A Single Act of Hatred: A Story

by Michelle Morley

It’s strange how one’s life can change so dramatically because of a single act of hatred. I only realized this after that one act was carried out.
In 1934 I was 16 and was living in the town of my birth, Green Briar, Mississippi. It was just about as south as you could run without running smack dab into the ocean. Actually, Green Briar never was green; the sign that welcomed visitors to our little town was terribly misleading. It was all nicely whitewashed and depicted a lovely green valley. However, this was far from the truth since everything in Green Briar was covered in a thick coat of dirt.
I was no different from the average boy, except for the fact that I have been and always will be a girl. My momma died giving birth to me, so my daddy raised me the way he thought best: as a boy. I would hunt, fish, wrestle and josh around with all of the other boys. You couldn’t pick me out from all of them. I dressed the same as they did, wearing overalls and a cotton shirt. The only way anybody remembered that I was a girl was my stick brown hair in a single braid that reached below my shoulders, which I mostly tucked under my hat.
I was good friends with all of the boys, but I was especially close to Silas, a black boy my daddy took in when I was six. (Because there weren’t any black folks in Green Briar, Daddy figured he was abandoned further up the river in another town and then wandered to our house.) We were always together. Color was never an issue between the two of us or Daddy. We would run together, talk into the wee hours of the morning, and fish together at our favorite spot at Bracken’s Pond. He was a good friend. He would listen to me, offer me good advice, and wait around patiently until I got home from school.
But the townspeople never seemed to tolerate our happy friendship. They would glare at Silas and me as if we were diseased. “A nice little white girl like you shouldn’t be ‘round the likes of him,” the men would say. The girls would say, “Robin Cole, you should be ashamed of yourself, first disgracin’ yourself by actin’ like a boy and then bein’ friends with that boy.” I found out later that every single white man who hailed from Green Briar (except for Daddy) was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. They would go into other towns to find people to prey on and to carry out their dirty work. It didn’t surprise me much when I found out. One day in July however, everything changed.
There was one particular man who everyone in Green Briar admired, except for Daddy, Silas and me. His name was Judas White, and he was about 45 or so. He was the judge and executioner for Green Briar. He stood up straight, combed over his grey hair, and carried with him the thickest whip and oddest Bowie knife I have ever seen. They said he was the best poker player in Green Briar; he could bluff his way out of the weakest hand. But what I feared were those eyes — golly those eyes. His left eye was blue, but the color was so washed out it looked almost white. His right eye was a reddish-brown color that looked as if it would gladly send you to hell if it could.
Silas and I had the misfortune of meeting Judas in the general store while we were buying a barrel of flour. He glared at me for a moment and then glared at Silas for almost a minute. He set his jaw, bumped me and then spat in Silas’s face. Silas acted as if nothing had happened and calmly wiped the spit off his face with his sleeve. The store owner was gossiping about Daddy, Silas and me to one of his friends. “That feller Cole must’ve been nuts! First raisin’ that otherwise pretty girl of his like a boy, and then takin’ in that nigger as his own and lettin’ him call him Daddy! Everybody knows that niggers are nothin’ but —” Then he stopped when he saw my shadow. Silas and I didn’t mind gossip about us, but when it came to gossip about Daddy, we couldn’t take it. Silas stared at the store owner, and I simply gave him my angry smile. We paid for our flour, and the store owner went back to jabbering about other people’s affairs. Silas went to go do something — I can’t remember what — and walked out of the general store. I was trying to balance the big barrel of flour on my hip like a baby, but it kept slipping, so I went to ask Silas if he could carry it for me. What I found outside would change my life forever.
