Barry sat silently at his desk, brooding. There wasn’t much to be done about it. Once the ink was on the paper, it won’t ever go back into your pen, or inside your head.
He stared at that page, examining the shapes and studying the curves and angles he had marked on paper. He breathed in some air, slowly, through his nose, and gently rocked backward. The two front legs of his chair lifted off of the floor. Balancing himself, crossed his legs but otherwise remained motionless, except for the continued slow motion of his diaphragm. Now he concentrated his eyes to out of focus and began to slowly rotate his pen between his thumb and forefinger, forcing his eyes to stay out of focus. Then, suddenly, he snapped himself out of the trance; laid the pen down softly, as if in repose, on the small round table along side his phone and his coffee.
What to do, what to do?
When ink animates from paper, when imagination intersects with the real, when the heart is thrown asunder, what is there to do.
Barry felt his life had unhinged, felt like it was a shattering mirror flying off into space. He picked up his pen and began to squeeze harder, gripping it ever more tightly, thinking his grip on life would thereby become stronger.
Nadine was asleep in her bedroom now, her eyes moving rapidly under closed lids, dreaming, dreaming about rising water, water she could not control. She tried to steady herself, tried to regain control of her own life, tried to navigate her body using the palms of her hands like a rudder. But the rising water, the fast currents, pulled her hands deep below the surface, like an oar plunged straight down into rapidly moving water, and she spun wildly out of control.
Then suddenly she walked into his life, asked not why he was brooding, but instead asked how he was doing; her face belying the passion he had just scripted for her.
“I’m fine”, he replied. “I’ve got a busy day.”
“Me to”, Nadine replied. “Can’t stay, this, that and the other thing.”
“Me to.”
And with those words, she walked back out of the coffee shop, and Barry continued the story.
He began to write out of despair and desperation, how he violently smashed two rocks together inside his head. He described how he built up a powerful momentum, a momentum which was irreversible and beyond his control. In his mind, the violence went on for weeks, until a small spark was created.
It was this point, give or take a week or two that Nadine returned to the coffee shop. That was the miracle of the spark, as Barry came to know it. Neither dream nor fiction, it was a genuine remission from his trychosis.
Barry wanted more, much more, but reminded himself  how far he had to come. As he considered the depth of his trychotic despair, he apprehended his next step toward recovery had to be to accept this spark. He had to comprehend it, though it was incomprehensible. Had to experience it, though it was beyond experience. He had to search thro

I dream


Whitman's ghost is in the new air around me 
not the figure in the workman shirt 
not the settled legend 
but the electric and naked poet 


drunk with this thing oxygen 
dancing atom Whitman 
fresh from the oily steam of the wharf 
and the ca-lak a-lak of trolleys and typesetters 


the coal-dusted womb of Brooklyn 
all the way to now and here 


he climbs from ordure in the cart
his wheels move god's manure 
pushed with grunts and the sweet sweat of beautiful men 
I rise from the wheely chair 
my modern wheels that get me know-where 
on a plastic carpet protector round and round 


and his laugh starts in the roots of his holy head 
his laugh bends and flexes the unknown parts
and leaves his sweet lips to curl my own
we wheel in wheels into the cirrus of love


above the cumuli of recycling drench and parch
beyond the nimbus of rise against and wreak 
past the hail and forked spark of human correction
to forget anger's predictable climate


to the jetted stream of love 
the fish scales and sky hooks of love 
the pure d blue of love's truth and presence 
of which he still sings o atomic paper o sooty pigment


and his great hand holds mine 
in more than this and he waits until I am 
trembling with all his parts 
all rancid and cleaned parts of all things 


my body electric and he leans in
as we drift over rooftops and I listen:
know these are still the same o best beloved 
I sing still of all work and all work


even the sit and spin of now 
it was always so my song was a refutation then 
and now again I refute ignoble and disconnected 
we are not alone 


we are not the warning label or 
the ad in the corner of the screen we are more 
we are the holy effort of plain and ordinary 
we are sex on the forest floor and


the spurt and couple and cupped jaw 
and the friction as we move along 
and it has not changed 
awake! every new child awake!


all of all is still here nothing is diminished 
your love is still love in new clothes
in the cellar of unreason there is a particle'd light
among the cold stars there is vast blue oxygen 


waiting for all of me and all of you 
I am what is in you and you in me 
not before not after but now 
now now now


and sly Walt beaming Walt ecstatic Walt 
takes me home covered in blue 
stardust ice pollen hair ordure 
and settles me next to my sleeping wife


stay alive while you are alive
he whispers 
remember the broken and dying and wet their brow
he murmurs


I open my eyes and the air dances in thousands 
I lean in slowly slowly to listen to her 
every inch is the progress of history
and her breath is the work of the universe

Barbara requests that you read and post comments.  Thanks.

Allan Street
By  Barbara Martin

Marge wanted to remember the day Aunt Rossi died. Marge lived a neat, solitary and organized life tucked away in her cottage in the suburbs, but she felt deprived. The events of 75 years ago played in slow motion in her memory like the truism of black and white movies because color couldn’t capture the depth of her observations of life as well. Remembering that day kept her alive (alert?), kept a raging fire in her heart, in her voice and in her eyes.

