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Prose
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The
Importance of Being Tammy R. Kitchen |
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Young
African Girl Janet
Butler |
Mirror, Mirror P. E.
Boslet
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The Importance of Being Tammy R. Kitchen
"No" Dirk van Nouhuys
Martha's World William Gladys
Accent Saskia van der LindenHuman Nature David Brown
Johnny of the Sleepwalker Jerry Vilhotti
One Sharp Sting Robin Evans
Time Changes Sarah Nowell
by Tammy R. Kitchen
red stares at his watch. It's one of the good kinds, not one of those digital ones. Those are too easy. No thinking involved. This one is better. He found it in a dumpster and it's perfect. It has a plain white face with dots instead of numbers. Time creeps fast on it. The second hand always jumps from the five dot to the fifteen dot in one swoop. Plus, it has one of those springy wristbands that pinches the skin and pulls the hair. Pain is good. Keeps a man alive.
The Amtrak is coming soon. Fred checks his clothes. The coat is too big. Its shoulders hang three inches below his. Under it, he can see only the muddy frays of his jeans covering his six-year-old black Reeboks. Satisfied, he moves his fingers over the dusty counter and wipes his face with his sweat streaked hand. The ground shakes under his feet and the whistle belches its warning to the cars. He moves to the edge of the platform and waits. The train is coming fast and Fred vibrates with excitement. Look down. Don't move.
The train stops with the third car in front of him. Perfect. The doors open and the people come out with their dopey eyes and sleep hair. They slump around greeting their peppy long losts.
—Oh my god, Roger, you look great!
—How was your trip?
—I'm so happy you came.
—Why couldn't you just take a cab? You know I'm busy.
Keeping his head down, Fred crosses the crowd to the end of the platform and steps off. Almost there, almost there. He keeps walking as he counts the cars. Six, seven, eight. This should be good. Without looking, he slips between the eighth and ninth cars and pulls on his new gloves—slick brown leather with grip pads on the palms and fingers. His stomach flops as he climbs up the ladder and slithers onto the top of the car. He pulls himself along, looking for a hand hold. Nothing. It's smooth as a bullet, but Fred is not one to give up. Not on something this big.
He looks through the scratches on his watch. Almost time. He slides his hand along the front of the car. Nothing.
The train starts moving, clanging along the tracks. No freaking way I'm getting off, thinks Fred. He wraps his palms over the edge and squeezes hard as the train chugs faster on its way out of town. Hanging on for life with his coat slapping the sky, he lifts his head in the wind and yells, "Wooo-hooo! We're flying now!"
Return to Prose
by Dirk van Nouhuys
e said, ‘No’”
The speaker was Sigrid Warner, a woman in her late 30’s both voluptuous and severe, her straight blond hair gathered in a bun and wearing a mauve, tailored suit over a high-necked white blouse. She sat with rounded back on the edge of her chair in a bright living room furnished with moderately priced antiques. A picture window lit the room and viewed neat, stucco houses boxed next to each other across the street and beyond them a wide field of new snow marked calligraphically with black stems and leaning fence posts. Beyond that stood woods seen through a chill mist as if through frosted glass. She was telling her story to her father, Soren Erling, an alert, middle-aged man with a salt and pepper walrus moustache wearing a tweed jacket and a worn, tweed cap with a visor. He sat opposite her on a couch. The child, Little Kurt, who had said ‘no,’ was her son.
A woman in a blouse with frilly threadwork, with salt and pepper hair in a braid down her back and an abundant pleated skirt, entered from an interior door. It was Mary Erling, Sigurd’s mother. She glanced at her husband and daughter to indicate she wanted to know what was going on.
“Little Kurt didn’t come tonight because he would not wear a suit,” Soren explained.
“A suit?” his grandmother Mary asked.
“He’s 12 now. He has a suit,” Sigrid said.
“I didn’t know that,” Mary Erling said.