Silas was walking down the street when Judas tripped him. Judas clutched his knee as if it was in pain. His face became redder than a freshly-painted steamboat. “What do you think you’re doin’, you dirty, ugly, clumsy, filthy nigger? You rammed into me without even lookin’ at me! You almost knocked me over, and it’s amazin’ I didn’t break any bones.” Silas was the one in real pain; I had never seen his face so twisted before. He tried to stand, but each time he tried, Judas’s hand shoved him back down into the dust. Silas then spoke up. “Suh, I ain’ nevah hahmed you befo. Why should I now?” Judas’s eyes were ablaze. “Are you callin’ me a liar?” he shrieked. “Imagine that! A nigger callin’ me a liar!” “No suh, I didn’t call you a liar neither. Actually, you pushed me down. I didn’t e’en touch you.” Judas was enraged. Nobody dared to call Judas White anything negative without paying dearly for it. Judas jumped on Silas and started landing heavy blows on his quivering frame. Other men who were there got in on it and started to beat Silas too. I dropped the flour and bolted towards the pile of angry, wrestling men and tried to pick them off Silas one by one. I heard the horrible sound of a knife being unsheathed and a muffled scream. Then all the men walked away from Silas and went back to their business as if they had done nothing more than glance at a dead dog in the street. Judas walked off and started laughing as if he had won some great victory over an incomprehensible evil. I saw why he was laughing. Silas, my closest friend, had a Bowie knife in his belly. His warm eyes were fixated on something unseen. I cradled him in my arms, and he started coughing up blood. My tears fell down on his face as I wiped the blood away with my hair. He looked at me and stroked my face, and as he tried to speak, I watched his soul fly to heaven. I sobbed for the first time in my life that day. Silas was gone.
Judas looked over at me smugly and muttered, “Nigger lover,” and strutted off into the distance. I glanced at the knife’s handle, and for the first time I understood that odd design. I had seen it many times, but never realized it depicted a skeleton suffering in hell. I felt helpless, angry, heartbroken and vengeful all at once. All I could do was wail. I took his body in my arms, and with all my strength, I dragged him to our favorite tree by the pond. I cut some of his hair that I loved to play with when we were little and cut a lock of my own. I placed them intertwined in a handkerchief and hid it in my pocket, next to my heart. Though Daddy couldn’t show it like I could, he was just as heartbroken as me. We buried Silas at our favorite spot. We talked it over and figured that we couldn’t do anything about it because Silas’s murder amounted to a lynching. And in Green Briar, no one did anything about lynchings. You might even say that murdering a black man was legal. We talked about the things that hurt us most, about how some people could do the things they do. But I never could tell my daddy about what I’ve always kept wrapped up so close to me. When it comes to love and hate, I’ve come to realize how much can be hidden in the human heart.

I'm Doin' All Right: A Short Story

By D. Eric Durso

It was a large, dark room. The lights on the wall were dim; the faint glow of the sconces around the room left many shadows. Only a few people were left. Most of them were the usual old, drunk, haggard men by which The Big Barnacle stayed in business.
The Big Barnacle was a low profile bar on the ocean front, near a long wooden pier where most fishermen try their luck at catching the “big one.” Wealthier visitors looked at The Big Barnacle as a lower class, second-rate bar that served no purpose apart from getting old men drunk. That was only partially true. It was lower class, and it was second-rate, but it wasn’t only for getting people drunk.
The bar’s walls were decorated with pictures of people in cities all around the world. The founding owner painted the words, “A piece of every part of the world” in black above the bar so that it was the first thing you saw when you entered. His goal was to fill the walls with artifacts from peoples’ adventures all over the world. The sailors in the community were travelers to begin with, so whenever they went anywhere, they’d bring something back for the bar — a piece of the Great Wall of China or the nets hanging from the ceiling that were taken from a Korean fishing boat. An Australian had even left a sanitized kangaroo foot hanging from the ceiling. If travelers didn’t have an artifact, they brought a framed picture of the place they had been. Anyone stopping by the pier to fish would stop at The Big Barnacle to see the latest artifacts.
When the excitement eventually died down, all that was left were multitudes of stories, memories and pictures on the walls. There were stories of love and hate, of adventure and disaster. There were stories of discovery and failure, each of them encapsulated in an artifact that was placed on the wall. Sam, upon entering the bar, had seen the words in black: A piece of every part of the world. He had seen the nets and the pictures. Now he was looking at a picture of a man standing in front of the ruins of the Areopagus in Greece with a smile of satisfaction on his face. Sam sighed. He sat hunched over in one of the stools, not drunk, but hardly sober.
He was deep in thought when the bartender approached him. “You all right, bud? You haven’t even had a drink yet, and you look worse than the regulars.” “You want the short answer or the long one?” The bartender smiled a grisly, but friendly smile. He had the beginning traces of a black beard and wore a stained, white button-up shirt. “I’ve got all night. And I became a bartender for this very reason.” He winked, “I love love stories.” Sam looked up from the bar. “It’s hardly a love story.” “Tell,” he said. “You need to talk.”