That cold crisp autumn day began innocently enough. Little Marge gathered the firewood Papa chopped before daylight. Then she started the fire in the dining room stove that also heated the living room and the two front rooms. Mama darted back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room with a breakfast of fried fish, grits and light bread before getting ready to go off to her maid’s job. During breakfast, Papa told Marge folk tales about animals that bore a striking resemblance to some of Papa’s friends. Marge loved Papa’s stories because they made her laugh. Marge knew that Mama’s meals always made Papa happy. He especially liked her strong, hot, black coffee in his caffeine stained mug. Very few things in Papa’s life made him happy these days. Papa hadn’t worked for a year since he got hurt working the coal chute at the train yard. Marge thought it must have grieved Papa that Mama became the primary breadwinner. Papa also bore the weight of holding the family together emotionally.

Marge loved when Papa’s sister, Aunt Rossi, stopped by. She allowed Marge to rummage through her pocket book to look for the chewing gum or candy hidden just for Marge to find.  Later events of the day helped Marge finally understand the cloud that came over Aunt Rossi’s beautiful dark brown face when she and Mama whispered in the kitchen. Aunt Rossi’s husband, Jake, seldom came to visit. When he did, he and Papa usually got into a heated discussion that ended with Aunt Rossi crying and her husband yelling that they had to go home.

Aunt Rossi and her husband lived around the corner just past rich Miss Beulah lamb’s house on Allan Street. Allan Street was not really a street. It should have been called Allan Alley or Allan Way because it was dead end. The short, unpaved, dusty road ended at the edge of a small acreage of woods. When it rained, cars dared not go onto Allan Street. Marge often saw well dressed passengers pushing a vehicle while the driver sweat and the passengers rocked the car back and forth to pull it from its muddy prison. There were only two houses on Allan Street – Miss Beulah Lamb’s and Aunt Rossi’s. Miss Beulah’s big, white four bedroom house sat on a lush lawn on the corner lot of Allan Street and Warren Street where Marge lived. It looked like a mansion to Marge. From her front porch, Marge could see Aunt Rossi’s house on the other side of Miss Beaulah’s. Aunt Rossi’s house was the unpainted wooden shack with the bare earth front yard at the far end of Allan Street next to the woods.

Miss Beulah Lamb had money. She was one of the few people in Black Bottom who had a telephone and a gramophone. Every other day, Marge sat in the ditch beside Miss Beulah’s house and listened to the jazz sounds that came through the windows. When she grew up, she wanted to be as nice as Aunt Rossi and as rich as Miss Beulah Lamb. Miss Beulah wore all the latest fashions and went to the beauty parlor to get her hair straightened. She didn’t have to work like Mama and Aunt Rossi because she had a pension from her late husband’s war service and all of the property that stretched from Allan Street to Catawba Street in the back of her house.

Marge was happy when she was allowed to spend the night at Aunt Rossi’s. Aunt Rossi’s house smelled like cinnamon when she cooked special syrup cakes for Marge. Marge liked the way Aunt Rossi’s petite frame moved around the kitchen when she cooked. She made it look so easy that the supper of bland pork and beans with rice tasted good to Marge. Aunt Rossi’s husband was the only unpleasant thing about being with Aunt Rossi. He usually sat silently during supper, until he drank his tea, then he began to talk in a funny, slurry kind of speech. After she went to bed, Marge thought she heard him yelling and Aunt Rossi crying. Some things were not right in Aunt Rossi’s house.
That autumn day, as Mama opened the door to leave for work, Marge heard Aunt Rossi scream. Mama told Papa that she thought Aunt Rossi’s husband was drunk again. She clinched her fists as Papa rushed out of the front door running toward Aunt Rossi’s house. “Call the Sheriff,” Papa whispered to Mama. Mama told Marge to stay inside as she hurried across the street to Miss Lamb’s to make the call. Marge felt a twinge of fear as she peeked through the squeaky screen door. She thought abut sneaking across the street to the ditch to find out more, but she heard Aunt Rossi scream once more and all was silent. She saw Papa run around the corner of Allan Street with Mama not far behind. Eternity seemed to pass before Marge heard the wail of the police siren. She didn’t see Papa after he went into Aunt Rossi’s house. She saw Mama leave miss Beulah Lamb’s house and start toward Aunt Rossi’s

The Sheriff’s car careened around the corner to Allan Street. Marge saw Old Buford, the biggest, whitest, meanest deputy Sheriff in the county get out of the police car and go into Aunt Rossi’s house. Hooked onto the belt under his large round belly was the big black bullwhip that scared everybody. Marge prayed for Papa to leave Aunt Rossi’s house and come home. She saw Mama turn and head back home when Old Buford went into Aunt Rossi’s house. Then Marge heard a different sound. A deep guttural yell, half scream and half whimper came from Aunt Rossi’s house. Marge’s throat dried. Her fear increased because Aunt Rossi and Papa were inside that house.
Suddenly, Marge saw Aunt Rossi’s husband, Uncle Jake, fly out of the front door of the house. He landed on the dilapidated porch with a thud. Old Buford emerged from the house and kicked Uncle Jake off the porch and into the dusty front yard. Marge saw blood gushing from Uncle Jake’s back through the shirt that was half ripped off. Old Buford kept kicking Uncle Jake and yelling “Niggers can’t even take care they business right. Got me comin’ down here to Black Bottom near every week.” Then he raised that bullwhip and began to lash Uncle Jake over and over and over. After about the tenth lash, Uncle Jake stopped moving, but Old Buford kept whipping him and talking to him.

