, a red plastic toy Jane had given him, his own hand. Through the back slider, I could see Jennifer sitting cross-legged at her emerald green desk on the porch, which she had turned into an office. The desk spent half the afternoon in the sun, so it was nearly bleached out. I had thought about repainting it but neither of us had the time. She’d splayed out her thick nursing books, circling and highlighting. Ryan crawled up to the slider and banged on the door. “No, buddy, come back over here.” I swept him up and took him into the kitchen. “Let’s make Momma some food.” I set him in his chair and tossed a few blueberries on his plate. I sliced a tomato and cucumber. Toasted the bread. Added sprouts, which she loved. We didn’t have pickles, so she would have to go without. Once I drizzled on the oil, the sandwich was complete. I left Ryan in his chair and took the sandwich out to Jennifer. But she had stopped working. Her head lay on the desk, pencil still in hand. She was asleep.

1995

James moved around the officer and stood near the school’s office exit. He was small for a middle schooler, dressed in pants four sizes too big, a white shirt that had clearly been yanked on. I was picking him up because he had just been suspended for pulling a knife out during a fight. He looked to me exactly like his father. Nothing like my sister.   

When we got to my truck, Ryan didn’t say anything but Angela was elated to see her treasured cousin. As soon as James climbed in the front, he turned in his seat, smiling, and made Angela giggle with laughter. As I drove, I couldn’t think of what to say. Our kids were so easy. Jennifer couldn’t even convince Ryan to skip school on her days off when she wanted to take Angela and him to a movie. Finally, I stopped in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. “I don’t wanna eat here,” James hissed. “Your mom’s really worried about you, you know—” “I don’t fucking care. She’s a bitch.” “Hey!” I shouted and slammed my fist on the center console. “Watch your goddamned mouth!” James hung his head and picked at his overgrown fingernails. I could feel the air being sucked right out of the truck. Ryan was shocked, and Angela was on the verge of tears. I started the truck and pulled forward to the drive-through. “If she cared,” James said, “she would have come herself, instead of sending you.” “She couldn’t get out of work—” “She doesn’t work, she’s a loser…” I threw the truck into park, reached over the seat and grabbed James’ shirt. I was about to slap him but his face was too serene. He wasn’t reacting, not even a flinch. It was as if he wanted me to hit him.

2004

Three weeks after we found out James had been killed in Fallujah, we received his last letter to us. Ryan never received the other letter, or if he did, he never told us about it or what it said.   

July 6th 2004

Uncle Rob and Aunt Jenny, 

Hi, you guys, what’s crackin’ in good old Blue River? Is it hot yet? It’s hot as hell here. No joke. We just had a Fourth of July BBQ party. It was probably the best food I had in a while. I wanted to thank you for the letters and packages you been sending. I know I probably don’t deserve much but I dunno I still appreciate it. Tell Angie and Em I say hi. I sent another letter to Ry. Hopefully, he gets it. Things are mostly okay here. I’ve seen some weird shit and a lot of times it’s really stressful, like when we have to go out with the private contractors from PanGen. They’re a bunch of A-holes. Capital A. I’m with a good group of guys though. We look out for each other. I only have to be here 7 more months and then I come home. I’m excited about that. I was thinking I would go back to school. Dunno though. Didn’t work for me last time. I just wanted to tell you guys how much I appreciate what you done for me. Sometimes I didn’t listen or whatever but I know what’s up. I guess you could say if I had it to do over again I would have done it different. Okay thanks again for everything and stay cool. Love, James

2006

Mom’s new apartment was disorganized and cold. Nothing like how she kept house in our old place. The dishes sat dirty in the sink. Piles of mail stacked up against the phone and microwave. It angered me to see her living like this. 

Ryan hugged Mom and kissed her on the cheek. “How’s college, mijo?” She said, kissing him back. “I graduated last year, Nana…” I set Ryan to work on the bathroom and then took to the kitchen. When that was done, I sat Mom down at the dining table and dropped a stack of mail in front of her. “What is this? I don’t know what any of this is, Robert.” She ticked her tongue. “You don’t know what your mail is? It’s the bills. You have to pay your bills.” I grabbed the first envelope. “Like, what’s this?” I tore the edge of the envelope and slid out the sheets of paper. “This is for your utilities. It says you haven’t paid last month’s bill.” She took the envelope from me and stared at it. “I can’t read this. I don’t have my glasses.” “Where are your glasses?” She looked up but not at me. She seemed lost. “Mom, where are your glasses?” “I don’t know…” She looked back down at the envelopes and sifted through them. “Robert?” she asked, in a near silent whisper. “What is it?” She raised her arm up and pointed toward the front door. “Sshh…don’t you see him?” “See who?” “He’s right there. Oh, no, Robert, he’s here,” she cried and covered her face with her hands. “Who’s here? No one’s there, Mom.” “No, he’s here. He’s burning. My poor baby’s burning.” I didn’t know how to tell her he wasn’t real.