The bartender had dealt with plenty of Sam-like people. They’d come into the bar after a heartache or a long day at work. He had been in the business so long he could tell exactly who was feeling the heartbreak and who was just bored. He could tell which ones just wanted a good time and which ones just wanted to be alone. Some needed to talk. Some people just needed silence. The bartender could tell that Sam needed to talk. Plus, he really did enjoy the stories. Sam was silent for a while, contemplating where he would begin. After all, he did need to talk, if only to sort out his thoughts about the whole situation.
“She’s gone.”
“Who’s she?”
“She was supposed to be my wife,” Sam said bitterly. “Toward the end of our relationship she started having second thoughts about it all. We started fighting about it more. She says she isn’t ready to settle down yet.” The bartender was silent, waiting to see if he would say more.
When he didn’t, the bartender said, “Go back further. Tell me about this girl.” “Well,” he began, “we met on an Alaskan cruise. My uncle — he’s a lawyer — had just won a huge case and decided he wanted to celebrate it by taking his extended family on a seven-day cruise in Alaska. Anyway, on the first day of the cruise, I decided to wake up before my family and get some breakfast. I was eating alone and reading The Royal Road to Romance. It’s a book about this guy who can’t stand college life anymore and takes off to travel the world. Good book. Anyway, while I was eating she sat down at my table and said, ‘How do you like it?’ I didn’t know what to say; I thought she was talking about my food at first. Then she said, ‘Sorry, but I love that book, and I’ve never seen anyone reading it before. What part are you at?’”
Sam paused and looked up at the bartender who was listening to every word. “No lie — she was beautiful,” he laughed. “I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have talked to her if she wasn’t!” The bartender laughed, and Sam continued. “She was just naturally pretty. Blonde hair, big brown eyes, slender. Anyway, we ended up talking about the book for at least a half hour, and then we talked about ourselves for another hour or so. She was so perky, so smart yet humble, independent, but not a feminist.
“After that we kept running into each other. At dinner I’d see her three tables away and wave, and she’d smile and wave back. My family kept asking me who she was and all I’d say was,‘She’s just a girl I met.’ After that they’d all say, ‘She sure is a looker!’ or something stupid like that. You know how family is.” The bartender laughed and nodded in agreement. “That’s how it was for the first couple days at sea. I swear I ran into her at least three times a day! Every time we’d stop and talk to each other, and I’m not the most outgoing guy. She just came up and talked to me. She was so comfortable, so confident. Not to mention that she loved to travel, loved to sing (not that she was good at it!), and loved to enjoy life. Every time we talked, I felt like I was getting to know her more and more. We even went on some excursions together. Anyway, by the end of the cruise, I was spending more time with her than I was with my family.
When we were about to get off the ship, I got her number and told her I’d call her. After that, it just blossomed.” The bartender was smiling when Sam looked up at him. “What was her name?” “Mindy.” Sam was staring down at the bar again. The bartender let him be silent for a while and then spoke: “Go on.” Without hesitation, Sam went on. “We’d have so much fun together. It turned out that she only lived two hours from my house, so for the next year we got to see each other. Sometimes I’d surprise her and we’d go kayaking in the ocean; or she’d surprise me and we’d go horseback riding through the forest by my house.
One time, we sat next to each other under a pine tree — gosh it sounds like the movies — and we said that we were never going to leave each other. Sappy, I know. But everybody’s sappy sometimes, right?” The bartender solemnly nodded his head. “Of course.” This caused him to think about the love that he had lost. Now, looking back on it, it didn’t seem so painful.
At the time however, he would have claimed to be in a worse predicament than Sam. The girl that he loved had left him for another man when he was studying abroad in Spain. The whole three months he never went a week without writing her at least one letter. Some were sappy, some serious. Every single one of them ended with the words, “I love you. Please write back.” She responded twice. Neither of those letters told him that she was moving on. Coming home was not the way he expected it to be. She wasn’t waiting for him at the port, and she wouldn’t answer his calls. Finally, he got a letter explaining where she’d been and how she’d moved on. After a week of mourning, he had left his hometown and never gone back.
“Anyway, as time went on I began to tell her that I wanted to settle down eventually. Get married, start a family, you know. It just seemed natural to take that step. I mean, we could see each other, at the most, twice a week. We did that for a year! Yeah, we talked on the phone every day, but I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. I wanted to marry her. I told her over the phone that I loved her, and she told me she loved me. Then I said we should get married. But whenever I brought that up, she would either laugh at me and pretend I was joking, or she would get mad and say, ‘Be realistic, Sam.’ Whenever I stood up for myself, she would get mad, and you know how girls get when they’re mad. They don’t want to talk, but they don’t want to hang up the phone. They say they’re fine when really they’re ticked off. Then when you try to talk to them, they’ll answer you with one word answers. Gosh, I hated that.”