“I went to him,” Sigrid continued, trying to justify herself, “a few months ago. He was in his room building railroad out of toothpicks and modeling clay. You know how he works the clay into pea-size pellets and uses them to join the toothpicks into fantasy constructions?” Soren nodded. “He had run a spidery railway from his dresser to the window. He was sitting in the window light holding pea of clay to pierce for the next tie. He did not look up; he had that look of angelic concentration he gets,” she added to ingratiate herself.
“Go on,” Soren said. He wanted to know what had happened, not what she thought.
“‘It’s time to buy a suit’ is what I said, right out.”
“‘A suit? You have some suits,’ he said without looking up. I don’t know if he was playing dumb.”
“‘No, a suit for you,’”
“‘A suit for me?’ He looked up at me as if I had betrayed him.”
“I told him it was because he was 12. He said he wouldn’t wear a suit. He said I had never told him my kid should wear a suit.”
“I always think of him in the same thing,” Mary said, “in the summer a T-shirt, usually blue with white stripes, and bluejeans—and no shoes. I can see him running between the rows of corn when we still lived on the farm. In the winter the same, bundled in a down jack and snow boots.”
“You know how he can bend his neck and fight back, like when we were in the boat and Dad was rowing and he wouldn’t take his feet out of the water?”
Soren chuckled, “I was pissed off,” he said.
The door opened for his father, Big Kurt, who wore a tailored gray suit with his shirt open at the neck.
“Sigrid is telling us why Little Kurt is not with us tonight,” Mary explained, wanting to smooth things over.
Big Kurt nodded understandingly to her without taking his eyes from her. He was by nature both attentive to others and self-centered. Soren stood and shook hands with him, as did Mary. Since she was up, she made a gesture toward the scent of a roast in the air and started toward the inner door, but stopped because she wanted to hear the whole story.
“It was difficult to park with the snow,” Big Kurt declared.
“Would you take a glass of beer?” Mary asked him.
“Of course,” Big Kurt said.
“I’ll get it,” Sigrid said and stood. Mary followed her out of the room.
“Is Little Kurt all right?” Soren asked.
“The neighbor girl is baby sitting,” Big Kurt said, evading the question of his son’s feelings.
“I’ll miss him,” Soren said.
“I’m sorry too,” Big Kurt said, “I know you’re his pal. I wanted to find a way for him to come. I used to have conflicts with my father…I bought a telescope when I was about his age.” He put his hands up before his eyes as if peering through memory at the event— “My father didn’t want me to spend the money—I earned it selling worms to fishermen on the pier in the summer. One day my brother and I got some old shoes. After I’d sold the worms, we slipped off our clothes and slipped into the water on the other side of the pier, swam under, and put old shoes on fisherman’s hooks. When my father found out, he broke the telescope.” He arched his hands as if breaking twigs for kindling.
“That was not just or kind!” Soren said.
Big Kurt nodded gratefully. He deeply appreciated his father-in-law’s sense of right.
The women came back, Mary carrying a tray with four pompous beer glasses with thick hollow stems. Sigrid resumed her chair and her posture. When they had each taken a glass, in the moment before they usually would have toasted one another, Mary raised hers and said, “To Little Kurt, we wish he were here.”
When she lowered her glass, Sigrid wanted to keep explaining. “So I told him he had to have a suit to wear. We fought. You know how we do.”
She looked to her mother for understanding and Mary nodded sympathetically. “He screamed at me that he wouldn’t, that we had not raised him to wear suits. I told him there was a time for everything.” She had not wanted to point out that his father wore suits to work because she did not approve of his work. “He ran to his room and slammed the door.” She went on talking as if descriptions would soften their memories of past quarrels. “It went on for a couple of weeks. Then one day when I came into his room he said, ‘OK, you can buy me a suit, but I won’t wear it.’” Sigrid looked around at her family to see if they understood she had tried and Little Kurt had tricked her. Big Kurt sat with his hands lifted and his fingertips touching: paying close attention.
