elephantine

fiction friday: for the taking

    On Fridays, the only day she left the house, Sweetie rode the city buses. There was only one whose route came close to her – the 14 – but that dropped her off downtown and from there she could go nearly anywhere. Once downtown, she waited at the stop in front of Macy's for the next bus. Sweetie didn't even bother looking at the route number. She just got on, waved her paper transfer at the driver, and found a seat.
    Before – when she had still been able to drive – she had always hated the buses. You couldn't see around them, and they went so slowly, and always made more stops than seemed necessary. But now she didn't really care at all. She didn't have anywhere to be. This was simply her brief getaway for the week, and all she was really looking for was a feeling of having traveled, even if it wasn't so far away from home.

    Sometimes another person sat next to her. When the bus became crowded enough it was unavoidable; other times it just happened anyway. Once, the woman sitting beside Sweetie asked where she had purchased her watch. This took her by surprise, and she said, "It was an heirloom," despite that not being true at all. But that was always what happened when strangers talked to her. It made her anxious, and she would inexplicably say things that weren't true.
    And then there was Jonathan. He was young, maybe seventeen at most. She didn't know why he had bothered talking to someone like her, but he had, and then somehow it happened again the following week. He reminded her of her brother, when they were around that age. Maybe it was the smile – she wasn't sure. But he didn't bring out the nervousness in her, and that was enough to make her enjoy the company.

    Sweetie was finding, to her surprise, that she needed less sleep the older she got. Or, rather, she couldn't sleep longer than five or six hours at a time. So in the pre-dawn hours of those days, she sat at the small kitchen table watching the steam rise from a dark mug of tea. She spent those hours thinking about the bus rides. With her mind very still, she could recall exactly how the feel of the cracked seats felt against her skin. It was not hard for her to recall the electronic bell that rang when a passenger pulled the cord for the next stop, or the sound of coins spilling into the farebox. The crescendo of the engine, the water spots on the windows: it had all been stored, two hours at a time. She had soaked in every speck of it, and now it was hers, inside her, available any time she liked.

fiction friday: burn

   Minutes after the television exploded, my mother emerged out of the doorway of the house, clutching what she could: the photo albums, her jewelry box, a paperback with an illegible spine, and a pair of bronze-plated baby shoes. She was panting wildly, strands of cement-colored hair clinging to the sweat on her forehead. She could barely hold her head up to look at my father, who was rushing back from the Cooper's house next door.
    "You went back in," he said. "Why did you go back in?"
    "My God," said my mother, wiping the hair off her face with a shaky palm, "I need to sit down." But she remained standing, swaying. The northeast corner of the house radiated with flames. One of the bedroom windows was broken, the curtains behind it ablaze.
    "Marianne?" he was asking her. "Marianne, are you okay?" But before she could answer, their neighbor, Mrs. Cooper, was at her side, in her robe and slippers. She held a cool washcloth in one hand and a highball glass in the other. Mrs. Cooper hesitated, then set her cocktail on the sidewalk, pressing the towel into my mother’s hands. Everything that my mother had carried out of the house was now arranged on the lawn, circled around her like children.
    "Look at that," Mrs. Cooper said. She bent down, not bothering to adjust her robe. She picked up the bronze-plated baby shoes.
    "Those were Eleanor's," my mother said. Me, that tiny, if you could imagine it.
    "Oh?" asked Mrs. Cooper. She started to say more, but then the whine of the fire engines echoed from down the dark street, and the three of them turned to watch, waiting, just waiting, for them to come.

fiction friday: callum

These last few damp, bluish-gray days are the kind that Callum likes most. He gets up early to feel ahead of the game. In his narrow kitchen, he rewarms and swallows down half a cup of coffee, rinsing the ring out of the cup afterward with a splash of cold water. He does this set of movements with his right hand – the other arm is just a half-limb, ending above the crook where his elbow had once been.
    After dressing, Callum clips the old leather leash onto his dog's collar. The dog has been shadowing Callum ever since he rolled out of bed, breaking away only to eat or to scratch violently at the back of his speckled gray ear. Callum wriggles his feet into the canvas slip-on shoes left on the mat by the door. Outside, on the step, the dog presses past his legs and stretches in the cool morning air.
    They jog up the flat blocks. At the intersection, where there is a shoe repair shop and a little café, the light turns yellow, then red. Callum scans the front pages of the newspapers displayed outside the café. Sometimes he ties the dog to the rusted post by the door and slips inside for an espresso instead of drinking the weak, grainy stuff he makes in his own kitchen. When he does go in, the barista behind the counter is always the same: a spare dark-haired girl, with a soft voice and pretty features.
    "Do you want a punchcard?" she always asks, even though he has told her, several times, that he already has one, and when he holds it out to her it is creased and full of holes.