The bartender laughed. “That made me never want to bring up marriage. “After a while it only became harder not to bring it up. I wanted her to marry me. After a while, I decided that I couldn’t take her indecision any longer, so I bought a ring and proposed.” The bartender looked almost shocked. “How’d you do it?” he said.
“We were on a small sailboat, kind of like the ones that are outside in this dock. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. We were having a great time talking about where we wanted to go. We always played a game where we’d ask each other if you could go anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go? We were talking about the Great Wall of China and laughing about a Far Side cartoon we had seen about it. A breeze picked up, and she let her hair out, and while she was looking at the expanse of the ocean, I got to my knee. It was really awkward, but I didn’t care. I said something like, ‘Mindy, I love you, and I can’t stand you not being mine. Marry me.’” Sam’s whole posture changed after he said this.
The bartender knew exactly how the story would end. The same thing had happened to him. After he came home from Barcelona, he found his girl and begged her to marry him. He didn’t have a ring, he didn’t have any money, but he swore that he’d live the rest of his life making her dreams come true. There are not many men who hear the woman they love say “no” when they ask for their hand in marriage. When she told him that it was over and that they would never get married, he flew to Italy with the last of his money.
Sam continued. “Well, it’s obvious what her answer was. She said no. Gosh, that killed me. The whole trip back to the dock we argued. She said she wanted to be free; I said we could be free together. She said she wanted to see the world before she settled down; I said we’d do it together. She thought that whole idea was unrealistic. When we got back to the dock she said, ‘Sam, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t get married. I can’t see you anymore.’ When she drove away that day, I was crushed. I felt completely broken. I think I threw up at least three times.” The bartender was not satisfied. “Where’d she go?” Sam, feeling weary of the conversation, went on. “She wrote me a letter about a week ago, and I got it today.” He pulled out a folded and refolded piece of paper that looked like it had been read a hundred times. “Here, I’ll read it to you:
“Dear Sam, I am on a sailboat called Freedom sailing through the Greek Isles. Remember how we talked about the wind that blows across your face and how it makes you feel free? How it makes you feel fresh and alive and meaningful? Well, that’s how I feel right now. I’ve never felt more alive than I do right at this moment. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’ve got what I wanted. I hate knowing that I’ve hurt you, but maybe, if it’s any consolation to you, at least you know that I’m living my dream. I’m going to see the world, Sam! Isn’t that exciting? It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe someday I’ll come back, and you’ll be right there waiting. I know that I can’t ask that of you, but at least I can hope it. At this point, that hope is all I’ve got. I’m on my road to romance, Sam. I needed this in my life. I needed to do this. For what it’s worth Sam, I love you. Mindy.”
The bartender’s favorite picture hung in the back of the bar. It was a picture of him on a large sailboat. He wasn’t smiling; in fact, he looked tired and beaten. His brown coarse hair was sticking up from the wind, his beard unkempt. In the background, the afternoon sun was hanging low over the coast of Sicily, and every cloud was wreathed in gold. He had taken it of himself about a week after he had left his girl. Although he looked wearied, there was a glint in his eyes that said he was doing all right. On the bottom of the picture he had written, “Now I’m doing just fine.”
When Sam looked back up at him after he had finished reading the letter, the bartender looked concerned, but not sympathetic. “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay,” Sam replied, softly. “I’ll be right here waiting.”
There was a pause. The bartender was uneasy. He knew that would be a mistake, but he remembered wanting to do the same thing. He had wanted to let his girl see him in pain. Perhaps it would make her feel just a little slice of the pain he was feeling. Two sleepless nights had cured him of that diseased thought. He had realized that life goes on. Though exhausted, beaten, bruised and broken, the only way to heal was to move forward.
Finally he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Live, Sam!” the bartender said emphatically. He slammed his fist on the bar and silverware rattled. “Live!”
Sam was startled by the bartender’s reaction. He didn’t know what to think. “Sam, you need to forget about her and find your life again. Why should you wait here in misery? There is hope in this life! You just have to find it. Get out there and do something!”
Sam’s eyes widened. It was almost like he was beginning to question himself. “You should be sailing in the Greek Isles! You should be hiking through the cold Rocky Mountains. You should be on your way to Scotland! This life is your last life! Do everything you possibly can before it’s too late. What are you doing here?”