2007

Angela happened to show up at the hospital that day. “Here,” she said, handing me her iPod. “Ms. Alcott told me when her dad was in the hospital, it made things easier for him if he could listen to his favorite music.” I looked at the tiny metal object in my hand, unsure of how to turn it on. “Why aren’t you at school? How’d you even get here?” I asked. Rosa, who had fallen asleep in a chair near Mom, roused awake. “It’s Saturday, Robert.” Angela frowned. “I took Mom’s car.” “Oh—” I paused. “Nana’s not really awake so you won’t be able to say hello to her.” “I know, Mom told me.” I noticed she hadn’t gone to the bed or even looked at her nana. I could sense she was upset. Angela had never been stingy with her affection. At that time, I could think of nothing else but holding Jennifer and the kids close to me. I wanted to wrap my arms around them, shield them, press them into my own body, but Angela’s anger resisted that. “I don’t know how to use this thing,” I admitted, holding the iPod out to her. She took it, tapped its screen, then held it back out. “It’s just these buttons. I’ve already loaded up everything.” For the first time in her life, I wasn’t sure if I should hug my own daughter. “Well, I think I’ll leave now,” she said, turning to the door. “I just wanted her to have the music.” Rosa called out to say goodbye but it was already too late. 

I went to Mom and placed the headphones near her head. The surgeons had shaved most of her hair away when they removed the tumor. A rippled cut spread from one ear to the next. She was sedated but not unconscious. Feeling my hand close to her face, she dropped her head toward me. I waited for her to say something but her mouth didn’t move. Her doctors had told us it would be unlikely she would speak again. I clicked the iPod awake and scrolled to where Angela had shown me. All of Mom’s favorites were there. “What do you want to listen to, Mom? Oh, how about this…you’ll love this.” I clicked on Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Spanish Eyes”, and as soon as the music started, Mom turned her head toward the sound. Rosa sat up from the chair and laid her head on Mom’s arm. “She loves this song.” I wanted to believe Mom smiled but I couldn’t be sure.

2015

Jennifer was turned on her side but I could feel her body shaking. For the last few years, but especially since the explosion on Orpheus, I had been afraid of speaking to her. Afraid I had wronged her somehow, afraid I had done something, or worse, afraid I didn’t know what I had done. Was I supposed to ask if she was alright? I didn’t know anymore. I waited in the darkness, listening to her cry. Before too long, I couldn’t handle it and reached over to turn on the light. “What’s going on?” I sat up on my elbow. Jennifer sucked in a breath. “I’m exhausted.” “Take a sleeping pill,” I offered innocently. I knew when I said this something heavy fell over her, over both of us. She was silent and still for a moment. In the quiet, we could hear Emily in the living room talking to her friend on the phone. Knowing Emily was close gave me a sense of comfort I never realized I had until much later. “—are you even listening to me?” Jennifer said. My stomach flipped. I had been listening to Emily and had not realized Jennifer was talking to me.  “Yes, of course.” I lied. “You have this weird look on your face.” Her eyes narrowed. In that moment I realized, somehow, I didn’t know my wife any longer. “What’s your problem with me?” I barked. She was annoyed and pulled the blanket over her shoulder as she turned away. “Look, I’m all ears now. If you have something to say to me, then say it. I’m tired of your moods. We shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around each other…” “My moods?” she asked angrily. “Whatever, you know what I mean.” Jennifer half-turned. “Can you just turn out the light? I want to go to sleep.” “No.” “No?” “Tell me what’s going on. I told you how I feel—” “Telling me you don’t like my moods is not telling me how you feel—” “Okay, sorry, I’m not good with words. I didn’t go to college like you. I work every day to support us…” “What are you even saying, Robert? I’ve worked every day the same as you.” “That’s not what I meant—” “What did you mean then?” She stopped. “Wait…stop. I don’t want to argue with you. I don’t have…I’m not upset with you about anything. You haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t want to ever argue with you about anything. Not this…” “Not what?” “Ah, fuck it…” She rubbed at her eyes. “I can’t be married to you anymore.” I reached my hand out to find hers above the sheets. “No, stop. Are you understanding what I’m saying?” “You’re just tired. Let’s go to sleep and we’ll figure it out in the morning.” “No, there’s nothing to figure out.” She slid her legs from under the sheets and readied herself to stand up. “Wait,” I said, though I was nearly out of breath and the room had started to spin. “Wait a minute…wait a minute.” Jennifer sat with her back to me. “Robert, I will always love you. We will always have the kids, but I can’t be a part of this. Not with that thing—” “But why? What did I do?” I could feel my own desperation. Like I was drowning and Jennifer was high and safe above but I couldn’t reach her. “You didn’t do anything. This is just what happens. I’ve felt like this for a while, I’ve held it in, I’ve tried to make it better, but it can’t be made better. If you were honest with yourself, you would say the same.”

Suddenly, our door opened. It was Emily, phone still in her hand. “Em, honey…” Jennifer said. “No,” Emily shook her head. “I don’t know what you guys were talking about, but I’m telling you, you cannot. Whatever it is. You stay in love.” Jennifer stood up and walked with Emily down the hall to her room. I was alone, and Jennifer never came back.

2016

Clearly, I had blacked out. How else could I be running barefoot through the streets, rivers of sweat draining from every possible orifice. My feet stung and burned from the asphalt. Up ahead I saw a park. I stumbled toward it and collapsed in the dried out grass. I gulped for air and turned on my side to vomit up my breakfast, though I couldn’t remember what it was exactly. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had done anything. Jennifer had moved out with Emily and for the last few months had been staying with her parents. The streets and businesses surrounding the park seemed fairly dead. But then I actually didn’t know if it was a weekday. Maybe they were closed for the weekend? Had I missed a holiday? Who knows…who cares?