“So we made a date to go to the tailor. On the bus he was quiet. I let him select the cloth and the color. He picked out russet tweed, flashier than I would have, but I didn’t say anything. He was interested in how the tailor went about his work—I have taught him to appreciate craftsmen—and asked him about why he did this and that and how often he made suits for boys his age.”
“What did the tailor say about that,” Soren asked.
“I don’t remember,” Sigrid said because she wanted to stick to her point. “We went back once for a fitting, and then the tailor phoned that the suit was done. I had to go into town to shop so I picked it up. It was in a pink laundry box wrapped in tissue paper. When I got home he was playing cars in the yard with his friend Bobby. As I walked past them I nodded, tapped the box, and said, ‘The suit is here.’ He was holding a red toy car that he had been pretending to drive between the rows of lettuce. Do you know his serious look?” she asked because she wanted to remind them who he was, of his quiet, haunting determination, and by that remind them that he was her son, herson, and so any strength he might show, even against her, was also to her credit. “He didn’t say a thing.”
“When he came in from playing he went straight to his room. I followed him with the box. And opened it on his bed. And put aside the tissue paper. He didn’t say anything. He did not even put his hand out to touch it. I closed the box and put it in the bottom drawer of his bureau. It’s still there,” she concluded to make them chew the bite of her confrontation.
“He’s a tough little guy,” Soren said.
“What happened tonight?” Mary asked.
Sigrid thrust her face toward her own mother to emphasize what she had to repeat: “He didn’t say anything. I reminded him Wednesday, and he didn’t say anything then either.”
“Do you think he was trying to make up his mind,” Soren asked.
The question surprised the mother who wanted to see drama rather than ambiguity. “I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “So afternoon came and I had to ask him, ‘Will you put on your suit and go to your grandparents?’ He shook his head, and I told him he had to.”
“He asked me why he had to, ‘I’ve never put on a suit for them before. I don’t believe they care if I wear a suit.’ He was obstinate as a mule. He said I had betrayed him.”
“Why did he say that?” Mary asked.
“He said we had never told him we were the kind of people who put suits on children. So in the end we had to leave him there. And we were lucky to find the Skii girl when she could baby sit.” Sigrid rested her case.
Mary glanced at her daughter, her husband, and her son-in-law. She wondered if Big Kurt had taken his son’s part.
“I admire his conviction,” Big Kurt said. It’s the stuff leadership is made of; it’s integrity.”
“He’s a fool,” Sigrid said bitterly. “I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life. I saw him looking from the window when we drove off. He always has a good time when we come here. I know his heart was aching.”
“We do too,” Soren said.
“Poor little guy,” Mary said, down cast, “It makes me feel terrible that he had to make such a choice.”
“Do you remember when you wanted to play bridge?” Soren asked his daughter.
“No,” she said dismissively.
“One evening we were playing bridge with the Crawford's—you were younger, maybe six or seven. You wanted to play with us. You kept saying you wanted to play. Mary tried to explain nicely to you that the game was too complicated, that in a few years you would be old enough, but you were still angry with us. Then I said. ‘When you’re grown up you can say the same thing to your own children.’ You were furious. You shouted, ‘I’d rather die than live like that!’ and ran to your room and slammed the door. In later years I thought you had a point.”
“I remember,” she said, “I’m sorry; it makes me feel shamed.” She did not lower her face, but looked from one to another as if daring them to sympathize with her.
“I understand,” Big Kurt said catching her eye, “but we all strike out some times.”
Soren wanted to ask his daughter if she had forgiven him, but he was afraid of the answer she might give. “Little Kurt is being a fool, and I admire him too,” he said, “and I feel sorry for him, and for you.”
“I wish he were here,” Mary said.