Maybe it was the bartender’s imagination, but a faint smile passed over Sam’s stone face. He recognized the glint in his eyes. He stood up from his stool and turned around to leave the bar. He paused. From behind, the bartender could tell he was looking at the pictures on the walls. He was looking at the foreign artifacts that decorated the room. When Sam looked back to see the bartender, he saw the smug contentment on his face. The kind of face that says, “Atta boy!” One week later, Sam was on his way out to sea. He didn’t care where he was in the great ocean; he had his compass and the stars at night. The boat was big enough for him to live on, and he was alone and free. The first few nights at sea were lonely. He looked at the stars and thought about Mindy. He’d spend all day tending the sails or writing. Writing always helped him vent his feelings. It wasn’t comfortable, but the freedom that he had was worth it. He had neglected to write a response to Mindy’s letter because he knew that he wasn’t ready to yet. He didn’t want to write her a letter saying that he was sad that she had left and he was lonely now. He wanted to wait it out.
He wanted freedom to run its course through him so that eventually he would forget about her. He’d forget about the dimple on her left cheek. He’d forget about the way she rubbed her eyes when she was tired. He’d forget about the way her toes curled up when they touched cold water. She would be reduced to whatever picture he had of her; whatever memory he could maintain of her. While sailing the mighty sea, he thought of her often, but more and more, he felt free of her. When he was at that point, he began to write his letter.
Dear Mindy, I have decided to take my chances out on the great sea. It’ll be hard at first, but it’s something I must do. I’ll be lonely at first. I will feel out of place. People and places will be different. But eventually everything will change. I’ll feel at home on the ocean. I’ll give up my insecurities, and I will live for the sake of life. Soon, I’ll feel at home. Now, when I’m out here on the ocean, I get a little lonely sometimes. Lord knows how much I could use a warm kiss. But still, I begin to think twice about whether or not I ever want to come back. But maybe if I did come back I could do things differently. I would make better use of my time. I’d drink less than I do out here. Without me you’ll slowly begin to see that things will change. What you left me for will eventually lose its taste. Things will change. All that will be left are the things that you hold on to. You have to hold on to something. But every once in a while the wind will blow through my hair and I’ll be reminded of you. The smell will take me away from the ocean, and I’ll be right there with you. I’ll be honest when I say that I’m okay with that. I guess I’m writing you to say I’m doing all right. I’m free like you are. So, when you turn around to find me one day, I’ll be sailing the big blue ocean with freedom blowing through my hair and chills running down my back. Freedom is a precious thing, I’ve found. Sam
After Sam wrote the letter, he got out his Polaroid and took a picture of himself. On the bottom, in the white part, he wrote, “Hey. I’m doin’ all right.” He didn’t put the picture in with the note. Instead, he saved it for the next time he would be passing through The Big Barnacle, so he could hang it on the wall.

Birthday for Evie: A Short Story

By Anna Forbes

Evie scrambled into her car-seat and reached for the seatbelt, but Dad found it first and winked as he handed it to her. She had been excited for this all week. Dad was taking us to the park for her eighth birthday. This would be the best part of her day. Evie loved to be outside so much more than inside. The indoors made her think of the dreaded school and books. Evie had moved to the first grade this year after two years of kindergarten, lots of testing and special tutors. She was one of the oldest in her class, but by far the smallest.
We arrived at the park, and I hopped out into the cold wind. I zipped up my jacket and waited for Dad to help Evie with hers.
“Look up, Evie. We don’t want your chin to catch in the zipper.”
Evie always got her chin caught in the zipper, and it always left a mark. She ran ahead of us to the playground, but paused several times to make sure we were still coming. Her small, delicate face lit up as she pumped her frail legs to swing. Something in her eyes seemed hollow. Her bobbed hair whipped across her face in the strong wind. Evie was blissful. She didn’t have to think or talk. She could just enjoy the simple moment all by herself. I often wished she would take me with her to the places in her mind.
Dad and I watched her for a minute, and then he suggested we race. He knew how I loved to run and that I loved racing against him. I secretly knew he could win, but I always said I would out-run him one day. I bent over and set my fingers in the cold grass, ready for the signal. Dad crouched next to me, and I prepared myself for his pranks. He said “Go!” and my legs flew, two strides for every one of his. Tears streamed down my cheeks as my eyes reacted to the rush of cold wind. He let me get ahead of him, but I knew what was coming. His fingers gripped my waist, and we fell to the ground in a mound of bulky coats and laughter.