   There have been days when she is the only person he talks to. The other days, when he goes to the bookshop in the late morning and works until locking up at seven, he at least has Ames and the customers. Though, to be fair, Ames only speaks to Callum when the register jams, or when he's going out for lunch, or when the display window needs to be switched. Last week, Callum changed the display to feature books with white covers. Pure white, like the start of a dream. Ames stood outside the shop, watching him, biting the tip of his thumb nervously.
   "Well," he had said, coming back in, the bell on the door ringing, "It's different, I'll give you that much."

    In front of the café, the intersection light flips to green. They cross the street. A child coming from the opposite direction, tagging behind his parents, stares at Callum's bisected sleeve. Callum picks up the pace, trying to get away from that feeling of wanting to turn around and go back home. Finally, the edge of the university campus comes into view. With its open lawns and winding brick paths, it's the closest thing to a park near his apartment. Morning classes are in session, and there are only a handful of students out.
    They enter through the northeast entrance. The dog is pulling him, so he lets the leash uncoil a few feet off his wrist. They trot past a row of low-roofed administration buildings, then take the wide steps that spit them out into a grove of Yoshino cherry trees.
    He's surprised to see that they're in bloom. Just last week, there was hardly a speck of pink. Callum decides that he'll come back with a camera tomorrow, if he can manage to find it. He'll wake up early, get dressed in his slow and steady way, and come over to campus again. All he needs is a moment, and then they will be his forever.

fiction friday: ma lai go

  I had but a single memory of my grandfather Yuan: on Sundays, when my parents drove us to my grandparents' sand-colored bungalow, Yuan would retreat to the small, single-window kitchen and labor over an egg whisk and a round tin to produce an airy, perfectly round sponge cake. I could remember no visit without it. Yuan hardly set foot in that corner of the house, aside from this weekly ritual. It was the only thing he had any desire to make, and years later, the only thing he had any desire to eat.
  Yuan was unhurried as he cracked the eggs on the countertop, and steadfast as he beat them to a thick and opaque froth. His was an economical man; no movement went to waste. He slowed his stirring as each ingredient was added. Finally, he poured the pale yellow batter into a parchment-lined steamer, which was placed over a pot of boiling water. He slipped a towel under the lid of the pot before leaving the kitchen. "To catch dripping water," he said, when I shyly asked, and I imagined tiny raindrops threatening the sponge cake.
  Those Sundays, the cramped kitchen was also occupied by my grandmother as she prepared the heart of the meal: thick oily noodles, fried strips of pork, leafy vegetables in a pool of glistening sauce, packed bowls of steamed rice. She shouted in Chinese over the hiss and crackle of the food to Yuan, and then in bumbling English to us. "Why her hair so long?" she protested to my mother, meaning me. "She should keep it short. Out of the way."
  After lunch, wedges of cake were served on blue and white porcelain that, afterward, I would help clear from the table and stack by the kitchen sink. Only a few crumbs were the remaining evidence of Yuan's toil.
  "Oh, that sponge cake," my mother always sighed, once we were back in the car. She glanced at me in the flip-down mirror while reapplying her lipstick. "I've been eating it since I was your age."
  "Ma Lai Go," I said quietly. It was what Yuan had whispered to me when he removed the lid of the pot and a cloud of steam rose toward his face. It was the only time I ever saw him smile – as soon as the steam cleared, he always returned to his normal, serious self.

fiction friday: sweet

  Maddy had read a short story about it in some magazine, although now she couldn't recall which one. What she did remember was that you had to bake two pies – one with, and one without. She baked them both on the middle rack, placing the one for herself on the right side, nudging it gently into the oven. Then she wound the timer, and wiped the flecks of flour off her palms.
  She made the phone call with the cell phone her daughter had given her over the holidays. "For emergencies," her daughter had said, but by that week's end, Maddy had discovered that she liked being able to make a call while she was in town; she had even used it to call Dr. Keller when she was held up in traffic and running late to her appointment. Now, in the brightly lit hallway just outside of the kitchen, she dialed John's number.
  "Still coming at three?" she asked, and then, "No, no. No need. Just bring yourself."

  At a quarter to three, Maddy pulled the pies out of the oven. They looked identical: both golden brown, both stained dark purple in a few places where the filling had seeped through. She set two plates on the counter, reminding herself that hers would be the one on the right. Not a good time for forgetfulness, she thought.