Martha's World
by William Gladys
eter speaks:
“Two hundred yards behind Martha I sit and observe her quietly. Dressed in green cords and jacket I am indistinguishable from nature’s greenery that surrounds me. I am motionless, a calm and steady rhythm of inhalation, exhalation, the only sound capable of betraying my presence. Through the screening summer nettles I watch as she stares towards the desolate grey stone farmhouse at the top of a slightly sloping field. Her body, caught at an odd angle, appears paradoxically frozen in the heat of the merciless overhead sun; the sun’s shared existence questioning our conjoined silence and peculiar disparate togetherness. Martha is unaware of my existence as I wait beneath the canopy of leaves that witness our mutual solitude and separate detachment from the bleak rural surroundings. At the top of the slope the small, cheerless barn, beaten by nature, is poised to crumble into an oblivion that beckons from the other side of the hill. The centuries old stone, leached of the lime and water that held it together, deposits a residue of dust escaping with the wind. The sharp blue sky vies for attention with the intense yellow of the newly cut stubble. Her white arms and frail body clothed by a pale pink faded dress violate the contrasting stark and simmering rawness. Her dark hair drawn back in a long bun hides her face and eyes concentrated on the vacant farmhouse. Scaffolding and two long redundant wooden fruit picking ladders, their rungs covered in moss, lean against the front of the sad, forsaken house; its windows like so many eyes search the surrounding landscape for signs of a returning tenant. To one side a rusty two wheeled farm implement waits for time to erode it, while the tracks of a once well used lane are just visible beneath the weeds and blown detritus that seek to erase its once busy existence. Behind the mangled chicken wire, disheveled wooden posts dutifully mark the parameters where chickens no longer scratch, no longer cackle. In a corner of the run an old stone coop, bereft of slates, commiserates with those which have fallen to shatter in many pieces. The blown dust and earth begins its task of covering them with a daily deepening layer that will soon bury them. A single door hangs decaying from a precarious hinge, as it continues an involuntary dance macabre in the wind which will lead to its inevitable disintegration. A sagging line dispossessed of clothes, droops, heavy with the slime of neglect.
For more than an hour, Martha sat, crouching low, sometimes prostrate as if in fear or hiding from a presence that could not possibly be there and which comfortingly I knew could never be. Then without warning she rose and started to walk briskly back to the refuge, her present home, three miles from the isolated deserted farmhouse where she had lived since early childhood.”
Martha speaks:
“When I left my room at the asylum I not only sensed but was physically aware of Peter Santani as he shadowed me at what he considered a safe distance. He was wearing green cords and a jacket that didn’t blend with the undergrowth where he sat behind me. His familiar odour, a mixture of cheroot smoke, stale Budweiser and a sickly brand of body deodorant was carried towards me by the wind. From this distance, I could hear the wind rustling his paper, and the scratch of his pen as he made notes to give to Doctor Hughes—far better if Peter Santani had revealed himself. His illogical reasoning, moreover, would not have considered it an intrusion, yet oddly my privacy had already been violated by his blundering manner and insensitivity—Doctor Hughes had informed me I would not be allowed out unless accompanied by a ward attendant. I had not forgotten his words, but if I had chosen, could have slipped away to enjoy the freedom of my own solitude, my own physical well-being and the environs of nature that I loved to explore. What a futile gesture it would have been, however, ensuring that I remain locked behind windows and doors for many more months or even years.
This was my first visit to the old home where, in front of me, father had hacked mother and older brother Gabriel to death four years earlier. A violent unsophisticated act he anticipated would prevent the sexual attention he had subjected me to from being aired publicly. Daddy had confided that what he was doing to me was normal. If it remained a secret, the family would not suffer, and I believed him. Since then, I have had many years to research books and medical journals in the library, and am now considered a well read authority on the subject. Although it is medically recognised that this type of sexual conduct can harm children, especially if exposed to it for a number of years from an early age, I do not follow that reasoning at all. I am proof positive that it hasn’t hurt or harmed me mentally or physically. How can it be otherwise? Indeed, without such proof, Doctor Hughes and his staff would not agree to a day release for me accompanied or not. Within the next few months it is essential I persuade the psychiatric staff that I be allowed out on my own It is an imperative for me; I need public transport to visit the nearest town or city to explore the stores where books on chemistry and plant poisons can be purchased. Not for my benefit of course, but Peter Santini who enjoys the hot drink I make for him each Saturday evening.”