Catching our breath, we sat up to see Evie standing on the edge of the sand, with her hands on her hips and disappointment written across her face. Dad knew she felt left out, so we challenged her to a race. We took off running to the other end of the field. Soon I was leading with no one behind me. I stopped and turned to see where everyone had gone.
A look of horror covered Evie’s face. Those once hollow eyes were now filled with fear and confusion. I quickly understood the situation. Her delicate frame couldn’t run against the wind, and the harder she ran, the more she was blown back. Seeing us fade farther away was more than she could handle. She couldn’t understand why she was being abandoned, and she screamed because she didn’t know what else to do. She wasn’t fast enough to catch us, but to turn around would be going farther away from us.
Dad ran to her and knelt down so his eyes were looking straight into hers. His thumb wiped her tears away, and he scooped her into his strong arms and carried her to the car.
I slowly walked back, wishing Evie was normal. Then everyday things like footraces wouldn’t be turned into disasters. I sat next to her in the car and watched her sad face. Tears clouded her eyes until she went to sleep; then her nap was interrupted only by a hiccup and a sigh. She had looked so helpless and vulnerable out there on the field. I thought about the world from her perspective: cold and unforgiving, with no one to understand.
No one but Dad. He was her rescuer. He had protected her from so much and had never spoken a word of disapproval or frustration. He did that for both of us, and we loved him.

And We Can Face the Music Together: A Short Story

by Rachel Thompson

Jazz held my breath that night.
Four months earlier, I was alone in my apartment, making a cup of tea. When the microwave beeped, I took the cup out by its handle and let the steam touch my face to warm my nose. I poured some honey in and tried to be delicate—avoiding the tea bag. I lifted the string up and down, up and down, though I knew better. It makes the tea taste bitter, but I wanted to throw the bag away before I left the kitchen. I hate when the tea bag touches my lips. I hate having to put it on a napkin or magazine and watching the moisture make spots on my round, antique table. I did the unpardonable and squeezed the bag to hurry up the process. It was tossed into the trash on the way into my damp- smelling, under-decorated, wallpapered-in-the-80’s living room.
While I sipped my tea and watched the television on mute, a conversation replayed in my head. I’d talked to Lydia that morning, the woman who owned the hair salon on 6th Street. She spent the majority of my haircut passing on gossip about people I didn’t know. She also told me about her Louis. She said they’d had their rough spots, but she’d never loved a man so much. In the end, they couldn’t live without each other. The sentiments were scattered throughout a lot of talk about his bad habits. But what I could not stop thinking about was what she said about tea—or rather, about her Louis. She told me, when his job would take him away every other weekend, sometimes she’d set out a cup of tea for him, to feel like he was there. And she’d call him up and ask if he wanted any sugar in it or not. “I know, it’s silly,” she had apologized to an imaginary crowd of un-romantics. I was that obvious, I guess. The image of Louis’s tea sitting there growing cold was so vivid that I didn’t even see what was playing on the television. I felt myself growing cold, sitting there on our old loose-pillow, gray couch.
I woke up to fuzz radio. Jon said it was the only sound irritating enough to wake him up. But associated with the irritating sound was the miserable feeling of having to force oneself out from underneath warm covers and into cold morning air. Consequently, fuzz radio was probably my least favorite sound. That morning while I let the conditioner soak into my hair, I read the bottles on my shower rack. Right under the shampoo label Silk Threads, it said, “Enrich your hair and you’ll enrich your life.” I had come up with that. I remember it was a Tuesday, and the company threw it at me last minute. I had tried to pick the best adjective I could think of between luscious and healthy. Those two had been done before, effectively so. Enrich was the end result of my not-so-rigorous brainstorming. To be honest, I hadn’t tried at all. At work, I scooped whatever natural brilliance lay on the surface of my brain and tried to get all the mileage I could out of it. I’d written a thousand other slogans that could make a person cringe. I turned the Silk Threads bottle toward the shower wall and began to rinse the conditioner from my coarse brown hair. It had grown coarser every day since we bought the apartment.
Ever since we moved into the apartment, I had stopped running outside when it rained. A few times I didn’t even know it had rained until I had to walk out to my car to drive to work. Now I realize why, but at the time I didn’t understand reasons, just results. Now I realize it was because Jon had started working one week on, one week off. His off-weeks were spent catching up on sleep and fixing up our place. It was because I had become a businesswoman. It was because we had replaced holding hands with brushing our teeth together. Life had butted heads with whatever we had when we were young.