  John, predictably, was late. And he had in his hands a small container of cookies, even though she had told him to bring nothing.
  "I baked a pie," said Maddy in protest, but John was already in the kitchen.
  "Two pies, I see!" he said. "I'll put the cookies out on a plate, if you don't mind." She couldn't stop him; he was already setting them out on a platter, placing the chocolate chip cookies on one side and the oatmeal cookies on the other.
  "Taste the pie," said Maddy. She was suddenly holding a forkful of it up to his mouth, cupping her other hand under it. Behind her, on the counter, the pie on the left was steaming from the place she had dug into.
  "Not yet," said John.
  "Go on. Taste it," said Maddy. And be done with it.
  But he looked hesitant. He looked nervous. He looked as though he knew. He broke off an edge of one of the oatmeal cookies, and held it out to her.
  "Only if you try a cookie first," he said.
  "Fine," she said, "But I want a chocolate chip one."
  "Suit yourself," said John. "But I want a bite of the other pie."

fiction friday: creature

   On clear nights, the creature came out of the woods and wandered through our town. My little brother called it the noche perro; he had been teaching himself Spanish ever since a pretty exchange student from Córdoba was assigned to his class. ("Doesn't she speak English?" asked our father, over dinner. "Yes," said my brother, "but that's not the point." Then, to me: "Lindy, pass the butter, por favor.")
   He was wrong about the creature, though – it wasn't a perro at all. It was much too big, hairy, and aware of its surroundings. I had seen it dig through our neighbor's trash cans, and it was methodical in its ways, eating certain pieces and throwing back others after a moment of consideration. I had seen it bury something in the Andersons' garden. I had seen it hide from a cat, retreating into a shadow until the tabby crossed the street. But even when the creature reemerged, it looked uneasy, as if at any moment the cat might come running back and attack.

   Then some of the PTA moms got wind of the creature. They said it was sniffing around the schoolyard. They spoke to the local news, claiming that two of the neighborhood cats were missing. When they realized that the creature was after nothing more than our garbage, they insisted that everyone hide their trash cans in their garages at night.
  "Now this monster will leave us alone," they said.

   When the creature came back, it seemed confused. Where there had once been bins stuffed with dinner scraps and plastic packaging and used tissue, there were now only round depressions in the grass. From house to house, it found the same thing – except at one. Outside of our house, the creature found a brown lunch bag, and inside the bag, my lunch. A peanut butter and honey sandwich. Half an apple. Some crackers. The creature sniffed at the food, gave a moment of thought, and then removed the sandwich from its plastic bag. It ate the bag, chewing slowly, and then took the sandwich in its mouth and started walking back toward the street. It looked back only once, glancing up toward my bedroom window. I saw the the glow of its small, oval eyes, and then I ducked out of sight.

fiction friday: please

   Four hours on the train to Portland feels like a week to Ralphie, whose palms are beginning to sweat at the thought of actually seeing her today, of actually having a face-to-face conversation. How many times has he rehearsed? Too many, probably. An hour ago, just outside of Centralia, Ralphie had walked through the swaying train cars – gripping the backs of seats to keep balanced, squeezing by passengers carrying trays of hot bagels and coffee – and climbed the narrow staircase to the observation car on the upper deck. He had sat in the middle of an empty row of seats that faced sideways toward the broad, reflective windows. The view was limited to marshland; miles and miles of it. In his head, he practiced the conversation again, and then again, and again, stopping only when the train itself came to a stop at the next station.
   Now, back in his seat, he can feel the sweat on his hands. He decides that he will practice once more, and then try to take a nap, so that he will look rested when he sees her at the train station. Then he'll tell her why he needs her to come back home. And it will work. He knows it will. It has to. On this accelerating train, with only two stops to go, that much he is sure of.

fiction friday: diary

   I had been reading my sister's diary for two weeks when, finally, something interesting happened: she developed a crush. Not just on anyone, but on Lee Lebovitz, who aced every math test and snorted when he laughed, but who also rode a motorcycle that was always in the senior parking lot despite him being a junior. In her diary, my sister smothered one of the white pages with lipstick-stained kisses. "Lee Lebovitz," she wrote, in small, tidy handwriting, "you are really missing out."

   In the mornings, when she was in the shower, I continued to sneak into her bedroom and carefully remove the diary from the back of her desk drawer. Before, she had never written more than a page, but now she sometimes filled two or three pages with a detailed account of every interaction she had with Lee.
   "Best day ever," she wrote. "Was partnered up with Lee in Biology!"
   And the next day, "Accidentally bumped hands twice during class. A sign?!?"
   But then, out of nowhere, Lee started walking around campus holdings hands with a girl who had a "stupid-looking haircut, and no personality," according to my sister, who just as quickly became moody and quiet. At dinner, she pushed the food around on her plate until our mother demanded that she either eat or leave the table. She started to go to bed early every night, and sulked around the house on the weekends instead of going out like she'd always done. When I snuck into her room to peek at her diary, she hadn't written anything new for an entire week.

   I thought it would pass. Isn't that what crushes were supposed to do? She'd get over him, find someone new to fantasize about, return to writing her long, zealous entries. But a whole month went by, and the pages remained blank.
   I was bored. I was restless. I came up with the only plan I could think of: I took a piece of our mother's pink stationery, wrote what I needed to, folded it into quarters, and slipped it into Lee Lebovitz's locker after third period, making sure no one saw me do it.