Marge didn’t realize that she was on her porch, trembling and crying, until Mama said, “Marge go in the house and stay there.” Marge’s breath came in short, gasping beats. She felt her heart racing. A strange feeling of sadness came over her, as if the world were coming to an end. Marge saw Papa walk slowly back home as Old Buford got in the police car and drove away. She saw Uncle Jake’s lifeless body lay in a pool of blood that slowly seeped into the yard. Marge wondered why they left him there, uncovered, until the mortuary wagon came. Marge learned later that Aunt Rossi’s husband, in a drunken rage, had slit Aunt Rossi’s throat. Mama didn’t go to work that day. Papa just sat by the stove and stared. Some of his church brothers came to help with the funeral, but Papa didn’t speak to anyone until after Aunt Rossi was buried a week later. To this day, Marge still doesn’t know who to hate.

Buttermilk

by

Barbara Taylor Martin

When I was seven, Grandmama sent me to Miss Wilhelmina’s to get fresh buttermilk that Miss Wilhelmina sold in the nice glass gallon jugs that Grandmama liked. Miss Wilhelmina lived on the far end of Alaska Street from Mr. Charles’ Dew Drop Inn café, so I had to walk eight blocks past the cafe to get the buttermilk. Even though it cost fifty cents, it was better than the seventy-five cents buttermilk we got from the store two blocks from our house. Grandmama said she’d rather give Miss Wilhelmina the fifty cents instead of that crazy old white man, Mr. Gerber, down our street. He always put the cost by Grandmama’s name in his little account book. Mr. Gerber secretly increased the price on all his accounts by the end of the month when payment was due. That just meant I had to walk clear across town and lug back a gallon of buttermilk from Miss Wilhelmina’s. At least Miss Wilhelmina would let me get a taste before I started back home. It wasn’t bitter and watery like today’s buttermilk or Mr. Gerber’s. Miss Wilhelmina’s buttermilk was smooth and creamy with just a hint of sweetness.

I became accustomed to walking all over our little town by the time I was six years old. The major roads were paved, but side streets were mostly dry sandy stretches that muddied over when it rained. The town kept side roads clear of debris and it was a good thing because my friends and I were barefoot except in winter. We could walk barefoot so that we didn’t mess up our school and Sunday shoes.

I was familiar with walking along paved Alaska Street because it was the short cut on the way to our church, Bethel Baptist, and it had a side walk. I could cut across Catawba Street past the Casino, with its wooden leaning walls, and turn left onto unpaved Taylor Street where Mr. Charles lived. From there, I walked over to the sidewalks of Alaska Street. That route was more interesting than going on Fronie Street, the long way around in back of our house. On Fronie Street there were only houses and vacant lots – vacant lots that might have snakes.

The Casino was not a place of slot machines and roulette tables. It was a large unpainted wooden warehouse-like building that could be used for community activities.  In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the Casino hosted several big bands like Count Basie who came through town on their way to the big cities. Before we got the gymnasium at the high school, our schools used it for sports and holiday celebrations. By the 1950’s, the Casino was not just past its prime, it was a safety hazard. But it was the only place that the Black community could come together and play.

The Dew Drop Inn, on the corner of Taylor and Alaska streets, wasn’t an Inn either. It was more like a bar and grill on the weekends and a fish fry and sandwich place during the week. Mr. Charles owned an operated the Dew Drop Inn on Alaska Street and lived in the house behind the Dew Drop Inn. He lived with his wife, Alice, and their two girls. His sister Bertha and her three kids, two boys and a girl, lived there too. Grandmama said they weren’t really respectable because they sold liquor. God knows, according to Grandmama, anybody who touched liquor, even if it was beer, was going straight to hell on a train. She knew that Mr. Charles family didn’t even go to church on a regular basis. When they did, they went to Olivet Baptist. Grandmama said there were a few suspicious things about the pastor at Olivet. Somebody saw him coming out of the Dew Drop Inn in the middle of the week. They couldn’t get close enough, but Grandmama was sure he must have had beer on his breath.

It’s a good thing I got a taste of buttermilk at Miss Wilhelmina’s house, because it was on the way home that I realized I should have gone the long way around on Fronie Street. Just as I was passing Mr. Charles house, his nephews, Lorenzo and Theopolus, the one they called Gator, ran up to me in the street and demanded I give them the buttermilk. I said no. They insisted. I said no and kept walking. That’s when they set their two barking dogs at me and I dropped the buttermilk. There it lay in the middle of the dirt that was Taylor Street. I watched beautiful, white, tasty buttermilk slowly seeping into the thick black earth as I stood stark-still crying. Crying because I dropped my grandmother’s fifty cents buttermilk (a sure fire whipping was in store for me), dogs snarling and barking at me (Oh Lord let me die) and two mean little boys almost falling over themselves laughing at my fear and sorrow (Where is God’s lighting bolt when you need it?)

