Yvonne Zima

Last week on my way to a drug deal, I tried to give my bag of McDonald’s hamburgers to a cadaverous transvestite. The tranny dropped his cardboard sign, raised his skinny arms to the sky, and said in a feminine falsetto voice, “I didn’t do it. You a cop? You gotta tell me if you a cop, you know! Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ so that you can’t judge me no mo’ ... stupid little white bitch.” Then, with a jiggle of his Adam’s apple, he dislodged mucous from his throat and spat at my feet.

In Los Angeles, everyone is an actor, a film producer, a drug dealer, or a bum. Most actors happen to be waiters or drug dealers. Only a few film producers actually produce films. And why are Hollywood bums so good-looking? They are actors who gave up. Now, they wallow in their own stench, holding up crude cardboard signs which read: NEED FOOD. HUNGRY.

A toothless vagabond, who stood on the comer of Melrose and Vine, held a sign that tickled my senses. She had written in purple lipstick on a shoebox: NEED MONEY FOR HARVARD TUITION. Because of her sense of humor, I dropped a five into the vagabond’s Dixie cup. She smiled with her capped teeth, belched a “thank you,” and then staggered into a liquor store to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes.

Nowadays, I only give money to panhandlers after my ineffectual “cigarettes-kill you” tirade. At least, the bums wait for me to turn my back on them before they strut into the liquor store to shorten their miserable lives guzzling alcohol and puffing out lethal billows of smoke.

The illustrious Hollywood sign has been obliterated by lung-scarring smog undulating in a sea of car exhaust, cigarette smoke, and remnants of shattered dreams, all trapped in the valley and suffocating its denizens below. After a rainstorm, the thick cloud of pollution and secrecy dissipates, revealing nine crumbling, filth-encrusted letters: H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D that once symbolized glamour and alluring success.

Far below the moribund Hollywood sign, the latest commercial trash to be shoved down poor moviegoers’ throats already has its billboards on skyscraper walls smeared and pasted up all over the city. Below the twenty-foot-high Puerto Rican actress, airbrushed to look white, svelte and stunning, the tagline for the action flick reads: IS THE FUTURE WORTH FIGHTING FOR?

Long before I joined Hollywood’s starvation trend, when I was at the chubby age of nine, I had imagined the future of my city to be extraordinary: movie stars flew to premieres on giant hot pink Frisbees, the sad saplings in the sidewalk lining the streets grew into enormous olive trees, rush hour traffic became obsolete due to moving sidewalks, and even L.A. actors replaced their self-worship and habitual use of the f-word with altruism. I dreamed of a Utopia. The future of my city was going to be Xanadu, not a sleazy wasteland inhabited by degenerates, bigots, and charlatans! I never suspected that Los Angeles would have devolved into a primeval beast that feasts on healthy adolescents and disgorges emaciated drug addict doppelgangers. The beast also inhales childhood dreams and exhales acrid carcinogens and blinding smog. Is the future of this hellhole worth fighting for? What a question!

Towards the trendy end of Melrose Avenue, a stage mother and her six year old daughter were returning to their expired parking meter from an audition. The mother was hostile and pinching her daughter with each syllable she spoke. “Why didn’t you lie about your race? I made you as easily as I can break you, yah know!” The daughter’s response to her mother was an inaudible whimper. Being a child actress had taught her to cry silently, unless the script called for otherwise.

The stage mother was driving out of Los Angeles and munching on the candy bar that she had promised her daughter if she “nailed the audition.” The daughter had stopped crying and was now sulking. She felt the hot sun on her brown skin, as she pressed her face to the car window. The six year old touched her unnatural, bleached blonde hair, staring at her Volvo’s distorted reflection in the murky glass of a skyscraper.

Their car stopped at a red light on the corner of Seward and Willoughby. The six year old saw a filthy brick wall emblazoned with gigantic graffiti, bright red like fake movie blood, but spray painted with slanted, feminine letters. She read the loopy writing quietly to herself: THIS TOWN WANTS YOU WHITE AND SKINNY.
Below the red graffiti, someone had left white roses, now shriveled and broken. A dirty silk ribbon strangled the roses into a neat bouquet and directly above it, scribbled in black charcoal, the words R.I.P. Thora Newman, 1990-2005.
Only two weeks earlier, Thora Newman, the mongrel love child of a famous movie producer, was still alive, but barely living. She had been awake for five days from smoking what she called “glass,” which was a crystal methamphetamine. Sometimes, she would “slam glass,” which meant injecting shards of the drug into her veins. Thora, like some many young girls brainwashed by glamour magazines and billboards of deliciously starving models, wanted to lose weight and thought drugs were the easiest solution.
Thora was the obese daughter of Larry Newman, who loved her in the way a master loves his dog. Thora was not a dog, but a human being - a stray, sweaty fat girl, who dreamt of becoming an actress, which was no lofty dream. Her father was a producer. Breaking into show business again would be so easy. She had worked non stop as a child actress, but no casting director wanted to hire her when she gained a hundred pounds during puberty. Thora’s heart broke on her fifteenth birthday, when her father presented her with a ten thousand dollar certificate for liposuction.

* * * *

Eighty feet below the freeway, on which Larry Newman commuted to his production office each day, his daughter, Thora, was lying unconscious on a quagmire of silt and trash, in a desolate man made chasm, otherwise known as “the wash.”

The wash is a concrete ravine at the northern edge of Los Angeles, a pathway connecting suburbia and city. During El Niño season, water floods the wash and a river is born. However, moisture is rare in L.A., and most of the year, the wash is an arid safe haven for junkies and runaway adolescents, rebelling against their tyrannical household rules which condoned such evils as “being civilized” and “avoiding teenaged abortions.”

Thora’s body, shrunken and gaunt from drugs, was curled up by the dying embers of an illegal bonfire. She had run away from home two months after her fifteenth birthday. In the cold night, she had wedged herself between a cardboard box of spent fireworks and a concrete column, which buckled under the pressure of the freeway. A phantasmagoria of graffiti covering these columns and supporting walls created a surreal wasteland of brilliant color and drug-induced dreams capes. Above Thora’s body were lyrics spray painted in red:

“YOU'LL NEVER KNOW
HOW I FEEL IN MY SKIN
I'LL NEVER SEE THE SUNRISE
THROUGH YOUR EYES
BUT REALIZE LIFE'S SHORT
HATE IS DEATH, A SILENT WAR,
LOVE THE ONLY LIFE AFTER AND BEFORE” - Charon

I stood over Thora, my childhood friend, while she slept. I didn’t recognize her anymore. A layer of thick make-up had dripped down her neck onto her muddy clothes. When I bent down to check her pulse, I studied a mound of pimples on her cheek. I don’t enjoy studying zits, trust me. They are repulsive, especially hers, but they were all perfectly aligned in a circular army. The bacteria on Thora’s face had more order than any other part of her. Her hair was bleached and fried from years of ironing. Her dark eyes were framed by black needle-thin and tweezer-attacked eyebrows, still red from a night of plucking. And then she opened her tiny mouth, which was crammed with too many yellow teeth, crooked and fighting each other for a prime spot up front.