Accent
by Saskia van der Linden
he only people who take offence at my accent tend to be old and male. As a rule, I find myself standing beside them at a bus stop or seated next to them on the bus. Once their radars have spotted a strange accent, they’ll sit up, put on a brisk voice and start raving on about how they defended the Brutish Empaaargh during The Waaargh. I make big eyes and nod patiently as I let them finish their story. Only at the end I’ll declare devilishly, but in a sweet voice, that I’m not German. “I’m from The Neverlands.” (Not: “Holland.” The older generation knows their geography, and to them it sounds dangerously close to their enemy’s territory. The younger generation seems to think unanimously that it’s part of Scandinavia.)
“Oh” They’ll take a deep breath, until the red bits have disappeared from their cheeks and been replaced with a smile. “I love The Netherlands,” they’ll exclaim, for every old male in Britain has at least one relative there who got married to some lovely Dutch person. They visit the country once a year—“At least!”—and know many more places than just the capital. “It’s just a shame it’s swarming with German tourists.” In another life I’ll be less of a coward and defend my German contemporaries with the words: “They’re too young to have fought against you in The Waaargh. Just as I am too young to have fought against you in The Waaargh.” But for now, I’m too busy playing an ambassador for my own country.
The only people who still don’t understand me after all my years here are bus drivers. Conversations with them go like this: “Can I have a return to—” but before I’ve stated my destination they’ve given up already. “Wha’?” Upon which I return the full sentence. Which is a mistake I keep committing. A colleague who’s also foreign once explained to me that the moment she started mumbling instead of articulating, and producing sentences of no more than three words, her problems with bus drivers were stored in the past. Mine will never be over until I change my strategy. Every day, a bus driver leans over to me and adopts a tone he or she will only use for children, the mentally underdeveloped and foreigners. I make big eyes and nod patiently as he or she explains to me the whole route to work, which I take on a daily basis. They’ll also warn me that it’s The Bronx of rural Britain: “Be careful, love.” “Love.” Was this the reason why I emigrated here? To be called “Love” whenever you buy your groceries, stamps, bus tickets…? Once upon a time it seemed like a dream-life to me. When they’ve told me where to get off exactly, they’ll ask, “Single?” To which I reply, exhausted: “No. A return.”
But today I was reminded of the fact accents can also come in useful. I’d gone to London for the day and after walking around for quite some time I felt my legs could hardly carry me any longer. I went inside the first pub I spotted and ordered a large cup of coffee. Which was a big mistake. Not only couldn’t they offer me milk with my drink, an unwanted companion sat down next to me as I took my first sip. I felt too tired to leave and too desperate to finish my drink that I decided to give in to his inquisition: I made big eyes and nodded patiently. Then I reverted to the accent and lied. “Do you live here?”
“No. I live in Holland.”
“And what do you do?”
“I’m a secretary.”
“You know, you could find work as a secretary in London.”
“Huh. I don’t think my English is good enough.”
I was strangely disappointed when he didn’t come to my defence here. On the positive side, I felt totally guilt-free when I finally jumped up and said it was time for me to go to Heathrow.
Human Nature
by David Brown
taring at the endless blue skies I see the birds fly high above the yard changing direction here and there but working effortlessly to distant lands. In my lonely prison I sit and think of that word that isolates me from my kind outside these walls: freedom. What is freedom, for I don’t know? How does it taste, feel or smell? Just how does it compare to this life?
The birds now vanish from sight, and I am left with my thoughts and constraints. The sun is setting and the clouds are tinted with shades of pink and peach; Mother Nature has decorated the skies for us, as she does most evenings with her palette and brush, but on this day there is no respite.