I got the deluxe whipping. The one with the “don’t-bring-me-no-dried-peach-switch-cause-I-want-the-green-one-that-won’t-break” twig. Of course, the whipping was more for example than torture. Grandmama’s point was that she didn’t have the buttermilk, the glass jug or the fifty cents. Fifty cents was a lot of money to her and the buttermilk and the glass jug were luxuries. And it took a long time for Grandmama to trust me with anything of substance.

I remember when the high school gymnasium was built a block from Grandmama’s house. I was a teenager, and it became a focal point for community activity, replacing the Casino as a gathering place. The gym brings back memories of high school days, my class mates and how our lives continue to connect.

I’ve only kept in contact with one of my old friends. All of us drifted away from that time and place. It was a time of bitter sweet circumstances. Last week, my friend NettieRuth (most of us had a first and middle name which was pronounced as one word), and I sat on her back patio with friends and relatives and reminisced about the school and how we challenged each other and our classmates to go downtown to integrate the only town ice cream parlor. NettieRuth’s nephew stared at us as if we had five heads and asked, “You mean you went to segregated schools?” We laughed at him because he looked as if we were dinosaurs come to life.

NetttieRuth and I became friends because of books. We both loved to read, but we could not go to the public library and check out books. That was strictly forbidden. We had to wait for our school librarian to petition the board of education for our school library books. NettieRuth and I watched the newspapers for best sellers or I’d ask relatives who lived in New York City to get titles that we wanted. Some works were banned. After Zora Neale Hurston wrote newspaper articles about the Ruby McCullum scandal (she was a black woman who shot a white doctor whose baby she had), all of Hurston’s books were banned. However, our high school library held enough books to keep us marginally occupied. As soon as a new book came in, NettieRuth and I were in a race to get it first. We were usually the only two students with an avid desire to read everything we could get our hands on. We still share books today.

Sitting on her patio, we talked about the days of fire drills from the third floor back room down a rickety fire escape that was probably held together by two or three steel bolts. NettieRuth believes that only God saved us from a collapse that would only have bothered our parents and their friends. The school board sure didn’t give a damn. We always got the obsolete text books, the ones with the front cover missing and pages torn out. Of course some of our classmates rejoiced in the used nature of the books. Every year, Leonard Clarence Wright, Jr., or J.R., wanted the books the white kids wrote in. He believed that they put the right answers in the math books. It took two years of getting C’s before he learned that they weren’t any smarter than he was.

Growing up in a small, rural southern segregated school probably had the same social dynamics as any other place. Even though NettieRuth and I were book worms, we did have diverse friends. NettieRuth lived on a farm and took the school bus so she knew all the farm kids. Her family came into town every weekend so she also knew many of the town kids. I lived two doors from school, but my grandmother was so protective I couldn’t really socialize with most other kids except my cousins Yvette and Patty. My one friend in town, Laverne, lived between my house and Yvette’s so I could visit her occasionally.

When Yvette was sent to boarding school and Patty’s parents moved them to another town, I didn’t see much of them any more. But Laverne was my life line to the social network. Although I had known most of the 75 kids in my class since kindergarten, I felt that the boys were too immature and silly to even think about dating, except for Tyrone Green. In my 15 year old eyes, he looked like a movie star – and he played football. It was football practice that opened my eyes. Laverne and I decided that we would go over to the field behind the gym and watch football practice. One of her cousins, a year ahead of us was on the team. But I went to look at Tyrone. It didn’t bother me that he was sweet on Teresa, one of my other classmates, whom I considered the prettiest girl in our class. She had a long slender body, a smooth coffee colored complexion and a long swooshing ponytail. I was short, round, wore glasses and didn’t have enough hair to style it even into a doggy tail. Also, my status as a book worm was well known. But I figured a cat can look at a king, so what’s the harm?

As it happened two of Laverne’s cousins were also watching practice. There was Theopolus, Gator- as he was called, who didn’t play football because he was strange. He was strange even before teen agers started acting strange. Gator could show up at school in various costumes (a loin cloth and buckskin shoes like a Native American or facial and body piercings and assorted hair cuts and colors – his most famous being an orange Mohawk.) Laverne’s other cousin, the one who played football, was Lorenzo. Most of the girls swooned over Lorenzo more than Tyrone, but I never noticed Lorenzo in that way. On the day of practice, Lorenzo had a cast on his left leg up to his thigh so Laverne and I stopped to find out when he could get back on the field. After he told us about being side lined for six weeks, he looked straight in my face and asked if I would go to the next game with him. Even though he was looking at me, I knew that he must be talking to one of the cheer leaders behind me.  This tall, lanky, gorgeous guy couldn’t be talking to me. A wide grin with the whitest teeth smiled from his smooth chocolate face. His rippling pectorals and abs popped against his T-shirt and actually grabbed my eyes. I suspected he must be joking when he wiggled his ears at the sight of my gaping mouth. After about five seconds, his question registered.