I stared up at the sky. Only a few slivers of the moon were still visible. No one could figure it out. NASA and PanGen had sent probes to investigate. The moon was still there, the actual thing. But from down on Earth, we could see less and less of it. Some people thought it had to do with the radiation from the explosion on Orpheus, but NASA didn’t say.

The last thing I remembered was opening the mail. Jennifer had sent me a package. I had sent her two books, a collection of Oscar Wilde and another called The Book of Monelle, which had been recommended to me by Ian and Mina, the bookshop owners. She had returned them both, rewrapped in the silvery tissue I had used. I could see her words written in the sky. 

Robert, I’m returning these because I know I will never read them. I appreciate the gesture and your kindness. 

She had placed our wedding bookmark in the Oscar Wilde.

I cannot imagine my life without you in it. I need only see Emily, Angela, Ryan to know without you they would not be here. But it would be wrong to act as if I found contentment in our marriage. I thought for a while I could be happy, but the longer it went on, something inside me told me it wasn’t right. The world is obviously more than what we had thought. Just look up and you can see that. There is more to me than being a mother and wife. I’m more than a nurse too. You are also more than what you think. I hope you can see that. It’s just like you to give me something I love. But, if you remember, I’ve read all of Wilde’s work. Maybe some day I will go back to him, but not today. It’s just not what I see in the future for me. The worst thing I can think is for me to stand in your way. And I know I won’t allow you or anyone to stand in my way. We will always be soulmates. In this life and the next and the next…

I heard Angela’s voice. “Dad? Hey, come on, wake up…” She had a flashlight and was shining it right into my eyes. “Hey, what the fuck? Get the light out of his eyes,” she shouted at someone. “You can’t sleep in the park overnight—” another voice said, with the dismissiveness only cops could muster. “Do you not see that I’m getting him up? Don’t you have some unarmed kids to shoot somewhere?” I could feel Angela’s arms going under mine. “Come on, Dad. You need to stand up.”

2023

I startled awake. “Oh shit.” I looked at my phone. Fifteen minutes late. There wouldn’t be time to shower. Unfortunate, because it was my water day. As I pushed on my boots, I saw the message on my internal network. I already knew it was PanGen notifying me I was 5 minutes late, but I had to click on the message anyway or else my biopass wouldn’t work. “Thanks for the update, you fucks.” 

Usually I would take the elevator but I was so late I took the stairs. My neighbor Arwin was coming up as I was going down. She seemed to struggle up the stairs, exhausted by her 14 hour shift. I wanted to help her, but we had never actually spoken in person. I gave her a wide berth as we passed. Later, I knew, she would message me. We only ever talked on the network. A few times I considered asking if she wanted to come to my apartment for dinner or coffee, but she was at least 20 years younger than me and probably not interested in making friends.

It was a quarter after midnight. The air was heavy and thick with heat. Beneath the ever-present scent of PanGen’s grain, there was the smell of the vector repellant, like bleached melons. And like everything they made, sometimes it worked but most of the time it didn’t. The surviving insects darted at you or swarmed the lightposts leading to the packaging facility. I had to spend half my pay on ointments and creams from the bites. When I went through the security doors, the alarm went off. Two helmeted security officers pulled me to the side. They scanned my phone, my network, and then ran a wand over my body. Of course, nothing was amiss. “Report to your workstation, immediately,” one of them said. So I did.

2026

Angela, Em, and I rode in a shared van to the protest in Walnut Creek. Ryan had said he would meet us there, but Em hadn’t heard from him since three days before. Angela sat in the front with the driver, interviewing him for an article she would later post on the community network. “Please, don’t print my name,” the driver said quietly. “If they found out I was here, they’d arrest me and send me back.” Angela assured him she wouldn’t. Em shifted in her seat and fanned herself. “Dad, can you ask the driver to turn on the AC? It’s too hot.” “The window doesn’t open?” She half-heartedly pulled on the van’s window. “No, see, this clip doesn’t work.” “No AC,” the driver said from the front. “Sorry, sorry, it’s not mine. Company car. I’ve got the windows down up here. It’s the best I can do.” 

Outside, the silky gold of California’s foothills was gone. Wildfire after wildfire had burned acres of open land. All the farms were gone. Not that they could grow anything. In their place were the smoldering ashes of the golden state. We had joined cities like Mumbai and Bordeaux as sites of permanent fire. The news called these places the Firelands.     

When we reached the facility, the protestors were already confronting PanGen security guards and the police. Our driver took one look, apologized, and said he wouldn’t be able to stay. The group we had shared the van with groaned and said something about already paying for the ride. “Asshole,” someone from the group muttered. Angela shot them a look. “You paying $40 to get a ride is not worth his life. So shut up.” Em pulled Angela away. “Come on. Mom’s here. She said she’s on the left side near the stairs.” 

A splinter group had taken over the walkway leading to PanGen’s parking garage. It was far enough away from the security guards, everyone could meet and regroup without being bothered. It would only stay like that until the police helicopters came in. But for now, there was a somewhat peaceful reprieve. 