All my staring at Thora had invited her to regain consciousness. She opened her eyes, which were lifeless onyx stones. She was no longer a semblance of good ole’ jolly Santa Claus. When she lost her baby fat, her beauty, animation, and emotion disappeared also. Deep lines cut into her forehead and around her mouth. She was a mere eighty pounds of bones and looked like a decrepit eighty year old.

My jaw dropped and clicked into a locked position. Ever since I bit down really hard on a salad fork in a Las Vegas buffet, my jaw has never been the same. I snapped my mouth shut with the sound of a car trunk closing.

I stared at Thora, from the beige make-up stains on her baggy t-shirt to her bony little fingers, which were fidgeting with her oversized sweatpants, twisting, tugging, and tearing the cloth.

“I won’t do drugs anymore, I am done with them, pinky promise.” said Thora. She untangled her hand from her stained sweatpants, which she had twisted into a wrinkly erection, and offered me a sweaty array of skeleton fingers. I wrapped my pinky around hers and smiled. I loved clinging to my youth with pinky promises. Thora leaned closer to me and I could smell her soupy sweat.
I stepped back. I was repulsed by her. Soup d’ jour was leaking from every nasty pore of her wrinkled skin. Thora was a product of Los Angeles. The city came into her bedroom, stole her from her home, and dumped her into a wash so that she may float down into the ocean alongside raw sewage.

Then, I remembered telling her once, what Diderot said to a young girl, “You all die at fifteen.” She was buying glass and I could tell she didn’t know what I was warning her about.

“Huh? Yvonne, I never know what the hell you’re saying. You should probably write those trashy romance books’ cuz you love your own words as much as I love glass. “

“You’re beautiful, Thora. Never change.”

She chuckles her papery laugh, since she has no spit. Glass has dried her up inside and out. “Yvonne, you’re so stupid. People don’t change.”

I let her walk ahead of me, knowing so much more than I’ll ever comprehend. She doesn’t even notice I am standing still, watching her form become smaller and smaller, until she turns into a silhouette, a dot, and finally disappears altogether.

A week after I saw Thora, she returned home to make peace with her father only to discover his absence. Larry was away in Canada filming a movie entitled Goodbye Blue Monday. Thora felt abandoned and tired. It was Monday and she hadn’t slept since Thursday. She had one rock of crystal methamphetamine left. Instead of smoking her rock, she climbed into her father’s oversized Jacuzzi tub, filled it with scalding hot water, and slit her wrists with the same pair of scissors she had used to clip pictures of anorexic models from the pages of Vogue. The walls of Thora’s room were covered with these glamorous clippings.

Her suicide note was shrouded in ambiguity: I used to be beautiful, but I didn’t know it, until I got ugly. I’ve become so numb, that I couldn’t cry if I tried. The door to my despair is no longer there. I burnt up all my light. Goodbye.
I moved away from Los Angeles after Thora slit her wrists. L.A. will always be an evil city, a mechanized factory that does not sleep, until every young girl in its wake feels too black, too white, too ugly, too fat, too plain, where people are disconnected, where facades deceive the heart, and walls of graffiti separate humankind. Thora might have survived the tempestuous storm of adolescence living anywhere else, but unseen forces governed her life. She never knew why she felt unloved. She never knew why she felt so alone.

I want to miss her, but I realize I stopped crying when she turned sixteen.

A year is long enough to mourn the dead.

Simona Patange

The people noticed the silence that morning. Numbly they walked to the windows, drawn to the wisps of light that strayed from behind the darkened curtains.

The skies above the people were clean and innocent, like walls before they are crayoned by the zealous child. The people stood at the windows with a hungry look in their eyes. To a man who says he can live on bread alone, let him live in Oregon.

Such as flowers blossom in the desert after a brief spell of rain, so the people stirred to life in these precious hours of sun. They left the confines of their homes and went to Cape Kiwanda. Their faces were various degrees of bewilderment, not believing it to be true. They brought their cameras, so they would know it was.

Sneaky things, photographs. Give the impression of truth without showing the story behind it. It shows the scarves and mittens, but not the warm ocean air that soothes the winter winds. It shows the tide pools, but not the stubbornness with which the sea stars cling to the pillars of rock, like ornaments on a salty Christmas tree. It does not show the month of rain that preceded that sunny day, nor the speed with which the people flocked to the beaches. A photograph is just ink on paper, after all.

That day the beach was alive with the shrieks of children and the barking of dogs, and the usual groups showed up. Joggers, surfers, painters, sandcastle builders, dune climbers, stick fetchers (dogs, not people), and a great many more who did nothing at all - which sometimes is the best thing to do. And so the people spent the day quenching their thirst. They drank in the blue skies with their eyes, absorbed the sun through their skin.

A shadow falls across the top of the tallest sand dune in the evening. A girl stands there, two hundred, maybe three hundred feet above the ground. The voices of the people below are lost to her. The sharp-tongued seagulls are her only company. Like the sun, she is on her way down.

Jumps turn into flying leaps. Ragged breaths turn into shrieks of laughter. Running, rolling, tripping, skipping, skimming, falling, flying down the hill, feet barely touching the ground. She wishes it would last forever, but it can’t because every silver lining has a cloud and she can’t stand up. Her legs won’t hold. But that’s all right, and she plops, deciding to lie there for a little while.
A sticky sweaty salty sandy heap of a girl. She lies on the sand and catches her breath.

And then she notices the sound. Or rather, the lack of it.

Around her people. At the inn, the restaurant, the beach, the tide pools, the water. People everywhere. But as she sits up, she does not hear the usual sounds of people drunk on sweet ocean air.

Cameras wink at the evening sky. The girl knows that visibly, this sunset is no different from the hundred others the people have seen at the coast. Yet the girl feels it within her. A feeling that this sunset is more precious, more brilliant than all the others because of the rain, just as water is plain and tasteless to all but those who are thirsty. The girl notices something that she could not remember ever seeing before. Something the cameras do not see.

Along the beach, for nearly half a mile, people and pets had stopped and were watching the setting sun. Everyone. Not most, which is usually the case, but all. People are caught up in their rush-and-run schedules these days more than ever, and nothing short of a tragedy will make them slow down and reflect. The girl wonders at the stillness and silence. Never in her memory had all life stopped for a sunset.