I remembered that a few years before Gator and Lorenzo got me into trouble about some buttermilk I dropped when they set their dogs out at me. Then they laughed. Now I was thinking, “Forgiveness is a virtue.” But would my grandmother let me go out on a date – with a boy? The thought of asking sent my heart into overdrive. But if I couldn’t have Tyrone, maybe second best would do. Somehow Grandmama let me go to the game with Lorenzo. Perhaps she let me go because he had on a cast and she reasoned, “What harm can he do?” All that mattered was that I had a date and it was special to me because my date was a popular boy who played football. Attila the Hun would have been acceptable, but Laughing Lorenzo would do.

Where the Roof Breaks Open into Sky

Nonie was only ten but she knew things. She sat on the hardwood floor in the front window of the apartment waiting for her mother to come home.

Her sister Emma Lee had climbed into her loft hours ago and sung herself to sleep. Nonie couldn’t sleep when her mother said she was on her way home soon and then she didn’t come.

The streetlight gave her a full view of Carroll St, all the way to Seventh Avenue and if she sat against the bookcase she could see passed St. Joseph’s Church where her mother would turn toward home, unless she took a cab which she sometimes did, especially at this time of night or when she was later than she said she would be.

The glow of the light shone even on Nonie’s face and reflected back her image on the clean window. She had used Windex on it herself so she knew it was clean but the dirt from the Brooklyn street left a grey film on the outside and Nonie wondered how people ever got their windows really clean unless they sat out on their fire escapes and theirs was on the back of their building. Maybe that’s why her mother liked to sit so long at the kitchen table on Saturdays, her head resting on her chin, her eyes wide open looking at something that Nonie couldn’t see. She sat there with her coffee and notebook until the end of Saturday morning cartoons and Nonie and Emma Lee were hungry for lunch and wanting to play in the park.

Nonie could see her own eyes looking back at her in the window, like her mother’s but different, sadder and less quick. She looked out into them as if she had a question but didn’t know what it was, but had the answer instead.

She had to sit here, to be there waiting when her mother got home. It was all she could do, this waiting, this looking.

Old man Murray had been sitting on the stoop across the way smoking but he’d gone to bed. Bernard Willis had come home from the ballroom dancing school on the corner. She’d already seen him glide up the street in his shiny tuxedo, the silly red handkerchief he puffed out of his pocket, all droopy and used. All the lights on the street were off except for the green emerald shade above her on the bookcase, even Mary Margaret Mayfield’s mother had come in from the night shift and pulled the chain in the hallway.

Nonie had been downstairs to turn it back on and check the mail. Her mother would forget both or leave the little key in the box. She would be happy when she finally came through the door but wobbly in her high heeled shoes…

A car door slammed shut. She hadn’t seen the cab come slowly up the street looking for their address. Nonie had been looking hard at herself in the mirror. Down below she saw her mother’s cherry red beret, her head turned up at the window.

Nonie jumped back from the window, sat in the dark, waiting for the fumbling at the lock, the click of her heels…

* * *

It wasn’t any good inside and it wasn’t any good outside. Nonie couldn’t be Nonie, not anymore. She had to be Nan Marie. She had to take her name back from her mother.

Nonie became Nonie when she was only two. She didn’t like to go to bed before the sun so she’d say “No”. She didn’t like to take a bath with her sister so she’d say “No”. She didn’t like fish sticks, especially the way her mother overcooked them until they looked liked black chewing gum and tasted like crunchy dirt. She’d spit them out on her plate and say, “No”. No became her favorite word and so her mother called her Nonie.

Nonie wanted her name back, Nan Marie, after her grandmother, the queen of France, and even the virgin mother, or that’s what her sister had said one day when she liked her, probably her birthday, since that only happened maybe once each year.

And now her sister had left her alone and taken her uppity self off to college. And now her mother Bette, short for Elizabeth but spelled like Bette Davis, came home even later after work. She said she hated her job on Wall Street but she stayed there late almost every night.

Nan Marie didn’t sit by the window anymore and wait for her, no, not anymore, and she didn’t scrape the black crust off the bottom of the frying pan either, after the fire started on their stove and the smoke alarm went off and woke up the whole building. She didn’t care what her mother did, not anymore. She didn’t care if she ever came home again of if her sister did either. From now on, Nan Marie would take care of herself.

She looked down at the book in her lap, turned the polished cover over and brought the picture of the sad, black woman closer to her face. Nan Marie knew her caged bird but she also saw the woman’s big beauty and heard her ferocious heart beat behind her deep eyes, heavy with something, but she sang still, even after everything she’d seen, everything she’d been through. With every word she still sang, threw her head back, her sad eyes closed, letting out the truth with her voice.

The creak of the old wooden rocker back and forth, back and forth, told time or did it keep her still so it didn’t matter what time it was. She looked out the brownstone window and then pulled the shade down hard, no more streetlights, no more waiting.

Nonie, Nan Marie, put the book face down on the desk, stood up, and began pacing, the new soles of her shoes tapping the polished wood floor, the sound like the creak of the rocker keeping time, marking it. The clock in the hall ticking, the sound in her chest hard.