As my girls and I walked up to join the others, Jennifer smiled at us. I hadn’t seen her in over a year. I was surprised to see she was sitting next to my old neighbor Arwin. But when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t Arwin, it was you—though I didn’t know that yet. I caught Jennifer’s eye. She shrugged and tapped her pen suggestively on the notebook in her lap. She wanted to write. 

That’s when the alarms went off. Then a crack.

The General

He spots a fly

He walks across the tundra

He plays croquet with an antelope

Who uses his hoof

According to my anatomy

Those are nails, he says

♪ Croquet hoop! Hair

In my soup! ♪

He visits his brother

Sings an opera tune

Under the table

He watches as the black cars go by

He hosts a wedding

He makes bold pronouncements

Mimicking Bonaparte

And bemoaning Russia and Waterloo

As personal failures

He praises the bold secular laws

That legalized his bizarre habits

He makes large gestures concerning

His reputation in the capital

He returns to his mother

In utero, tutto intaglio!, he says, then

Hand me my coat!, to his date

And partner in revenge and theft

We have no hope of making it out

Of this country alive

Out of breath

Trying to hold the blood of his

Nightmares, his childhood in suburban France

In, the bullet in his belly

Fired mistakenly

By a checkout clerk

Who stares at the couple empty-handed

And lets them walk out with the wine

Free of charge due to wonderment

At such superb theatrics

And like a marathon runner

Or a rebel in a Godard movie, the General says

Just maybe, my love

On this grand escape—the last—

There’ll be more chances

To sing.

Modern poetry

Spring: a lovely time

to quit your job. The inevitable

is irrecoverable, but maybe there’s

no past behind those mountains—it’s worth the trip. All event

horizons meet somewhere spritzy

the language of innocence makes sense. I’m not a tractor

I don’t have euphemisms for sex.

Tiger meat, cilantro, & applesauce for breakfast.

Satisfy your hunger. What way your way.

What’s the sound the Cordyceps fungus makes

as it grows out of its host’s head? 

“Bazing, bazing, BOOM.

Hold me, mother.”

Dedication

I see Rowland S. Howard float

through hell

holding his own sun

or mirror

or liver

saying he’ll be out soon, it’s just

he was curious—

the ‘O’ in ‘Or’

he says, and the ‘O’ in ‘Ocean’

or ‘Ornithology’

are the same—

leaving myself

too

Rowland S. Howard has cheated

death, I say, counting my fingers

or passing my fingers through my lack

of a beard

or smoking a pine needle—

don’t ask me why I’m here

it’s personal

and you’d be surprised

how quickly they let you in—

the ‘O’ in ‘Cataclysm’

and the ‘O’ in ‘Happy’

I reply

like a blind priest:

are not so different

either, at any rate

two things

Rowland S. Howard also holds

as he floats in the afterlife

of his choosing

and I ask him how?

he says you just

have to keep your eyes open

when it happens

oh

and be brave

that helps

Tope Folarin’s debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, is set partly in Utah and partly in Texas, and it is largely based on the author’s actual experience as the son of Nigerian immigrants. It is a coming of age story and also an immigrant narrative focusing more on the experience of the first generation American children of Nigerian parents. It is both uplifting and heartbreaking—heartbreaking in the way all immigrant narratives are heartbreaking. The father struggles to keep the family together in a small, mostly white small town in Utah after the mother begins to show signs of dementia. Her dementia, undiagnosed, could very well be related to the trauma of leaving home and having to make a life in a strange country. Eventually the mother returns to Nigeria and the father remarries. The narrator is the older son, and he grows up ignorant of both his parents Nigerian culture and popular African American culture. Most of the narrative is about his discovery of his blackness, culturally and politically, and about his search for his mother. It is uplifting in its resolution: despite all the challenges thrown his way the narrator eventually manages to find his own way, and of course because of its beautiful language—the opening section won the Caine Prize in 2013.

—Helon Habila, author of Travelers: A Novel (W.W. Norton) and professor of creative writing at George Mason University, Washington, D.C.

Note: The following short story originally appeared in the 2016 Caine Prize Anthology. 

Our father lifts his axe into the air and brings it down heavily onto the goat’s neck. A lush curtain of blood gushes down from the wound, muscles and tendons peeking out before tumbling into the grass. 

As the blood rushes out, our father snaps one of its legs. And then the other. 

The goat convulses on its side in the middle of our backyard. It is bleating in muffled terror through a gag that our father placed around its mouth just a few minutes ago. The gag is so tight that it has stretched the goat’s mouth into an evil caricature of a smile. A smile now refuted by a bleeding frown a few inches below.

Our uncle is laughing and jumping but we are horrified. We can’t help it — we begin to cry, softly. Our father tells us to shut up. He wipes his face quickly, but not quickly enough. We have already seen his tears. “What did I tell you before?’ he screams. ‘This is supposed to be a moment of joy!”

Yes, he told us this before, as we were planning how we would capture it. He told us that its life had been created for this purpose. He told us that God doesn’t have to provide us with any justifications for His commandments, that our only responsibility is to follow His will. We screamed and cried and refused to help him, we told him we would never do what he had asked us to do, but in the end we obeyed him, because he is our father and he is a man of God.

Yet now we know that we have made a terrible mistake. We have done something evil. It seems as if our father realizes this as well — his eyes are red and brimming. He rubs them and turns away from us.