Beautiful things, sunsets. A phoenix from ashes. Sunsets are caused by the breath and bustle of the earth etching a texture out of the sky. A texture of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases, green and noble. As the sun’s rays pass through, the colors diffuse in a way that an artist has yet to find. A photograph does little justice. It cannot stand alone without losing the story.
Close one eye and see the world with only the other. There is more to a scene than just the focus point. But with one eye closed everything to the side
disappears, and the story is lost. The cameras that evening were only watching the horizon. The photographs will not show the stretch of beach behind the lens, where the people stood as one.

Close one eye and the depth is gone, and therein too the story is lost. The camera captures images, not experiences. And experience is the one and only truth.

Which is why you must open your eyes and take in the sunset with all your senses. Open your eyes-do not rely on a picture. Open your eyes and take off your gloves and let the sun warm your palms.

Smell the air, taste the salt. Feel the presence of those standing by you and those farther away who are no more than mirages in the waning light. Hear the crescendo of the waves and the caws of high flyers who see it every day, and the silence of those on the ground who have not seen it for a month, and who will probably not see it again for many more.

A man watches with his face pressed against a camera, never once stopping to look up. He snaps a picture every twenty seconds, consigning the sun’s path to a series of broken drops of gold pixels on blue. His mind is not on the present, but in the future. A photo contest, perhaps. When it is gone, he stuffs the camera into his pocket and leaves.

The others are not so quick to move. They watch the sky turn from gold to orange, from orange to burgundy, and then finally from burgundy to blue. The sky is pricked with silver. And when the breeze is once more reclaimed by winter, the air grows colder and the people know it is time to go. The spell is reluctantly broken.

The girl sits at the base of the sand dune. Her gloves lie on the sand and her hands are empty, palms open, still facing the west. She sees what the photos do not, and she will remember what the photographers forgot. She closes her eyes and can see the place where her retinas burned as the memory was burned into her mind. The photograph of strangers being united for one moment.

By a sunset.

Michael A. Cooke

“Hurry! You’ll be late for the banquet if you don’t hurry!” Annie Mae shouted from the porch, as Booker Lee trotted his mule into the yard after a day’s work in the fields.

“You’re right,” Booker admitted. The sun was almost touching the horizon. “I’ll miss the dinner, unless I go now-just as I am.”

He turned his reluctant mule about and was soon at Joe Tucker’s farm. He tied his mule to Tucker’s corral and walked confidently into the house, where the rancher’s dinner was soon to begin.

Always sure of a welcome, he spread his smiles and his jokes around him. He was so happy to be talking to his friends that he did not notice for some time a very strange thing. He was talking to their backs instead of to their faces: Not a single man was listening to him!

Soon an even stranger thing happened. When the soup was brought in, Joe Tucker ushered the other men to their seats at the main table, but he had no words for Booker Lee.

Booker cleared his throat noisily. Joe Tucker did not notice. Booker coughed loudly. Joe paid no attention.

“Brother Tucker!” called Booker Lee exuberantly. “I noticed a fine herd of cows in your pastures today.”

Joe Tucker, busy with his well-dressed guests, pretended not to hear.
“Oh, Brother Joe!” Booker’s voice was even louder this time. “Your smallest calves are twice as big as the best in my meadows.”

Still Joe Tucker seemed unwilling to hear or see the one guest who stood alone in his shabby clothes.

Booker looked thoughtfully at the other guests. Each man was scrubbed and was wearing his best clothes. Then he looked at his own brown hands, caked with the honest dirt of his fields. He looked at his own clothes with their patches upon patches, and with the day’s new holes, which his wife Annie Mae would patiently mend that night.

Very quietly, Booker Lee slipped out of the door, untied his tired mule, and trotted home.

“Hot water, Annie Mae!” he ordered. “Soap, honey! My new shoes! My best hat! My new coat!”

Annie Mae hustled and flitted about him. Soon Booker Lee looked like a new man. He preened himself before his admiring wife, who had not seen her husband so utterly well dressed in years. Then Booker Lee strutted out of the house as proud as a peacock. Little boys spoke to him respectfully as he strutted back along the road towards Joe Tucker’s house. Women abandoned their modesty to openly stare at the comely gentleman who walked with an air of grace.

A bowing servant ushered Booker Lee into the dining room at Joe Tucker’s house, and the beaming host hurried to meet him and escort him to the best seat in the room. Men smiled and nodded in Booker’s presence. Joe tucker heaped his plate with goodies, as questions and stories were directed toward Booker Lee.

When he felt that all their eyes were upon him, Booker picked up the choicest piece of meat on his plate. He did not raise it to his lips. Instead, he opened his coat and placed it in an inside breast pocket.

“Eat, coat, eat!” said Booker.

A handful of corn, a piece of bread, and a square of cheese followed the meat into the coat pocket.

“Eat, coat, eat!” said Booker Lee as he put in each morsel of food. The guests stopped eating to watch Booker Lee feed his coat.

Finally, Joe Tucker could contain himself no longer. “Tell me, Brother Lee, what do you mean by telling your coat to eat? Isn’t my food good enough for you?”
Booker Lee raised innocent eyes to Joe Tucker. “Why, surely, you wish the coat to eat, Brother Tucker,” he said. “When I came in my old clothes, there was no place for me at your table. But when I left and came back in my new clothes, nothing is too good for me. That shows me it’s the clothes that make the man in your eyes. So, it was the coat, not me, you invited to dinner.”

Stephen R. Coar

Bruce Billings stretched far back in his chair at the State Unemployment Office where he’d worked for the past eighteen years and gave a resounding sigh. He shook his head slightly and gazed a second time at the capitalized scrawl on the application form he held. In the box marked Reason for Dismissal it read, DONT NO.

He recalled interviewing the client, Bobby Dunne, and from that alone there was no chance he would approve his application for assistance, but he had made the obligatory call to the employer earlier.

That morning Bruce had adjusted his frame into his chair, set the form down flat on his desk, and focused on Dunne’s former manager’s impatient breathing on the other end of the phone line.

“Mr. Dunne says he has no idea why he was let go,” Billings said into the phone receiver he held in the crook of his neck. His eyes were closed and his mind drifted. He’d spoken the same words to other employers in other cases so often that it was automatic by now. “Are you the HR man there, sir? Did you make the decision to fire Bobby, or is there another member of the staff I should talk to?”
“No, no. You’re talkin’ to the man you want,” came the response, a touch of the Cumberland Plateau in the disengaged voice. “I’m the go-to-guy ‘round here. I’m the man who fired him, and if you need to know why, that’s the easiest question I’ll answer all week, mister”

“And why was that, sir? For my official records.”