Today she would tell her, tell her mother that she wanted her name back, the name she’d been given when she was born. She didn’t want any more allowance. She didn’t even want her bed. She would be leaving. Noni, Nan Marie, had saved enough bus fare to see Chicago for herself, to find her father, and tell him what had been going on in New York City.

The phone rang in the kitchen—one, two, three times. Only one person would call this late and she wasn’t about to answer. Soon she heard the syrupy drawl of her mother’s voice,  “Noonie, Noonie, darlin’, I’ll see you in the morning, OK, sweetheart? Lock the doors now.”

The echo behind her sounded like street noise, but she didn’t care. She knew where she wasn’t.

Nonie pulled up the shade until it snapped into a roll popping the top of the window frame; the streetlight flickered like an old movie. Soft rain fell washing away the pigeon poop from the outside sill.

Nonie picked the book back up from the desk, continued her rocking, sang herself to sleep.

Bette heard her daughter’s voice, big, self-assured, heavy with need, speaking into the answering machine, unwelcoming her as she pulled the big, iron gate open with one flexed foot, the bag of groceries tipping dangerously forward, her backpack grinding into her shoulders, somehow still able to hold the keys in her hand, to turn the bolt, then push open the inside door with her bad knee. The heavy wrought iron slammed into her backpack and Bette fell to her knees, grapefruit rolling ahead of her through the entranceway caught by a dust-ball under the coat-rack.

She caught the eggs but sacrificed her elbow and looking down saw the gash in the apple-green cashmere sweater she’d worn only once.

Tears flew from her eyes from an overfull fountain as if she’d fallen from a childhood game of pile-on. “Mom,” she heard Nonie’s voice again, “Please, pick up, jeez, Mom, where are you?” still louder and more insistent, as the machine cut her off with its long shrill beep.

Bette let go and lay flat on her belly on the cold floor until her tears stopped coming, heaving like a child. Her ribs hurt, and she wondered if she’d broken something, broken something in her chest, her breastplate, the armor across her sternum pierced and shattered, no longer able to protect the mush inside her, to prevent it from oozing forth, so deep, so red…

She wished that she could just stay prone, feel the cool wood under her cheek, the scent of cedar wafting from the coat closet and a faint hint of peppermint. When she realized the mint was artificial and coming from the too-full cat box in the adjacent laundry room she picked up the eggs beside her and wobbled to her feet, stripes of riddled thread running down her black tights, holes at the knee. The eggs, organic, she smiled, fresh from Murray’s Farm, worth every penny of the $3.50 she’d paid for them. She placed them on the three-legged table next to the coat rack and finally set the key into the lock.

Inside the dark paneled front room reminiscent of a ship captain’s quarters, she fumbled for the lamp near the door and turned it on, its light fanning across her unmade bed, the lilac comforter bunched and fluffed as if someone lay beneath it. Her computer screen flickered at her desk where she’d forgotten to sleep it. The old cat Zoë met her in the hall with a loud meow nearly tripping her again as she rubbed up against her legs.

Bette plopped in the overstuffed chair by the phone, her coat stained with something sticky—peanut butter—her hand bruised, her neck aching, her tights stuck to her knees where the fall had scraped away her skin.

She put her head back and eased down into the worn floral chintz and if the doorbell had not buzzed at that moment she would have forgotten the groceries strewn across the hall like lost memories.

“Hello, hello, Miss Mason, are you there?”

“Oh, no,” she said out loud, jumping too quick to her feet: Isaac, her student, his English test tomorrow, she’d promised to help him—all this coming to her at once.

“Miss Mason,” she heard him call again through the gate, “I see you.”

“Coming, coming,” she called back to him, and as she moved toward the front door to the brownstone, the sight of him healed her, the blue of his eyes, his bright, worried gaze, the nose too big for his small pink face.

“Miss Mason, you’re crying, and your sweater, it’s torn, has someone hurt you?”

“Don’t worry,” her eyes said and together they kneeled and gathered the spilled food back into its bag, the little boy half her size helping her again to her feet.

* * *

After Isaac’s lesson, Bette returned to her chintz chair in the kitchen, where she awoke to the old cat’s rub against her ankles, the house dark, the clock on the VCR blinking 1:31.  She undressed as she walked down the hall to her unmade bed and crawled into it. Through the wall, she heard the neighbor’s television blaring, a man shouting loudly. As she tried to sleep, the echo of her grandfather’s voice took her to a Sunday dinner long ago after church. She wore a yellow dotted Swiss dress and only a cotton slip, no bra, she must have been 10 or 11, her brother barely four sat in a booster seat diagonally across from her next to their mother, her father on her left, Papa, her grandfather, at the head of the table, Nana at the other end, all in their usual places.

Fresh fruit set in brightly colored Fiestaware bowls set before each of them—cantaloupe, watermelon, strawberries, grapes—smothered in French dressing. As he sat down, her father made an idle comment about the strange choice of dressing and Papa snatched her father’s bowl from in front of him and dumped its fruit on tope of his own portion, saying: “Too good for your hoity, toity tastes? Who do you think you are criticizing the meal laid before you?”

“Sir, I’m sorry. I just…”

“Shut your mouth, you’re lucky to have such a meal. And your job, if it weren’t for me….let’s see, do you still eat roast beef?” and with this flung a slab of overcooked meat on his son’s plate, the juice splattering on to his crisp white shirt.