I remember meeting him when I was just 18. We met in a bookstore. He was buying a children’s book for his sister who taught kindergarten. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the fiction section, discovering the genius of Kurt Vonnegut. Jon walked up and talked to me like he knew me. So I let him get to know me. After that, I guess we fell in love. I know we did.
I picked up a copy of that day’s newspaper on my walk from the car to the office. My eyes scanned the fluff section, and I located my birth date just for the heck of it. My horoscope read, “Today will be a good hair day.” I giggled for the first time in a long time. Someone’s step quickened behind me, and I saw my co-worker Jim catching up next to me. He was a natural type of guy—always friendly, always honest.
“Wow, Suzie.” I hated that nickname. I really hated it.
I lifted my eyebrows, bidding him to go on.
“Bad hair day?”
My hand rose to the top of my head as I smoothed down two lumps. I’d…nope. I hadn’t brushed my hair. How could I have forgotten to brush my hair? The newspaper in my hand was shrieking with laugher as I crumpled it up into a tight ball and threw it into a nearby trashcan.
Work was lifeless. Maybe it was more listless. But I am not as sure about the definition of the word “listless” as I am about the feeling it conveys. I know exactly what the word “lifeless” means, however. And although it’s dramatic, I will use it. I believe I know personally, and to a greater extent than most, what “lifeless” feels like. You ought to be asking yourself a question at this point. Maybe, “How can a person be lifeless and alive at the same time?”
There is nothing redeeming about typing up descriptions for teeny-bopper hygiene products. Everything must be exaggerated and made to sound life-changing. I knew I was making false promises to 14-year-olds when I wrote, “Make him love you” on their perfume bottles. But oh—the pay and the benefits…the pay and the benefits.
I called Jon. His voicemail was always the same. “It’s Jon. Leave me a message.” The tone of his voice made it sound like you’d interrupted him. I didn’t leave a message.
After work, I drove to Antelope Valley High School to pick up my brother Shane. He was 12 years younger than me. In her old age, my mother found it difficult to take on normal parental duties. She told me it was because she felt young. She needed to take some time for herself “finally.” Besides, playing chauffer was the least I could do. She had paid for me to go to college. She had spent the better part of her life driving me around. I wished her arguments made sense.
Shane wasn’t alone. He and Casey were waiting, playing with some kid’s skateboard. Casey kept falling, but she’d just laugh and dust off her hands. Once they got into the car, I turned down the talk radio. Five minutes into the ride, they found a permanent black marker on the floor in the back seat. No restraints now. Casey started laughing before anything even happened. She knew exactly what she was going do with it. She took the cap off and drew on Shane’s face. It was a messy job, but it resembled a mustache, mostly because of the placement. “Guys, I hope you know that’s permanent,” I warned from my seat of authority. They didn’t hear me. It was Shane’s turn, and he held Casey’s chin in his hand and drew right above her lip and below her nose. They titled hers a “Hitler mustache,” and she let him make more art on her cheeks, her chin, even the tip of her nose.
I shouldn’t have spied, but I noticed something. And once you see past a person—I suppose you could call it “seeing their insides”—there is no looking away. It’s one of those “finish what you start” kind of things. I noticed how gently Shane held her face. He’d draw something and then let himself stare into her eyes. He’d stare and then look down quickly. Not quick enough for me. I knew he loved her. They laughed and took pictures of themselves. When we dropped Casey off at her house, Shane yelled out the window, “You look good with facial hair, Case!” and she disappeared. On the way home, I thought about the worth of adjectives and whether I ate too much yogurt. Shane thought about Casey’s soft face.
Most people would call Jon and my marriage a young marriage. A spark should still be easily lit. The truth is, in spirit, we were an old couple, maybe about 65. We’d stopped getting to know each other after the first year. I knew his hygiene habits and his snore like they were my own…but I couldn’t remember for the life of me what his favorite book was anymore. And maybe he had a new favorite by now. I just didn’t know.