The sun is just a prisoner like me; each day it is released from its confines to enrich a starving world, but then the hands of darkness escort it to its cage beyond the horizon and then it is the turn of the moon and stars to be set free. I once enjoyed the feel of the sun shining through the bars of my home, but now I know the truth, there is nothing to look forward to in this miserable existence.
My home is but a small cage in one of two long rows lining the warden’s path, or the walkway of life and death as we all regard it. I have three walls enshrouding my weakened body and half a dozen cold, rusty bars to cling to for support at night. In one corner is my own bowl; a once perfectly round and green artifact of Man, but today it stands as a ragged, sharp reminder of nights of chronic chewing and despair.
Beneath my body I can still feel the dampness of my urine and excrement; the warden has just passed by and that’s why the floor is stained. There was a time when I tried to resist my nerves, but now I barely notice as my fur closest to the ground suddenly feels warm and the stench overwhelms the air in my prison. All desire to cleanse, to maintain my rich fur and to free myself of parasites has long since subsided. This is what I have been reduced to, the way it has always been.
Across the warden’s path, beyond another row of crying and screaming victims, there sits the defences of this fortress. They swallow each victim whole and digest them slowly, marveling in every outburst of anguish. We saw the warden invite his kind to the prison yard to erect the fortress; they brought violated and molested trees, reshaping them into what the warden calls a “fence” and to this they added dull foliage, sharper than the prickliest leaves and named “barbed wire.” How strange the trees now appear, standing once more to keep us locked away, whereas before they were our harmonious sanctuary.
Outside the fence stand a dozen guard dogs; one of these was once an innocent like me, pure of heart, seldom subjected to hate. We called him Victor, a name of great bearing on his character; he was our inspiration, never would he shy from a challenge and always he could lift the lowest of spirits. Today, this hope is unrecognisable; hours being beaten with the warden’s instruments of death have turned Victor into mankind’s plaything. Now he has no heart or soul, only a desire and hunger for those of us that dare to escape from this fortress. In a matter of weeks, the warden’s hands have taken away a friend, and molded and contorted him beyond all comprehension. The predator returned to us another enemy, but this came as no surprise; we know the power of those filthy hands.
You can never be sure when he will appear, but it’s usually around noon. It must be like the routine of prey in the wild. First you hear the footsteps signaling the warden’s approach, the dry soil is crushed beneath his feet at every step; another aspect of nature simply wilts into dust in his presence. As he closes on our cages, we listen for the sound of his club being removed from his belt and then the rattling of rusty bars as our host taunts us. He passes by my cage, knocking rust clean off the central bars, and then he crouches in front of me, his grey eyes focused on mine as he licks his lips and chooses his next victim. His bulky arms are covered in tattoos; the images embedded in his skin are of skulls and snakes, some hidden like safe animals in the forest that is the thick hair on his arms. Those strong hands are always damp; their stench is of blood and sweat, while the faint scent of his last victim is often present. He handles animals like a curious child learning of the limits in life; we don’t know what to expect when we are taken from our homes. He always has what looks like a small branch between his teeth; smoke rises from one end, which is badly burnt, and often we hear the name “cigar” when our host converses with his kind. If Man is the embodiment of all this world’s worst traits, then the warden is the manifestation of the cruelest evil; a dark adversary, bereft of compassion and sorrow, giving way only to unmerciful hate.
There was once a young girl that came to our fortress. The warden would show us all to her and she would giggle with delight at our blank expressions as we waited for our next punishment. The girl brought the brightest light of comfort to the shadows of our world of suffering. The warden would never show the girl how he treated us; instead he would speak of his empathy and how he had rescued us from those ‘nasty men that hurt poor animals.” However, it wasn’t the warden’s leniency that we treasured; it was the girl’s hands. I can still remember the first time she held me; one hand against my back, the other she sat me on. She held me close that first time and I did not pick up the scent of blood or sweat that overwhelmed the warden. The girl’s smell was reminiscent of flowerbeds and forests; her hands felt warm and consoling against my fur and for a brief moment all my anxieties were like the warden’s hand that pinned me down during experiments, but had now been lifted. As the girl rubbed her chin against the top of my head, I listened to her and the warden.