Everyone at the table jumped and too the meat that the old man delivered to each of their plates but with less intention.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t…”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said shut your mouth!”

“Please, Daddy,” his wife spoke up trying to quiet him.

“You, too, shut up. When was the last time you cooked a meal?”

And so the Sunday dinner unfolded, the little boy blinking back and forth between his giant grandfather, his father, who looked down at his plate like a wounded animal not yet felled; his mother, anxious, fidgeting with the little boy’s meat, cutting it into tinier and tinier pieces; the girl, seeing tears well up in her father’s eyes, wanting to touch his leg, but not knowing what he would do.

Silence among them for some time, only the sound of smacking lips, swallowing, without breathing, deep sighs.

Nana finally said, “Daddy, it’s so good, the beef, well done, just the way I like it.”

The father chewed and chewed and chewed. He liked his meat juicy with plenty of pink, the girl remembered this as she listened and watched, his face the color of the radish on his plate, swimming alone beside the collards, okra, tomatoes, and over boiled potatoes.

Elizabeth knew what was to come and sure enough soon after the coconut cake too sweet for their upset bellies they were in the car, the key in the ignition, engine racing, her mother’s legs crossed looking out her side mirror as he backed out, forgetting to check the sidewalk behind them.

“Careful, watch out,” was all she said as the boy on the bicycle came into his view and he stepped hard on the break lurching the children forward and the beautiful, careful wife into her visor.

“Goodness,” she said, as the back of his hand with the large red stone of his college ring hit the side of her face, knob on bone. She cried out and he said, “Shut your mouth,” and she did and they didn’t say another word or make a sound as the car pulled onto the suburban road and flipped on the radio to hear the ball scores.

The girl, then glad she had not soothed him, hated him, wanted him to die, and she flew away on the next bird’s wing, high above the car into the blue space. When she looked down again, the tiny red car moved slowly along the grey ribbon of road, the feathers soft beneath her skirt, the kind and gentle bird taking her where she needed to go, without a word.

Her eye still on the car she watched it turn and pull into its box as they swooped closer settling onto the winding oak that hung over the road in front of her house. She could hear them now and she would peck his eyes out if she could, and her friend turned to her and spoke, saying, “No, this is not a thought you want to have,” and she released the intensity of her gaze, the scowl on her face easing. She knew she must return to the hard ground, her little brother was alone except for the tired, worn brown monkey that swung limply from his hand. The other hung tight to their mother’s hand, she thought, or was she holding on to her son like he held on to his monkey?

The bird nudged her with his yellow beak and she flew on her own floating to a soft land, the heels of her red Mary Jane’s catching the ground. She stood for a moment to be there again and walked into the garage, the slam of the doors and the tone of his voice bellowing as her steps hit the brick of the breezeway and she stood with them all again at the back door, her father impatient with the lock, loud like Papa, his face still as red as the radish on his lunch plate. Her mother stood as still as she could like a wilted flower in her fuchsia silk wet stains under both arms.

Elizabeth placed both hands on her little brother’s golden head like she saw Father Benton do for those who were not yet ready for Holy Communion. He looked up at her with his nut-brown eyes and she saw what he saw in her freckled face. She smiled with her eyes much like his. Their mother could not see them as she looked down at her shoes. Bette wished she could take them both into the wide blue space but she knew they must find their own way.

On an ordinary day, her mother might ask her father not to grumble so loudly about the stiff lock but today she said nothing as he fumbled and cursed. She watched as her mother’s ears folded into themselves like day lilies at the end of their day.

Once inside the kitchen, her father pushed the breakfast room chair out of his way and Shadow, their big black cat with the white beard, ran between his legs nearly tripping him. She wished he had and the bird’s face came to her reminding her that thoughts like these would make her like them, Papa and her father, and this would be the last thing she would want, to be mean and hurt people who she loved and wanted to love her.

“Have you cleaned your room, Elizabeth?” her father barked at her as he threw his jacket over the chair in front of the fireplace they never used and moved toward the stairs.

“Not yet,” she answered quietly, as he ordered her up to her room, the crystal beads shaking on the chandelier in the entrance hall as his voice boomed and his heavy steps pounded the stairs.

Her mother fluttered behind him saying something to her brother about putting on some play clothes as she slowed her pace behind her husband still holding on to her son’s hand.

Elizabeth watched from the bottom of the staircase, looking up at the ceiling where patterns of color—lavender, rose, and pale green quivered in the mid-afternoon sun coming in through the transom over the front door.

“What are you waiting for?” he called after her over the banister above, as she imagined him falling, cracking his head open on the hard brick, landing at her feet.

She looked from his red face to the light patterns now moving down the wall and she saw the bird’s eyes in their flickering and remembered who she was and did not want to be.

Watching her red Mary Janes scamper up the stairs after her mother and brother, she followed into the children’s part of the house, as her father turned to look at them before slamming the door to her study behind him.