The goat won’t stop dying. It is trying to wheeze the last notes of its life through its gag, but it’s choking on the long tongues of blood that are violently ejaculated from its second mouth with each ragged breath. The tongues lap at our feet. We cannot move.

After a few minutes death finally comes. A shuddering last breath and it’s over. 

We stand silent for a bit, trying to remind ourselves what our father said when he woke us up this morning. That by doing this we are proving our faith and our commitment to God. That everything would be easier if we thought of him as just another kid. Dad drops his axe and glares at us. Trance broken, we pull on our gloves and aprons and collect the blades and buckets from the stoop.

Our hands will not stop shaking. We start with blades on its skin, cutting away the hair, so slowly, so carefully. Our father makes a long vertical cut from the second mouth to the anus. Something stinks, something is putrid and rotting, and then the steaming innards slide out. We bend and dump the gunk into our buckets. We go to work on the stuff in the buckets, cleaning everything; our father told us this morning that nothing can be thrown away, or none of this will work. Our father and our uncle continue working on the animal, methodically breaking it down. Our mother watches us from the window — she is saying something, no, she is screaming something but we cannot hear a single word because the window is closed.

***

My brothers say I eat too much.

Mom shakes her head as she places another pancake on my plate. “That is the last one. OK? You’ve already had five.’ She tugs at my ear. ‘All this food you are eating, I don’t know where it is going.” 

“Five is definitely not enough for him,” says Dele.

“Yeah, he’s like a monster or something,” says Seun.

They are younger than me, and they’re always saying the same thing, always agreeing with each other, always double-teaming me and everyone else. In other words, they are annoying as hell.

Mom chuckles. “And so? Both of you should mind your business. No one is talking to you. Let him eat. That is what makes him happy.”

She’s right — I love to eat. I am the family garbage disposal, a walking trashcan, and I’m still the skinniest kid in school, probably the skinniest kid in the city.

Just a few months ago, on the stern advice of my doctor, I went on a 3,000-calorie diet before trying out for the basketball team. Dr Kolson checked my reflexes, my blood pressure, placed his cool hands on my back, asked me to cough, and did a double-take when I told him my plans.

“Well, son,” he said, pulling his glasses down his nose. “You’re going to have to gain some weight.”

Mom supported the idea, and Dad quietly acquiesced, so they bought me several boxes of power bars, and I gorged myself on six meals a day all summer long. I’d never been happier. At the end of the summer, I stepped on a scale and, of course, a net loss of three pounds.

I polish off my pancake in about three seconds and join Mom at the stove. “Please,” I say. I give her my best smile. The one she can’t resist. ‘Just one more. I promise.’ This is our Saturday morning ritual. After my fifth pancake I come and see her at the stove, and she’ll make another one, and I’ll devour it, and then another, and then another. Usually I eat ten pancakes. Sometimes more.

Mom’s wearing one of her flowing fluorescent wrappers, and she looks over at Dad as she tucks in an unravelling edge. Dad turns a page in his Bible. The sun is streaming in from the kitchen window onto the table and his tired face. He hasn’t said a word to me, to anyone this morning. A stack of pancakes sits uneaten next to his arm.

“That is all for now,” she says. “Lunch is coming soon. Try to be patient.” She turns away from me.

For a moment all I feel is anger washing through me, for a moment I am actually full, this anger is so satisfying, but then my stomach begins to growl, loudly, insistently. I place my plate in the sink, go up to my bedroom and close the door.

***  

“Can I come in?” the voice says. It’s Mom.

“Yes, Ma.”

Mom opens the door and surveys my room. My Star Trek: The Next Generation poster on the wall, my slim bookshelf filled with my favorite fantasy novels, my unmade mattress on the floor. I am sitting next to the bookshelf, bouncing a tennis ball off the wall.

“Can I come sit next to you?”

“Yes, Ma.”

Mom strides over and sits. She leans against me, and I can smell her hair. It smells earthy and brown, and I realize that I haven’t smelled her hair in years. Now a rush of memories — my small arms around her hot neck; she’s leaning close and rubbing her nose against mine; she’s tickling my neck after whispering in my ear.

“I am sorry about earlier,” she says. “I know you are still hungry. I am already preparing lunch.”

“It’s OK.”

“That is actually the reason I came to see you.” She takes the ball from my hand. She tosses it into the air, catches it, tosses it again. Then she places it on the floor. She clears her throat.

“I know this will be difficult, but you need to find a way to eat less.”

“Ma?”

“You need to eat less food.”

“Why?”

Mom pauses.

“I cannot tell you why. But trust me that it is for your own good.”

She stands and walks over to my bed. She sits. I can’t remember the last time she actually visited my room. Dad is usually the one who barges in, who is waking me up or lecturing me or searching around for something or another. It doesn’t feel like my room now that she’s here. It feels like we’re somewhere else, or like I’m dreaming, one of those dreams that seem so familiar and real that you almost forget to wake up.

She looks down for a moment, and when she looks up her eyes are red, tears beading at the corners. “Please, my son,” she says. “Try to find the strength to eat less. Especially around your father. If you get too hungry, you can tell me and I will try to find something for you. But it is important that from today you find a way to be satisfied with what I feed you.” She leans toward me and grabs my hand. “This is very, very important. Can you promise me that you will at least try? Can you try for your mother?”