“Let’s see. I hired him on a Friday to start the following Monday. Anyway, they tell me he showed up that mornin’, on time, all bright and bushy-tailed. Then he shows up an hour and a half late on Tuesday. Now get this; we never saw him again. Period; no call, no explanation. Just gone. He may well of vanished inta thin air. That happens a lot more than you think, mister. I don’t get many calls from you people, though, ‘cause mosta’ these lazy-asses wouldn’t have the gall to ask for unemployment.”

“I see, sir.” Billings sighed again. His index finger and thumb flipped his pen in a perfect somersault onto Dunne’s single, double-sided form centered on his desktop. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard it, but the variety of reasons for discharging an employee always had the ability to stun him. He thanked the manager and hung up.

‘At least this is the last one of these I’ll have to do today,’ he thought to himself. Bruce Billings lifted the stamp off its red ink pad and punched DENIED into the blank, white block, conveniently set in the upper right hand comer.

There were ten minutes to go until he could clock out. He never left work early. The man who was considered the veteran in the office, who had the most experience, and who many sought out for advice, worked hard at being forthright. He was stretched back as far as possible in his chair, now. Some in the office joked, “Be careful passin’ Brucie’s desk after 4:00. He’s been known to topple over.”

Smiling at the thought, he reached into his file of applications for unemployment assistance thinking he’d get a head start on tomorrow’s first case. He picked the one on top, adjusted his glasses, and set it on his lap.

“Oh, God,” he muttered aloud, “what am I gonna do with this?”

In the designated box, top left, the name Akmed Amin was printed in neat block letters, all capitals... just as requested. He said softly, “Might as well try to get this one cleared off as fast as I can. With a quick glance at the wall clock, he lifted his phone receiver and dialed the number on Akmed’s form. A woman answered.

“Is Akmed Amin there, please?”

“I’m sorry, Akmed isn’t here right now. May I ask who is calling?”

Bruce scolded himself. The last thing he wanted this close to the workday’s end was to get involved in a long phone conversation with what had to be a wife or a mother. “This is the Unemployment Office downtown. My name is Mr. Billings. I’m calling to set up an interview with Mr. Amin about his application. This is standard procedure, ma’am, nothing for Akmed or for you to worry yourself over.”

The last word wasn’t out of his mouth before he knew how condescending he must sound. He sat up straight in order to lean on his free elbow and pound his fist silently into his temple. The woman on the other end of the line cleared her throat suspiciously, and then replied.

“Mr. Billings, was it? My job at the EPA downtown makes me fully aware of standard procedures. Perhaps if you would give me a time convenient to you for this interview I will see to it that my son, Akmed, is there... unworried.” He hung up and sat there, contemplating foot-in-mouth surgery.

Knowing he easily deserved that and probably more, the agent set the interview with Amin for nine thirty, but intrigued now, he dialed the employer’s number. After punching through a two-minute-long menu, Bruce reached the man he needed.

“Accounting. Grimes.”

“Mr. Grimes, my name is Bruce Billings. I’m with the Unemployment Office downtown. I’ve received an application for assistance today from one Akmen Amin and if you have a minute I need to confirm some of the information on it. Could you answer a few questions for me?”

“Sure, why not?” came the terse response from Grimes.

“I take it that Mr. Akmed did work for you.”

“Okay, we’re off to a good start, but the difficulty for me is that the application I’m looking at isn’t very clear on the reason he was let go. Not very clear at all. Could you help me with that? Was his work below standards? Was he consistently tardy or absent?”

“Yeah, it became clear to me very quickly that he was a disruption.”

“A disruption,” a statement not a question, as Bruce jotted with his pencil onto a spiral notepad. “Could you give me an example?”

Grimes went on to say that Akmed’s work was shoddy and that his religion forced him to slow his pace three times a day for prayers. The remainder of the conversation held no surprises and was over abruptly.

His next exchange did hold surprises for Bruce, though, and the young Amin delivered them. He assumed he knew a lot about Amin from the application, but assumptions were pitfalls and he’d learned that decades ago. Therefore, when the quiet Muslim slipped into the small, second floor interview room with his head free of traditional headgear, allowing a mane of thick black hair to fall at the rear neckline of his jacket, Bruce wasn’t sure it was the correct man.
Billings checked his watch. “Mister Amin?”

“Yes, am I early?”

“No, young man, you’re right on time. Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the one plastic chair across the desk, “uh, but if you want, pour yourself some coffee from the thingamajig over there first.”

Akmed turned to his right and saw the intricate coffee making system the taxpayers of the State had provided the office. “No thank you. Just my luck, coffee’s the one thing I’ve given up this year for Ramadan.”

“Oh, yeah. Ramadan is your fasting time, right?”

“That’s correct,” said Amin. After settling into the offered chair he looked up at Billings and offered a sardonic grin. “Are you a student of Islam, sir, or did you hear that on CNN?”

Bruce did not miss the shot, but somehow he liked this fellow instantly. He was quick and he’d said it with a cutting smile, but he had spirit. Of course, now Billings couldn’t ever admit to seeing Wolfe Blitzer’s report on Ramadan. He held Amin’s application in hand and the two shared a silent moment until Bruce finally spoke.

“I notice your application form is very neat and complete. But then I get to the most important box on the form and you have taken a 90 degree turn from serious to, may I say, silly?”

“You may say what you like. It is unfortunate, however, that you feel the way you do. I filled every box seriously.”

Only Billings’ eyes moved as he looked up into those of the Muslim. “Under Reason for Dismissal you seriously wrote, Ethnic Cleansing? You filled that in with those words exactly? Seriously?”

“Most soberly so, Mr. Billings. I enjoyed my job and my co-workers very much. Just three weeks ago our company was bought by a large corporation. We all knew changes were in the offing.”

“Three weeks.” After a pause, sizing things up, Bruce said, “I take it changes did arrive, and that’s why you’re sitting at my desk this morning.” His temple was leaning on the eraser of his Ticonderoga pencil, his features relaxed. He was hoping for more to the story, otherwise his red ink pad would be used first thing that morning, and he never liked starting his day with a DENIED.

“Major changes, yes.”

“Please go on. Explain.”

“In our division there were 15 employees. Five suffered layoffs.” Billings looked down at the two words in the important box. He was afraid to ask the next question but he knew he must.

“How many were of the Islamic faith, Mr. Amin?”

“All five.”

“Your new shift manager said he thought your work was shoddy.”

“Ask my co-workers. Their opinion will be based on what they see with their eyes, not on a dark thing they carry in their souls.”

“Our system doesn’t allow for interviews with co-workers,” said Billings.

“It seems heavily weighted toward an outcome desired in advance.”