Elizabeth imagined the roof turning to clouds and opening into the blue space, the sound of waves from the nearby Gulf, where white sand reached far, both left and right, and everyone was swimming. Her mother sat on the beach in her black and white bathing suit talking to her sister who wore the same suit in red. Her brother, still a baby, played in the portable playpen and the men, her father and her uncle showed off their big fish. She and her cousins waved from the sandbar, miles away, where the turquoise water was only up to their knees and they caught crabs for supper with their bare hands.

“Elizabeth, hang up your dress and get started on your room before there is a fuss.”

She heard her mother but through a mist from far out in the low-tide waves.

“Elizabeth, focus, you must get to your room. I’ve made your bed but these things on the floor must be put away. I’ve told you about taking out watercolors on the rug—only on the back porch on newspaper.”

“Yes, Mother, I know, but I wanted to make a card for you of the waves like at the beach. Will we go this summer?”

“Yes, I don’t know, dear, let’s get our church clothes off. Now hurry along. You help your brother, won’t you?”

And she was gone through the door, the latch clicking into place behind her, only a scent of lemon, gardenias, she called it. Was that a flower? she wondered. What could such a flower look like? Round and full like a skirt of white ruffles?

And she heard him again through the wall. “I told you,” he screamed. “I told you to shut your mouth,” and she knew it was not the door slamming but her mother. No, not that…and she wanted to lift off back into the blue space, the clouds above, but she heard her brother, the snuffling whimper coming from under his door, his whisper, calling her name…and her heels came back to the ground and she went to him, flipping on the radio beside his bed as a woman’s sweet voice sang, “you can always go, downtown, downtown”.

Her brother sat on the round braided rug between his twin beds as if afloat on a raft, his old brown monkey beside him, his eyes wide and tears frozen upon his cheeks.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll read you a story. How about Big Bear?”

He nodded. She closed the door and sat down beside him on the raft reaching out over the water for the book beside his bed, Little Bear Goes To School.

“Not that one,” he said pointing to the high shelf.

“OK,” she said standing, her arms out to her sides like wings, as if for balance or to fly over the water to reach it if she must. “Little Bear Has a Birthday”? she asked.

“Yes,” he said, the tears melting now and drying up, his eyes like stars.

Far away on shore she heard a loud voice and something hitting the wall. She turned up the radio before lifting herself back onto the raft, the woman still singing, “when you are lonely…” and she settled down with her brother, not lonely at all, as their knees touched and the old brown monkey sat up to listen, as she began, “It was Little Bear’s Birthday and his mother would bake him a cake.”

She took her brother’s hand as they rode the gentle waves. “Little Bear wanted chocolate cake with white icing and it would have six candles.”

Her brother’s eyes widened and he said, “I will be six after I am five, right?”

“Yes.”

“After nursery school I will go to big boy kindergarten, right?”

“Right.” And the waves rolled gently beneath them as the loud voice stopped but the wall shook like thunder inn the distance.

“Little Bear knew this meant he would soon go to school.”

“And I am my mama’s little bear, right?” her brother asked.

“Yes,” and the stars fell from his eyes, “Daddy won’t hurt Mommy, right? And you will stay with me here, right?”

“I will stay with you forever,” she said and picked up his stars and put them in the great blue space so he could be where he was on the raft and not be afraid.

And without warning someone broke down the door and called her name from not so far away but her brother couldn’t fly and she told him she would be right back and while she was gone he needed to take care of Monk and she turned up the radio and gave him a pillow for a cloud and waved to him from across the water and he held it close, as he lay on the raft holding tight to his monkey’s hand.

Elizabeth closed the door and tiptoed toward her room and began to tidy it, the watercolors dry, her brushes neatly in their cup of water now blue violet.

He came into the room without knocking and yanked her up under her arm where it was wet like her mother’s and shouted, “I told you to clean up this mess! What have you been doing?”

“Reading to Harry,” she said looking down at her shoes.

“I told you to clean up this mess, look at it, you know you are not to paint in your room!”

And still holding her hard by the arm, he kicked the paints and stepped on the clean, white paper where she’d made a sun shine and his giant footprint stayed there making a shadow.

“And these drawers, can’t you close them?”

And he yanked her desk drawer open finding a Sweet Tart wrapper. Throwing her into the desk chair he pulled it out and all of the tiny candies fell onto the floor and he stomped on them and told her to sweep them up with her hands, as he pulled out another drawer upending its contents onto the floor. Her pink diary fell open and hit her chin and he grabbed it from her as they both reached for it.

“And what might you write in here?”

She said, “Give me that!”

And he stood back as if to get his balance, the whites of his eyes green, and he slapped her straight away, the crack of his hand stinging through her skin to the bone, her ears ringing.

“Wipe that sneer off your stupid face!”

But she couldn’t and froze as he unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his pants like a lasso, the tail of it on fire. He told her to stand and she did but would not look at him again in the eye and she turned looking through the blue flowers on her wall until she saw the raft, reached her hand out to Harry, as her father hurled the first swipe at her backside, and again, this one harder, as she hit the wall—like her mother. And she flew to the raft and they lifted off. Her room with the blue flowers fell below her and the man with the belt who had been her father grew smaller and smaller and smaller until he was out of sight, only the wide open blue, and the bird, his feathers beneath them, taking them where they must go.