   When the diary entry finally appeared, my sister wrote it in a fresh loopy handwriting, as if it was an entirely new version of herself. Lee Lebovitz, she announced, was now single again. Not only that, but he had smiled at her in the hallway, the type of smile that made her feel a little bit light-headed and very much hopeful.
  "It must be fate," she wrote, "because there's just no other explanation."

fiction friday: you and I

   For all those years, I don't even know you exist. Then, just like that, we are standing in the snack aisle at Kroger, both eyeing the last box of chocolate chip granola bars. You make a suggestion: you'll buy it, then give me half of the granola bars, in exchange for nothing more than my phone number.
   I laugh. "You can't be serious," I say.
   "Come on," you say. "You could even give me a fake number."
   "And a fake name," I point out.
   "That, too."
   "I'm Jenny, by the way," I say.
   "Or maybe you aren't," you say.

   Friday night, we see a horror movie together in the multiplex downtown. Whenever foreboding music kicks in, I stare at the neon green exit signs instead of the movie screen. It occurs to me later that this is a bad avoidance technique. At dinner, I keep seeing green spots on my menu. I decide to ask the waiter what he recommends. "The lasagna," he says. I ask what else he recommends. He explains to me that it's all good, because if it wasn't, they wouldn't put it on the menu.
   "Don't leave him a tip," I tell you, after the waiter leaves.
   "Who says I'm paying?" you ask, smiling.

   After the twelve or thirteenth date, I stop counting. I keep trying to pay for things, but you always tell me I can get it next time. I eventually have to admit to you that I am, in fact, terrified of horror movies. You confess that you were never really that crazy about granola bars. Sometime after Christmas, you give me a key to your apartment.
   "This might be a bad idea," I say. "I'm always losing things."
   "Right. I forgot about that," you say.
   "That's our problem," I say. "Neither of us can hold onto anything."

   Do you remember the birds? All those sparrows in the tree outside your building? It seemed like there were a hundred, at least. They were on every branch, rustling, chirping, coming and going. People could hear them all the way down the block.
   We were watching them from your window. You had just asked if I wanted to get out of the city that weekend, and I was saying, "Yes, but where?" and then, all at once, they abandoned the tree. They became a small dark cloud rising from the branches, rising higher than the rooftops until they broke apart and scattered in all directions. For a split second, the sky was polka-dotted, and then it returned to a single shade of blue.

fiction friday: dogspeak

   I'm already wide awake by the time they start to stir. "Monday," one of them grumbles. The other one yawns. Why are they so slow? Finally the man gets up. I follow him into the kitchen. He gives me breakfast. More, I think. Pour more! But the man leaves the room. I scarf breakfast down, almost choke, slurp water from the other bowl, go searching for the man again. He's back in the bedroom, talking to the lady. Quiet words I can't understand.
   Hey, I think. Hey, mister.
   He pats my head. We go to the back door and he lets me into the backyard. Oh, the smells! The sweet air.
   I do what I need to do. The man takes out a little bag – that makes me want to laugh every time, him with his nose scrunched up. We go back in the house. The lady is standing in the middle of the kitchen, making a sandwich. I sit next to her and think, Give me the sandwich. I use every bit of my thinking power to think this, but she doesn't give it to me. I follow her into the bedroom, then back into the kitchen, then to the front door. She hands the sandwich to the man, and the man gives her a kiss, and then he's gone, just like that.

   Everything in the middle of the day is boring. I climb back onto the bed. The lady sits at her big desk and stares at her computer and talks to herself every now and then. Eventually I fall asleep, and have one of these awesome dreams where I'm running, I'm running, I'm running, and I'm in a backyard that's three hundred miles long and smells like sweet, fresh air, and at the end of it is a sandwich, my sandwich! You wouldn't believe how fast I can eat a sandwich. You really wouldn't believe it.

   The man gets home when it's dark outside. When he walks through the front door, I run around the house like mad, almost as fast as I ran in my dream, but not quite. He's home, I think. I didn't know if he was coming back!
   He gives me dinner. I'm happy. Really, really happy. I wouldn't mind if he gave me a little more, but still. I'm happy. In the living room, the man and the lady are staring at the TV and eating colorful dinners. I try to lick the edges of their plates and they say "No!" and "You already had dinner," but what they don't realize is that I could eat a hundred dinners if they let me.
   "Sit," says the man. When I do, he gives me something small off his plate. I don't know what it is but it's the most delicious thing ever.
   "Not too much," says the lady. "He'll get sick."
   I won't, I promise I won't, I think. Give me lots more. I won't get sick. I'll just be the happiest dog in the world, and in the whole entire universe.