Bruce Billings explained the unemployment laws of the state to the surprisingly erudite man, and how he was bound by them. Unless he could find clear evidence of reprisals or revenge against the five men he was bound to hold to the law and deny unemployment claims based on what the employer reported to him. He ended by saying, “I must decide cases on published law. Otherwise, ... well, after all, we are a nation of law.”

The smile again. “Yes,” a pause, his eyes never losing contact, “when it is most convenient.”

After Billings got the names of the other four dismissed accountants, the two men rose and shook hands, Bruce repeating that he would look into the case as best he could and see what he could do for Amin. After the Muslim had left the office Bruce made one decision on his own, free of the bounds of law. He’d assumed much about Islam, too, without knowing the facts. Mr. Amin’s physical appearance alone kept bugging him. ‘One major part of his brain was presently unemployed,’ he told himself, and he meant to resolve that.

Billings clicked his home computer onto the Wide World Web that evening and typed in one word, Islam. The aging employee of the state learned the fundamentals of one of the world’s oldest and widely practiced faiths. It was a simple and beautiful one, adhering to every tenet of his own Western faith when it came to the basics; to love your God and to be the best man you could be in your God’s eyes.

The Quran said the prophet Mohammed had delivered the word that was immutable, but also flexible. In the face of changes in time and place Islam appeared rigid to the casual eye, but it was most certainly an adaptable way of life regardless of human changes. Billings mused, “Adaptable? Who’d have guessed?” That answered any questions he’d had about Akmed’s attire in his office that day. And many more.

That night after dinner Bruce Billings lay in bed staring, unseeing, at the ceiling. The interview with the polite, young Muslim that day had brought to mind a memory; not because of its similarity, but just the opposite. He had carried it with him since he was a very young man. It returned to him on the most unexpected of occasions. Those many years ago, so very far from the man he was to become, he was a reprehensible teen, and he hung out with a small but virile gang of equally horrid boys.

There was no limit to what they considered acceptable behavior at the expense of others; other races, other minorities, other ethnicities. Billings carried a shame so deep from the memory of those events that he never spoke of it.
His gang resided in a well-heeled neighborhood set within giant-sized mossy oaks. Thinking back to those years Billings had no explanation, but hate, racism and prejudice are sicknesses that a stable home life cannot guard against. If his parents had known what went on in the woods surrounding their hamlet they would have been stunned, for behind the blind of trees and across a thin creek sat the hovels the boys comically called ‘Nigger Town.” Their cruelty could move from a shouted epithet to shattered glass in the blink of an eye; in the toss of a stone.

Why had they acted so harshly toward people never even seen? Did the thought of their difference, their existence, disrupt the image of their own lives as mono-cultured, mono-colored, mono-linquistic? His memories that night were disruptive, wrenching, until sleep finally overcame them deep into the night. The next day he called Grimes again and asked him directly about the other four men he had let go.

“How could you know these men’s work? I find you only took your position three weeks before you fired them?”

“Oh, now here we go! I never get a call back from you guys ‘less it’s some goodie two shoes with a bleedin’ heart. Believe me, I knew these guys plenty well enough. What I told you yesterday was the truth, sport.”

“Let me ask you one last question, Mr. Grimes. Did you work on the floor with these men, you know, in the same building, or were at a different location?”

“Same.”

“Thank you for the extra time you’ve given me this morning. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“No problem.”

“Oh, Grimes. Just for my own curiosity. What were the names of the four other men? Just their first names?”

There was a long pause, Grimes knowing he’d been boxed in. “Screw off,” he said, and it sounded to Billings as if the disconnect of the phone line had been a harsh one. A moment later Bruce held Amin’s application, smiling the smile of a man who felt lighter than he had when awakening that morning. He lay it flat on his desk.

He lifted the stamp off his black ink pad and punched ACCEPTED into the blank, white block, conveniently located in the upper right corner.

Pat Amati

Lydia edged slowly in front of the long dressing mirror. Her reflection was wavy and distorted; her eyes bounced in and out of her head. I look terrified, she thought. I can’t go to school like this. But I have to go. What should I wear? What do you wear to a school shooting? How insane is it to care what I wear? The police said just act normal. Everybody is covered. I hope they’re right.

During the long night she had convinced herself that she and Frank and Hakim had done everything possible to prevent Del and Tully from committing murder at school today. But now, in the early morning light, bone-breaking fear tried to push its way back in. Suddenly Lydia’s mind snapped free. That’s enough! She straightened her back. Stop being scared! She squared her shoulders. Now get dressed and get going before Mom or Dad look too closely. Sweet, sweet calmness poured over her head and her reflection resolved into frozen steel. In the cool quiet, she dressed quickly in a simple navy dress and tied a soft yellow sweater around her shoulders, then collected her books and left for school.

It was May in Houston so she walked. The sweet-smelling spring morning was indifferent to human drama. Flower-heavy Azalea bushes spilled into the yards and esplanades. Delicate white lilies and sharp colorful tulips filled the flower beds. Millions of birds sat in leafy oak trees singing up the sun. This spring, Lydia was graduating from high school. Years ago, it had been the lure of good schools that brought her family here. She had met Del the first day she cruised the new neighborhood on her bike. He was hanging from a tree limb by one arm and one leg while his mother stood underneath with her arms extended.

His mother had cried, “Delbert, don’t be scared. Catch a hold with your other hand and unhook your leg, then let go. Bend your knees and land on your feet. I’ll catch you. Do it, Del, do it now.”

The boy’s long hair concealed his upside-down face, but his strong arms and legs told Lydia he was probably capable of getting off the low hanging limb. She stopped to watch just as Del’s mother ran to their house making little shrieking sounds. When his mother was inside, Del grabbed the limb and dropped to the ground, where he laid down on his back and twisted one leg, then started yelling as if in excruciating pain.

Within seconds his mother reappeared, howling as she ran toward him, “Oh no! Oh no! Del, what did you do? I called the fire department. Why didn’t you wait? My goodness, your leg looks… broken.”

Del began laughing wildly. Now rolling on the ground and kicking both feet in the air, he hooted, “You called the fire department? Where’s the fire? Did you believe I couldn’t get out of the tree? I was only kidding. You’re funny, momma.”
With a disgusted look on her face, his mother turned and stomped back into the house. Lydia pedaled up to Del’s yard and stopped in front of it. When he saw her, Del jumped to his feet, smoothed down his hair and said, “Hey! Hi. Who are you?”

“Lydia. We just moved in on Crocket Street. I saw what you did to your mom. Pretty funny.”

“Where y’all from?”

“From here, out near The Woodlands.”

“I’m Del Barnes. Will you be going to Norris Middle School?”