She seems frantic now. I am bewildered. But I can’t stand to see my mother upset.

“Yes, Ma. I will try.”

“Yes, my son. Just do it for me. Just for a little bit. I love you so much.”

She hugs me and her shoulders are shaking and I rub her back like she once rubbed mine, in those days before I could walk or talk.

In those days before I consciously made promises I know I can never keep.

*** 

My father is a prophet.

God speaks to him all the time. God told him that Mr Parker, our mailman, had cancer. One day my father told Mr Parker to go see his doctor about his colon, and a few days later Mr Parker returned with his wife, and she would not stop hugging my father, she would not stop crying, she would not stop thanking my father for saving his life.

God told him that the Challenger would fall from the sky. I will never forget that morning, my entire family gathered around the television, the Challenger rising so beautifully into the air, my heart soaring with it, and then my father saying it is going to explode, it is going to explode, and I look back at my father, terrified that he might be right, then back at the screen, praying that he’s wrong, and then that beautiful white blip detonates and dissolves, a trail of fire in the sky, and I can’t stand to look any longer, instead I look at my father, with hatred now, because something tells me he willed this into existence.

God told him that my uncle would be born retarded. My father has told us many times how he told his own mother that God was going to punish her because she refused to find another husband after her first husband — my grandfather — died. Because she abandoned my father and woke up in a new man’s bed every morning. When she discovered she was pregnant she remained home, and her mother came by each day and fussed over her, did anything she asked, and her sisters hugged her close and read stories to her growing stomach. For the most part my father ignored her — the few times he spoke to her he told her she would be having a boy, and that the boy’s brain would never function properly. She cursed at my father, told him to leave her alone, and then her water broke and her family rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a beautiful boy whose eyes were too far apart, whose mouth was locked in a permanent smile.

My father is not a prophet.

God did not tell him that each of his businesses — including his computer business, his shoe business, his grocery store, his electronics store, his furniture store, his Nigerian clothes import-export business, his Nigerian news magazine — would fail.

God did not tell him that Mandela would leave prison one day. Whenever we heard about South Africa on the news, heard about how the world was applying pressure to the government of South Africa to release Mandela, my father would say it will never happen, it will never happen, Mandela will die in prison. He said this on the day we saw Mandela walk out of prison, looking older than we ever could have imagined; even as Mandela raised his fist in the air my father said it will never happen. To this day my father believes that Mandela died in the Seventies, that the man who left prison that day was an imposter.

God did not tell him that his mother would die. I’m not sure if my father ever believed she would die. One day he heard she was sick and he purchased a gold cross and prayed over it for three days. He sent the cross to her by express mail, and the following week his sister called and told him she had passed away. My father shook his head and hung up the phone and continued watching TV as if nothing had happened.

God did not tell my father that he would struggle so much in America. My father still can’t believe that he’s so broke. He still believes that our lives aren’t real, that any day now he will wake up in a mansion with a squadron of luxury cars outside, hundreds of gold bars piled neatly under his bed.

If you ask my father about these things he will tell you that God has never lied. Someone will step forward and say that Mandela died in prison. His mother will poke out of her grave and visit us in America. My father will be wealthier than anyone who has ever lived.

*** 

Dad’s sitting at the table when I get to the kitchen, almost like he’s been waiting for me.

“I guess it’s time for your nightly cookie,” he says.

Before I can deny it, or offer an excuse, Dad shakes his head. “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” he says. “Go get a couple, and get one for me as well.”

I wonder how long he’s known. For the past year I’ve been sneaking cookies out of the kitchen every night, around midnight or so. I started doing this after I turned 16. Around then I noticed that my constant, gnawing hunger had only grown worse. It no longer mattered how much I ate during dinner; at midnight I’d wake up to my growling stomach, and I’d spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise so I could eat again. After a few nights of this I decided that I’d steal a cookie or two out of the pantry at night, after everyone was asleep. I decided to do this even though my father once told me that my hunger is a burden I will have to bear for the rest of my life. That I would prove my worthiness to God if I learned how to control it. ‘God gives each of us a weakness so that we have a chance to draw closer to Him,’ he told me. I must have been nine or ten. “Your weakness is your hunger. If you can learn to overcome it, you will be proving to God that your devotion to him is more important than your greatest temptation. And He will reward you greatly.”

For many years afterward I repeated these words to myself at night, like it was my mantra, like it was a prayer, as my stomach knotted up and consumed itself. For a while these words were enough. But then I turned 16 and my hunger was threatening to become the most important part of me. I decided to do something about it. Just one or two cookies each night. Consumed quietly in the comfort of my bed.

Even after what Mom told me a few days ago I can’t stop. I can’t.

Now I go to the cupboard and pull three chocolate-chip cookies from the package on the top shelf. I pass one to Dad and sit across from him. He shoves it into his mouth. “Come on, eat up,” he says.

I wonder if this is a test. Maybe he wants to see if I’ll actually eat the cookies in front of him. If I will sin in his presence. I sit silently while he munches. When he finishes he asks me to pass him another one. “And finish that one in your hand,” he says. “I promise I won’t bite you.”