“What’s his name?” the girl asked, gazing with admiration at the warden…her father and hero.
“Let’s call him, Gabriel,” the warden replied now stroking my fur, and smiling as I flinched. There was glow of innocence in his eyes but I could make out the dark cloisters in the corners of those pupils, a relentless hate waiting to claw itself to the surface.
“What happened to his eye and his legs?” The warden’s daughter asked. She was now examining three deep wounds across both of my legs; they had been raw and infected for weeks, while my eye she was concerned about was long since obsolete.
“He was mistreated by his previous owners. They cut his legs with a knife and I think they blinded him in his left eye shortly before I rescued him. Don’t worry though, love, I am looking after him now.”
“You’re the greatest.”
As I was placed back in my cage I felt sad once again, wishing to vomit as I inhaled the air of lies and deceit. Little did the girl know but those wounds on my legs were inflicted by the warden’s boots, stamping me because of the stench in my cage one morning. As for my eye, that was the work of the warden’s friends, the ones that have white coats like the polar bear and insist on using us for experiments.
I was but six months old when the warden came to my home and before he had reached my cage, the floor was steaming and wet. I felt insecure in those oppressive hands, the grip was firm and the nails dug into my sides like those of an eagle securing its prey. When I reached the far side of the fortress I was taken into a large cage and laid on a hard surface, the remains of a tree long since killed. As the warden held me down, the men with the white coats came; one of them was writing something, the other held a small object, with his finger resting on its head. Its body was shaped like that of a tree devoid of branches, while its tiny head spat a large spray of venom on my fur. These men called it “deodorant.” It felt unnatural against my fur; I almost choked when inhaling it for the first time, but the warden simply nodded his approval. The funny is something that reeks to such an extent is designed to make Man more attractive.
I felt the warden loosen his grip before he asked for another experiment; this time on my eyes. I couldn’t tell you what those men used on me. One of them held out a long clear stick above my head and three drops struck me in my left eye. As I watched I thought back to the leaves of the trees in autumn when the raindrops fall on their surface and drip one by one off the edge to the ground below. These drops looked no different to rain, but they felt worse than anything I have ever encountered. At first, my vision was a little blurred but then came the throbbing in my eye before it intensified to stinging. I cannot remember anything beyond that pain, just the next day to find my right eye was all that remained; the other was scarred and ruined.
The warden’s daughter, though oblivious to her father’s true demeanour, continued to visit for the next year. One day we never saw her again. I remember that day was Wednesday and always she would arrive with our host, but not today. Instead, the warden was more ruthless than he had been in many months, taking twenty animals for experiments and executing ten others in a single day. That night rumours flowed from cage to cage, whispers of a single word that explained the warden’s new and hostile demeanour— “divorce”— but that means nothing to me.
As I reach the end of my tale, we have passed the early days of November and in particular the fifth day is the warden’s favourite. Often he invites his friends to this impenetrable fortress to bear witness to the huge pile of junk erected in the centre of the yard. Carpets, wood, furniture and boxes are set alight in the early evening and we that observe shriek in terror at the magnitude of the flames. Ours is a fear of fire, but also of the next time that the warden piles up all his junk from home. As he fans the flames under the night sky, no one asks what is in the hundreds of boxes placed on the fire, but we know. The executed and failed experiments reside in those boxes, some dead, others alive, but all destined to be taken prematurely from this world. The fifth day of November is the worst night for us all, sitting helpless watching the flames scorch carrion and living flesh; their scent released through smoke while their ashes stand as the testament of our friends’ bravery and martyrdom.