They were in the same grade and became friends, even after adolescence transformed Del from a mischievous boy into a somber zombie. Lydia had first noticed the change in him about a year later when they were sitting together at a softball game. Del was unusually quiet, and he kept turning to stare at her. There had never been any attraction between them so she asked him what was going on.

Del said, “I was thinking that you got the best from both your parents - your Mexican mother’s face and your white dad’s body. How about your brain? Do you think like a white or a Mexican?”

It felt like he punched her in the stomach. “I can’t believe you!” she exclaimed. “Are you trying to hurt me or are you really that dense?” He looked surprised as she continued, “First of all, Mom was born in Texas, not Mexico; and second, my parents met in college so they think pretty much the same way.”

“Sorry Lydia, I guess I’m that dense.”

Del never said anything racist to her again. Because of that, and because he had been her first friend in a new place, Lydia adjusted to his personality change and their friendship survived. If it hadn’t, she never would have heard him talking about the Columbine High School shooting.

It happened almost three months ago when she and Del were doing homework in his room. Del’s best friend Tully called and Del flipped Tully to the speaker phone so he could finish working an equation. Tully said something about practicing on Sunday and Del answered absently, “That’s fine.”

Tully said, “It’s coming closer, dude. Trace the line from April ‘99 and Columbi. .. ...”

Del jumped to grab the phone and at the same time spun around to look at Lydia. Struggling with the math, Lydia heard Tully’s words but didn’t really register what he said. Instant sparks from Del alerted her that something important had just happened. Knowing how volatile Del could be, she instinctively hid her reaction and forced herself to continue punching numbers into her calculator as her eyes moved back and forth from her paper. She heard Del tell Tully he had to call him back and hang up the phone.

With his eyes still fixed on Lydia, Del said softly, “Sorry about the interruption.”
She pretended to be engrossed.

He raised his voice. “You solve that equation yet, woman?”

“No. Shut up.”

She stayed until dusk, then told Del she wanted to jog and left his house, nearly fainting with relief at the first gulp of outside air. As she walked home she thought, Trace the line from April ‘99 and Columbine. That’s what Tully said. What kind of perverted freak rhymes about Columbine? Her next thoughts hit like a knife. Tully also said “it’s coming closer. “ Did he mean Columbine is coming closer? Could they do that to our school? Maybe they could.

Both Del and Tully scowled bitterly at the world. Tully’s sarcastic attitude reinforced Del’s joyless aggression. Their favorite conversation was to make fun of the “mass-produced, manufactured, middle-class emptiness” they found at school. Most other students avoided them and called them weird. To hear the pessimistic gruesome-twosome talk gleefully about Columbine was frightening.
Next day Lydia told her boyfriend Frank what she had overheard and together they devised a way to find out why Del and Tully were talking about Columbine. Later on, when things got complicated and they needed a third person, Frank confided in his friend Hakim who agreed to help them. For weeks the three played their parts. Frank infiltrated Del and Tully’s friendship and learned they really were planning to shoot up the school like what happened at Columbine. After Frank knew specifics of their plan, he and Lydia and Hakim talked to police.

Today was the day Del and Tully planned to attack. They expected Frank to be with them. Each boy would enter the school through a different door between first and second period classes and shoot his way down the hall, then they would hook-up at the gym for a joint attack with pipe bombs and more shooting. What Del and Tully didn’t know was that as soon as they met this morning with the friend providing the bombs, they would be arrested. Police wanted to wait until then in order to prove the boys’ intentions as well as catch the accomplice. If, for some reason, Del and Tully called off the attack, they would be arrested for conspiracy.

Frank and Hakim had been told to stay home but Lydia was going to school in case police had to implement the backup plan of talking to Del and Tully if they approached the school. As teachers arrived that morning, they were instructed to keep students in Home Room for an emergency drill. After first bells, the school was locked down, which meant all classroom doors and entrance doors were locked and shaded. Students and staff quietly followed drill procedures, unaware that SWAT Teams surrounded the campus.

Lydia was locked inside the principal’s office with him and his staff. She tried to sit quietly but after twenty minutes passed with no word from police, she started to pace. Feeling a sudden surge of nausea, she thought, What if they went looking for Frank? Mr. Martin stood up to speak to her but just then the telephone rang and he lunged toward it. His staff members froze when Lydia darted toward his desk.

Mr. Martin’s tight face suddenly relaxed into a beauteous smile as he nodded vigorously to Lydia while he said to the caller, “Thank you lieutenant, thank you very much. We will see you when you get here.” He hung up and said, “Everything’s fine, Lydia, just fine. All three were arrested without a fight and with the weapons. It’s over. Go call your parents.” To his still motionless staff he said, “Police just arrested two students and an accomplice who were planning to attack the school today. Mrs. Simmons, please activate our emergency telephone system. Leave parents the message that no one has been injured but because of a major problem, they must pick up their children. Students who ride busses will be loaded up in one hour. I’ll make the announcement to teachers and students. Now, before you ask, let me say that all your questions will be answered tomorrow at an all-school assembly. Until then, don’t listen to rumors and don’t start any. Oh, Mrs. Simmons, add that to the message. Ask parents to attend the assembly at 9:00. All right everybody, let’s get busy.”

When Lydia’s parents arrived, she took them to the principal’s office where Frank and Hakim were waiting with their puzzled parents. Lydia and Frank rushed to each other and embraced, then pulled Hakim into the group hug. Mr. Martin said to the parents, “Your kids will tell you about what happened today, but first I want to go on record and say that when they came to me four days ago with this information, I wanted to inform you then. However, because your children are eighteen years old, I had to accept their decision to wait until now.”
Mr. Martin first told the parents about the arrests of Del and Tully in possession of semi-automatic guns, pipe bombs, and a notebook with detailed plans for killing students and faculty. Then Lydia, Frank, and Hakim told their stunned families how over the last ten weeks they had convinced Del and Tully that Frank, who was new to the school and relatively unknown, was alienated and unhappy. First Lydia had complained to Del about Frank’s angry attitude; then Lydia and Frank pretended to break up. Hakim had openly ridiculed Frank for his antisocial behavior and publicly challenged him several times. One Sunday afternoon, Frank “bumped into” Del and Tully at a firing range and worked his way into their conversation. After several weeks of intense “friendship,” Del and Tully began talking about getting revenge on the snobs and bullies at school, an idea Frank enthusiastically endorsed. A couple of weeks later they confided to Frank their dream of “doing a bigger Columbine.” When Frank begged to be included, Del and Tully told him their plans.

At this point all six parents started talking but Hakim’s father stood up and nearly shouted, “Hakim, I think we should go home and talk about this in private.”

Hakim said, “Dad, I know you’re going to tell me that as a black man and a Muslim, it was dangerous to behave like that. But Frank is my friend. And we all watched each other’s backs the whole time.”