I slip the cookie into my mouth and eat it. It doesn’t taste as good as it does when I’m by myself. After I’ve finished it I wait for that surge of relief to pulse through me but it never comes.

My father rises and walks to the window.

“God has never led me astray,” he says. “Never. Not once. Even when I think he’s wrong. Even when I doubt His power and wisdom, He proves me wrong. But this thing that God has asked me to do now — it is too much.”

He’s facing the window, so I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Dad, I don’t think I heard you.”

“Yes you did.”

God asking too much? I don’t know what to say. This can’t be my father. My father who prays at least ten times a day. My father who insists that we attend church four times a week. My father who once banned us from watching anything but Christian television for a year. My father who instantly decided to marry my mother after she recited the first chapter of Psalms from memory during their first date. My father who fasts for days at a time, sometimes weeks, because, he says, God told him to.

I’ve never seen my father this unsure of himself before.

What has God asked him to do?

My father remains where he is. I don’t say a word.

I shrug. “Well, you’ve always told me to trust God, no matter what.”

Dad turns from the window and smiles at me. Then he returns to the table.

“Did I ever tell you that you were a miracle baby?” he says.

“No.”

“Ah. I guess I was waiting until you were a man. I might as well tell you now.” He nods and closes his eyes. “When your mother was about five months pregnant we went to the hospital for a routine check-up. The moment the doctor placed the stethoscope on her stomach I could tell that something was wrong. The doctor turned on some machines and attached some wires to your mother and called some other doctors in. She didn’t answer any of our questions. About half an hour later she told us that your heart had stopped beating.”

My father pauses. He licks a finger and presses it to the table. When he lifts it I can see that a few crumbs are attached. He slips the finger into his mouth and continues.

“Before your mother became pregnant with you she’d had five miscarriages. She had never carried a child for more than three months. When you got to four months I knew that you were meant to live. That you were our blessing. So when the doctor told me that your heart had stopped beating I smiled at her and told her that I respected her opinion, but that I answered to a higher power. Then I grabbed your mother’s hand and we went to the car and I began to drive. We drove for about an hour, and then the car broke down. Your mother asked me where we were going. I ignored her. I got out of the car and fixed it and started driving again. Your mother started screaming at me, telling me that she wanted to go back home, that she needed some time to mourn. I told her that no one would be mourning anything. I continued to drive. By the time the car broke down again she had fallen asleep. I fixed the car once more and continued driving. Four hours later we arrived at the church where I was saved. I woke up your mother and we walked out of the car, and I knocked on the door until the pastor opened it. When he saw my face he knew what was happening.”

My father is smiling now, and I feel like something is expanding inside me.

“I thought the prayer would take hours and hours, but my pastor just laid his hands on her stomach and prayed for only a few minutes. And then he looked at me and said it was done. And though I have often doubted God’s ability to do the impossible at the moment I knew that you had been healed.” My father shakes his head. “The pastor told me that you were the key to the success of this family. That you would serve a special purpose in our lives. And I believed him. I knew you would.”

My father rises, wipes his face with the back of his hand.

“So whatever happens, always remember that you are here for a reason. Your purpose was preordained.” My father leans forward and kisses my forehead. He has never done this before. Then he turns and walks up the stairs.

After a few moments I shut off the light and go to my room and slip under the covers.

My stomach is silent. I feel full, so so full.

*** 

Before last week I’d never heard Mom and Dad scream at each other. Before last week, whenever they were upset with each other, they’d exchange a look and disappear into their room for an hour or so, and when they emerged they’d smile at each other and the rest of us with their entire bodies. Last week, though, Mom said something to Dad, or maybe Dad said something to Mom, and they stomped off to their room and slammed the door and screamed at each other in Yoruba for almost two hours. After they finished they left their room separately, first Dad, then Mom. They ignored each other for the rest of the day.

This happened again the next day. And the next.

Now all they do is fight. Anywhere. Everywhere. They slam plates and slam doors and slam each other with their words. Dele says they are arguing about God. Seun says they are arguing about life and death. I’m not sure what they’re arguing about — my Yoruba is OK, I guess, but for some reason Dele and Seun have always understood Yoruba better than me, even though they are younger, even though we were all born in the States. All I know for sure is that Mom is feeding me less and less. Last Saturday she prepared only four pancakes for me. There are no more cookies in the cupboard. Mom says I can’t snack between meals any more.

I’ve never been this hungry in my life.

Two nights ago Mom came into my room and sat on my bed. I know it was her because I opened my eyes just a little when she walked in. She stroked my hair and kept stroking it. She said a prayer over me — I could not hear her words. Then she whispered something in my ear, like she used to when I was little. She said I will always be with you.

*** 

Dad says: “Go. Chase them.” 

My brothers and I stand, dumb, glancing at one another, and Dad says “Go on.”

Uncle is laughing and clapping his hands. Dad’s expression does not change. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so serious before.

“This is what my brothers and I did when we were your age. Your grandfather made us earn our food. All of you have been too spoiled by America. You can just go to the store and buy bread. You can just go to a machine and buy candy. That is why you don’t value your food. It is not your fault. There is just too much here.”