It was obvious by our looks and tired smiles. Our uneventful evening would be ending shortly. The blood that flowed through my hands felt like ice water, and I remember struggling to fit the key into the car door. Jon rubbed his arms rigorously and looked sideways at me. That look had so many different meanings. Tonight it meant, “I’m cold, baby.” I heard the words though he never said them. The key finally clicked in, but I stopped in the process of opening the door. I heard music. Like someone had pressed play in the middle of a song. A couple walked out of the small jazz club down the street, and as the door shut, the music stopped as abruptly as it had started. The parking lot was gray. Everything about it: the ground, the cars, the night lights, the cold. I took the key out of the door, and it slid through my fingers to the asphalt.
“What’s up, Suze? I’m freezing here,” Jon said.
I put my cold hands over my face (this was a shock, yes, but I was too stubborn to take them away) and started to cry.
“I…what’s…” Jon was a wonderful handler of female emotions. I was so comforted by his words that I kept crying.
“I’m sorry…I just…can’t take it anymore. Honestly. I can’t.”
“Take what? Susan…I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jon sighed. But there was no reason for him to be frustrated with me. I rarely acted irrational. About a year after our wedding, my random bursts of tears had dwindled and finally disappeared almost entirely. And so had Jon’s understanding of me. I stood there with tears making everything colder, everything worse. But then Jon stopped. That is, he stopped being the husband I knew too well and yet not at all. His eyes seemed to flash compassion, guilt, maybe even understanding. I think he was even surprising himself. He was making a face I hadn’t seen since…I don’t know. Had I ever seen it? “Come on…let’s not go home just yet. We can go inside for a while.”
And he didn’t even wait for me to respond or to walk toward him. He came to me, put his arm around my waist and led us both back out of the parking lot and down the street. The music played again for three seconds and stopped. I didn’t remember that I was cold anymore, when I saw that Jon was leading us toward that little jazz place.
We walked in like shy guests. “It’s warmer in here, hmm?” Jon whispered in my ear. I whispered something back—not for the sake of communication, but more for the chance to whisper in his ear. A doorman led us to seats up close to the band. He seemed to think we were serious music connoisseurs. I was still wiping the wetness off my cheeks, by now feeling more awkward about the whole crying thing. But Jon kept his hand on my waist, even after we’d sat down. I just felt different…felt like I was with someone different. Jon was behaving as if he wasn’t busy and tired, though I knew he was both. I had hardly slept the night before, but those thoughts didn’t consume me. The flute player’s fingers did.
The air was smoky, but it only contributed to my alertness. I would say happiness, but it’s such a strong word. The piano player had handwritten sheet music in front of him, and when he began to play, all the other musicians stopped and watched. They nodded their heads and smiled with eyes closed. The trumpet player was the leader, you could tell. His presence was large and silencing. He hardly moved, but he shut his eyes, and sometimes he’d mouth words. I felt distinctly that he was the best musician there.
Glasses clinked. An old man sat at the table next to Jon and me. He had come for the music. His withered face made me picture him young…a young soldier. And his gray hat made me picture him dancing to the same song 20 years earlier. The drummer played the rim as the song reached its climax. I glanced at the old man again as he sat there with his eyes closed, his hands tight around a glass of liquor. Jon told me later he noticed the man, too. And he told me that the guitar player had caused him to think about improvisation for 10 minutes. I was happy in those moments.
There was a table full of women, probably from out of town, packed elbow to elbow. They’d stolen chairs from other tables around them. They drank assorted martinis, laughed and talked, and didn’t know there was music playing. At least not in the same way that old man did. I leaned over to Jon and asked him to grab me a lemon slice. There was a platter of them going by. He laughed and shook his head at me. I remembered just then. Fitzgerald. That was his favorite author. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I wished I were wearing high heels and sweet perfume for him. I’m sure if I’d analyzed my feelings, I would have been shocked, maybe even worried. But listen, I wasn’t analyzing. I was listening to jazz music and holding my husband’s hand. I was smiling. The trumpet player lifted up his instrument and played what he felt. What I felt. All the nights of my life had led up to black and white keys that kept and matched the pace of my heart.
The drive home was rainy. And having settled back into my normal self a bit, I started thinking organized thoughts, though not questioning the night just yet. I decided I ought to put Jon and me inside a metaphor. I decided that we were like a drop of rain running across a car window. Glistening, traveling, breaking up and coming back together again as a bigger drop—with all the more speed. Our car was approaching a tunnel. Jon said with sincerity, “Ok, now hold your breath.” He gulped in and kept the air all in his cheeks like a chipmunk. I didn’t start until halfway through the tunnel because I was staring at Jon’s childlike enthusiasm. I gulped, and we both held our breath until the car made it out of the gray tunnel and into the lit up street.