Frank’s father said, “I didn’t know you were Black Muslims.”

“No, no, not Black Muslim Nation. We’re traditional Muslims.”

Lydia’s mother demanded to Lydia, “You knew Del was planning murder but you continued going to his house?”

Lydia answered, “It took time to find out the details. Since I knew Del best, it was my job to watch him. I had to act normal.”

Frank’s mother jumped in. “Frank, you put yourself in some serious danger. What if those lunatics had decided to use you for target practice?”

Frank said, “But they didn’t. Mom, think about what was at stake. We had to find out the truth. We couldn’t accuse Del and Tully until we knew for sure. Besides, I didn’t believe they were serious until I saw their clothes and weapons and by that time…”

Frank’s father interrupted, “Their weapons? Their clothes?”

“Del kept two AK47s and a .357 Magnum in his room. He and Tully had bought those long black coats and combat boots like the Columbine shooters wore. They even had a poster, an enlargement of that magazine cover taken by security cameras at Columbine that showed Eric and Dylan with their weapons smoking. Del and Tully thought Eric and Dylan were gods.”

Lydia’s father said, “What parent doesn’t remember that picture. One thing all parents understand is the fierce, intense need to protect their kids. Do anything you want to me, but don’t kill my children.”

Silence filled the room. Hakim’s father sat back down and he put his arm around his wife.

Mr. Martin said, “Maybe this is a good time for me to say something. As you can imagine, this story is all over the news media. Instead of sending a letter or some such thing to parents, we’re having an all-school assembly tomorrow morning to tell everyone what you’re hearing now; as well as to correct the false impressions Frank and Hakim made recently. Lydia, Hakim, and Frank will be on stage to answer questions, and they want you there with them.”

When the parents shifted around in their seats but said nothing, Mr. Martin added, “I know you’re still upset so while you think about it, I feel compelled to thank all of you for being the kind of parents that you are. As I look around the room at this diversity, I know these kids are friends because of you and your values. And today their friendship saved many lives.”

Lydia crossed the room, stooped down in front of her parents and took their hands. She said, “Mr. Martin’s right about that. Remember when I used to ask you why some people were unfriendly or said ugly things about mixed marriages? You told me it was the normal human condition to have differences: men and women differences; age differences; physical, educational, religious differences. But the only important difference is if someone is a friend or an enemy. You said a friend wants you to be happy, but an enemy brings you trouble. When Del became an enemy, I turned to my friends.”

Lydia’s mother touched her face. “Just yesterday you were a little girl so proud to be big enough to help me in the kitchen. Now here you are, grown up and helping everybody.”

“Friend or enemy,” Hakim’s mother said softly. “That sounds familiar. You know, we tried to teach our children the same principle. Looks like Hakim was listening. Mr. Martin, I will be proud to sit on that stage with my son tomorrow.”
Hakim smiled warmly at her, then looked to his father, who slowly lifted his head to return Hakim’s gaze, then started to smile and nod his head. Within minutes, everybody agreed to attend the assembly, and as the conversation eased into more normal tones with soft laughter mixed in, Mr. Martin said loudly, “You know, I haven’t eaten all day and I’m starving. How about we all go have lunch somewhere and finish talking about this assembly?”

As the group walked down the hall toward the front door, Hakim’s mother put her arm around her son’s waist and said loudly, “There is still one issue I need to settle with my son, and that is just because you are eighteen does NOT mean you can keep me out of your business. Will all my parent friends support me on that?”

Everybody laughed and joined in with her, but all the parents knew the truth: that their children were almost gone, and were becoming the kind of adults they had dreamed of.

Natasha Grinberg

They’ve got to be kidding – this is not Russia! Benjamin Goldman emerged from his elementary school bus, zipped up his winter jacket, then immediately unzipped it. No, that wasn’t reckless enough. He flung the jacket open, stepped to the left of the cleared sidewalk, and shoved his leg into the foot-high snow. Letting the wind beat on his chest, he trudged home through the highest mounds. He sucked in the freezing air and held it for better effect.

Oh, they don’t even know what I’m capable of, he thought. I’ll show them. They’ll be sorry for the rest of their lives, but it’s going to be too late because I’ll kill myself and be dead. He paused, twisted his body, and jumped to straighten his stone-heavy backpack. Mama and Papa would weep over his grave, beating their foreheads on the ground, yelling Bubik, his Russian pet name. Of course, his grandparents should not be told that he died – they were innocent in this matter. It was only between him and his parents.

“If you don’t zip your jacket,” Mama had said a million times, “you’ll catch a cold and start coughing nonstop. Your throat will swell up and you won’t be able to breathe – just like the time we had to rush you to the hospital. You could’ve died, and what would I do then? You’re my one and only sonny-bunny. Please zip up.” Mama liked to repeat things he already knew as though she were etching her message on his brain cells. He wondered if his mind compressed copies of this speech into one version or stored them all. Was there a way to erase that information?

He’d thought he had it bad before, but the discovery he’d made yesterday was the last straw. Until now, he’d tolerated the crazy things his parents made him do, even the clarinet lessons and the Russian-language school with Lilya. After everything they’d told him about Hitler and Stalin, she seemed a cross between the two, a teacher from hell. But that picture of him at age one was where he had to draw the line.

The more you give in, he thought, the more they want to push you. I’m a boy. I’m almost ten years old. Don’t they understand? This is not Russia. This is America.

Coming across the photo yesterday, he’d bulged out his eyes and yelled, “What’s this?”

Mama answered, “Don’t you recognize yourself? See how cute you were?” She scooped him up and smothered him with her soft body – that’s Mama’s version of an embrace. “You’ll always be my cute little sonny-bunny.”

He fought to release himself from her hold. Tears burst from his eyes. “You dressed me in pink!”

“What’s wrong with pink? It’s a beautiful color.”

Papa nodded in agreement.

“Pink’s for girls.”

“Why?” His mother ruffled his hair and kissed him on a cheek. “Pink overalls were on sale. We didn’t have much money. And what’s the difference? You didn’t seem to mind then, so why worry about it now? Just forget it.”

Forget it? She didn’t even try to apologize. Forget it? Forget the slight, the attack on his manliness? Never never. He’d never forget and never forgive.
Wasn’t it enough that they had made him take violin lessons when he was five? Five! Can you believe it? Of course, in re-tro-spect, he shouldn’t have told his classmates about it. He’d only wanted to demonstrate what he’d suffered since childhood and had simply used the violin lessons story as the most egregarious example. . . . gregarious? He tried to recall how Mama had said the word yesterday when she told him it meant vopiyuschiy in Russian. E-e-egregious.
His classmates were sympathetic at first, but then they began to shy away from him and whisper behind his back as though it were not his parents but he who was Russian. He was a full-blooded American, born not in St. Petersburg, Russia but in St. Peters, New Jersey. He could even show them the birth certificate.