And when he says ‘here’ he lifts his hands, indicating — I guess — the sky, the grass, the farm, the sun, the goats. Uncle nods solemnly, as if he’s just heard someone deliver an acceptance speech for the Nobel, even though we’ve all heard this speech about a million times. Every three or four months Dad drives us to some random farm somewhere, and he gives the same speech before asking us to milk some cows or feed some hens or pluck a few fat red apples from a tree. We’ve never had to chase any animals, though. Dele and Seun immediately assume a runner’s stance but I don’t move. I have my maturity to defend after all; I’m too old to be chasing a bunch of little dirty-ass goats. I stare at the ground, but I know that Dad is losing patience, charm exhausted, giving me his better-do-it-or-I-will-embarrass-you-in-public look. Which, considering where we are, is kind of ironic. My father isn’t into irony. I lean forward and place my hands on the ground, like Carl Lewis.

I want to be mad at Dad but now I’m thinking about goat meat, how soft it is, how delicious. Saliva floods my mouth. Maybe if I catch a goat Dad will allow me to eat more than my usual share tonight.

“More like it,” Dad says. “So here are the rules: This isn’t just about the chasing. The first to catch a goat and tackle it to the ground wins.”

“Wins what?” I ask. I’m thinking about goat stew. I wipe my mouth.

Dad says, mysteriously: “You’ll see.”

He lifts his head slightly: “ON YOUR MARKS!”

I sense my brothers at the edges of my peripheral vision, just far enough out so that I can’t really see them, but I can feel them lurking, waiting for an opportunity to burst onto my field of sight.

“GET SET!”

The goats start rustling; maybe they notice the tension in our legs.

“GO!!!”

The goats immediately scatter; we chase them all over the field, probably looking quite goatish ourselves, while Dad and Uncle yell directions at us. The goats are quick, cutting from one direction to another in an instant, kicking the air with their hind legs when they sense that we are close. 

Dad says USE YOUR BRAINS, NOT YOUR LEGS! and I examine my surroundings for the first time. There’s a large chain-link fence bordering the field, and the goats — only three of them — are basically running from one end to the other, and sometimes through us as if we’re in the way. I focus on the goat directly in front of me. It has mottled black-and-grey fur, and is shooting shit pellets at me with every step. I stop to catch my breath and Dad says NO STOPPING so I jog while trying to formulate a plan. I figure if I can somehow chase the goat into the fence, angle it in a certain direction, I can pounce just as it’s about to turn. I experiment with this approach, I run hard at the goat and try to force it towards the fence, but the goat catches on to my plan after a few seconds, and now it will only run parallel to the fence. Dad yells NICE TRY, SON.

Another plan. I slow down, almost to a walk, and try to lull the goat into thinking I’m tired. The damn goat figures out what I’m doing before I can start sprinting again, though, and runs even faster.

GETTING TIRED? Dad asks, and Uncle begins to laugh once more. 

I drop all the intellectual pretense and began running full-throttle at the goat in front of me. The goat looks back and for the first time I see fear in its eyes. I keep running, imagining the ground as a massive trampoline, trying to leap forward with each step. I gain on the goat and keep going and keep going. Just as I’m about to jump on the goat and tackle it to the ground I look back and notice that Dad is chasing me. I laugh, enjoying the surprise, executing sharp cuts in the dirt, turning suddenly to the left when Dad tries to cut me off, threatening him constantly with my high back kick. I look back again and see my father breathing hard, wheezing, and I laugh louder, run faster, I’m gaining strength, the goats are my friends now. I feel the wind resisting my face and arms, but the running is glorious. I hear someone grunt and look back again; Uncle’s chasing me too, I laugh harder while evading, dodging, cutting, wondering why is he using his arms like that? So awkward, so ungainly, almost as if he’s never run before, for the two seconds I see him running he has already pushed himself to the edge of exhaustion.

I dodge again. Uncle and Dad try to work together, they try to trap me in a corner, and when they’re about to jump I bolt between them, galloping triumphantly away, sticking my tongue out at them, I run, run, run. Dad and Uncle finally stop, they’re grabbing their knees and panting at the ground, and I stop too, pointing and laughing, jumping up and down with excitement, and someone kicks me hard in the small of my back. The air is evacuating my lungs as I collapse, and someone punches me in the ribs and slams my head into the ground. I feel my arms and legs being tied together and I hear Seun yelling I GOT HIM! I GOT HIM! Dad says GOOD JOB, SON, I’M PROUD OF YOU and lifts me into the air. Someone punches me hard in my kidney. I don’t know what’s happening I thought this was a game I’ve never been so scared in my life. Fists coming at me from every direction, someone spitting on my face, stabbing me with sharp metal. I GOT HIM, I GOT HIM, says Seun and I feel myself being lowered, hands violating every part of my body, and they swing me one, two, three times and throw me into the trunk of the station wagon. 

*** 

Dad ignores me as I lie bleeding on the grass. Everything hurts. I want to apologize for whatever I did wrong, to promise I’ll never sin again, but there is a gag in my mouth. I start to scream but my father ignores me. Seun and Dele are standing far away from me. They look terrified. Almost as terrified as I feel. Where’s Mom? I try to scream her name. My father looks up at the sky. He keeps saying the same thing: ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE? Then he looks off to the side, wildly, like he is expecting someone to show up. No one does. My father is crying, his shoulders are heaving, he lifts his axe into the air and I close my eyes.

Reprinted with permission of the author.