But then again, even if he hadn’t told his classmates about the violin lessons, Mama had done other things that had made him a suspect. Everyone went to the mall but Mama wouldn’t let him. The shame of being babied, kept at home, burned his lungs. He coughed. Good, he thought, I’m coughing already. When he exhaled, he heard the familiar strumming in his air passage. Good, I’m wheezing, too.

Why should it matter to her what I do at the mall? But no, she had to call Brian’s mom and ask if Brian was going. And even after Brian’s mom had said yes, Mama kept asking what Brian did at the mall. Brian’s mom didn’t really know. So if Brian’s mom lets Brian go to the mall, and Mama doesn’t let me go there, then something must be wrong with me and my family. It’s all clear. I’ll show them. I’ll just die and they’ll be sorry.

He approached the comer Seven-Eleven and paused on the side by the garbage bin. He was tempted to get a grape Slurpie but that would involve showing his face in the store. He’d stolen an Alpha-5 Power Ranger not long ago – just to prove to himself that he could – but was still unsure if his theft had remained undiscovered.

A mailman exited the store and tossed a candy-wrapper in the garbage. Sure – why didn’t he think of it before? Benjamin bent to his side and eased his backpack to the ground, then took his jacket off. Completely off – now his plan should work even faster. The cold he was about to catch would now develop with supersonic speed. He balled the jacket and stuffed it into the garbage bin. Pulling his knitted hat over his ears, he exhaled and made himself cough, then began coughing spontaneously for the entire block it took him to walk to his house.

“Bubik?” Nadia, the housekeeper, yelled from the kitchen. He banged the closet door as if he just hung his jacket. “How was school?” She peeked out her lamb-curled head to glance at him. “What do you want to do?”

“Ho” – he whoofed a cough--”Home--whoof-whoof--work. Whoof.”

“When did this start?”

“It’s just air in the wrong pipe. It’s nothing,” he lied. If Nadia just sniffed his getting sick, she’d make him take medicine and imprison him in his room with the humidifier, then he might not get sick enough to die. He tried to hold his coughing spell and hauled himself to the second floor. Bo-boom, bo-boom, he dragged his backpack over the stairs. Bo-boom, bo-boom, whoof, bo-boom, whoof, whoof.

“I don’t like the sound of your cough. Let me give you the medicine.”

“I just got some from the nurse,” he lied. What did Nadia know about American schools? He’d heard that in Russia, school nurses did whatever they wanted, even vaccinated kids without their parents’ permission. “It was a purple liquid, the same kind you give me.”

He closed the door to his room, to dampen the sound of his whoofing, and sat at his desk to do math problem sets.

* * *

The dreaded humidifier had been buzzing for several hours. All would be lost if he gave in now. Benjamin forced his head into the pillow and drew himself so tight, his teeth bared, his face hurt, his body shook. “No!” he cried in English but immediately switched to Russian.

Mama always pretended to become hearing-impaired when he talked English to her in private. “Nyet, I hhh-ate this medicine. It tastes like cherry.” He hoped to tire Mama out, so she’d give up trying to spoon the medicine into his mouth.
“That’s the only flavor we have left. Please, Bubik, for me.”

“I like the grape flavor!”

“It’s medicine. You shouldn’t like medicine. But I promise to get grape the next time.”

“No!”

“If you don’t take it, I won’t read to you.”

Benjamin whoofed a round of barks, thinking of more ways to delay the taking of the medicine. Every minute gave him the advantage of getting sicker. “It tastes so awful, I’ll take it after you read to me.”

Mama extended the spoon. The metal touched his lips, wafting of sweet bitterness. She must be kidding! He thought, I’ve made up my mind and that’s it. She doesn’t even show a single sign of remorse. Not even a hint at what she did to me. That’s so unfair.

Mama hesitated. Benjamin unfocused his eyes, so her face digitized into something like a puzzle, a jumble of the red of her hair, her flaring nostrils, her tense green eyes – one higher than the other. Though Mama had said he was the fastest person on earth to assemble puzzles, he wasn’t rushing to put her face back in order.

One of her eyes squeezed shut. “You’re strong-minded. I like that in a person. One has to know what one wants. We have a deal.”

Deal, shmeal. I am going to die and that’s it. Mama rose from his bed and placed the medicine on his desk, then came back with a book of Russian fairytales. “Which one do you want today?”

He sifted through the list: Vasilisa-the-Beautiful, Round Doughboy, Three Little Bears, Ivan-the-fool. He wanted something about the present or the future not the past, something about aliens, ghosts, other planets. Ivan-the-fool . . . There was something weird about him. “Mama, why is it that Ivan-the-fool lies on a bench all day but wins the princess in the end?” He made his eyes focus on her face.

Mama nodded several times and curled her lips in a way that showed she was surprised. “You have a point. I haven’t thought of Ivan from quite this angle. I like it when a person can articulate his thoughts.”

“What’s articulate?”

“Articulate,” Mama repeated the word in English, then switched to Russian, “it’s when you can explain precisely what you mean. It makes other people understand you better.”

He nodded and tried on this articulation thing. “I want you to read to me about aliens and space.”

Mama thought a moment. “I don’t think we brought these kinds of books from Soyuz”- that’s how she always called where she and Papa were from-- “and even if we did – they would be dated by now. What do you have from the library?”

“My Teacher Is an Alien, but I already finished that one.”

“So? You like it when I re-read fairytales to you.”

“Fairytales are different.”

“Fine. If you feel better, we’ll go to the library tomorrow. Do you mind if I read to you in English at bedtime?”

Mind? Hurrah! “I’d like that.”

“So if we are not reading now, can you take your medicine?”

Damn. He almost forgot about it amid all these articulations. She brought the spoon and the bottle back. No! He prepared to yell but kept thinking. Maybe. . . Maybe he should give it a try. “Mama, you hurt my feelings dressing me in pink. I don’t like it when someone hurts my feelings.”

Mama poured more medicine into the spoon to replace the spilled liquid. “Ah . . .” She sounded tired. “You’re going to be peeved at me for something one way or another when you grow up, so let this something be my dressing you in pink overalls.” She extended the spoon to his face. “Please, for me.”

He shut his mouth and narrowed his eyes at her, considering her apology.

Mama’s brows inclined toward each other, just like when he made Mrs. Potato Head look sad. Her lips twitched; she was about to start crying. Yup. She was sorry. It was absolutely clear that she was.

He whoofed and rubbed his nose, then relaxed his face and parted his lips. He had known what he wanted and he had gotten it. He liked it when a person got what he wanted.