To make it this far means you have listened and you have listened well. I hope my account of the warden’s fortress is understood by those that have a shred of empathy in their veins. If not, then don’t worry, for others shall continue the legacy I am ready to leave. Death consumes me by the day and now he is down to his last couple of slices, I am confident the mark I leave shall persuade others to reach further than we have before. Mankind is the enemy, that’s for certain, but there are those we have touched and continue to touch with our strength and spirit. My life is over and though I die a captive of Man I await the day when my kingdom will be free once more. That dream cannot be far away.
Johnny of the Sleepwalker
by Jerry Vilhotti
In the dark night he could see her riding on a great stallion very similar to the one her favorite person of all time—Garibaldi—whom she had seen once as a six year old leading his red shirts atop his white stallion near the clouds when the horse reared up on his hind legs; making the great warrior's red hair fly into several directions while his determined eyes remained focused on creating a one nation; thinking that idea would lead to a peace only realizing as an old man that nationalism would be a further tool used by the elite to create more profits in mass killings in the name of "My country is better than your fucking country!" while getting their young men to die for that idea and a medal while the old Italic song of "Go to Sleep" played sadly and softly over the dead young persons.
The day Johnny had overheard his mother and her mother having their daily argument with Mamasu insisting she was being held hostage in a state absent of subway noises and would escape after taking her whore-master husband's favorite son's head off to mount it on top of the front stairs so he would remember her was the day his anxieties began in earnest ... "Why do you always pee in the garden and in the flower bed. We do, you know, peasant, have a toilet inside the house and not in the back as yours did in the land of rocks and stones before your sons took you here to this country!"
"And don't think I don't make them pay for abducting me and taking me to a land and among a people who will give up their liberties for a phony security and I say they don't deserve either! I make them cry during every meal and they have to sleep with one eye opened—never knowing what I'm going to do next!" the old lady said smiling contentedly before adding: "So who planted the fucking thing that gives me so much pleasure in breaking the necks of the corn and stepping on tomatoes making streams of juices flow?"
"You know I did, Mama!"
"I mean who was the pishomole who helped you by watching you do all the work?"
"What's that got to do with the price of bitter broccoli rape?"
"You asked why I pee in the garden and that's why! I won't rest until I kill everything that lives or walks in that fucking garden—and let a little boy beware of the eyes hiding among all those vegetables!" ....
Johnny dribbled his rubber ball by them as he was on his way to play a triple header in the corn field beneath the radio towers while suspecting that little boy was that should avoid a garden full of succulent vegetables was none other than himself!
He came home just in time for supper but so tired he had to go to bed right after he ate and the meal was not killed by his grandmother with her coughing up phlegm and trying to touch the well done bread strewn upon the table since his parents had set her up in the parlor to watch the funny guy with large thick glasses covering large fake eyes playing with monkeys as a nickelodeon blared loudly in the background.
In Johnny's dream, he was walking in a garden and the corn stalks wavered high above his head and tomatoes were all packed in jars, to be integrated with meats to make a future delicious gravy, beside the garden were large pots on top of fires cooking up the crushed tomatoes that had been picked up by his crying father saying Mamasu had killed his garden while standing among stalks of corn that now only reached up to his groin.
Johnny awoke from the dream when he bumped into Mamsau who was coming out of the bathroom! He began a run for his life in a full darkness—as both his parents and grandmother did not believe in wasting electricity—while the old lady was running for her life thinking her son-in-law had been lurking in waiting to assassinate her once and for all for all the years her boneless tongue had broken his bones with all the insults she had hurled at him.
One Sharp Sting
by Robin Evans
It is a hot Friday afternoon and Mrs. Donnelly and Mrs. Fletcher are sunning themselves around the pool. They talk lazily to each other from behind oversized sunglasses and floppy hats. They complain of the heat, the humidity and what it’s doing to their hair. They make jokes about their husbands and gossip about the Dewart’s who live next door but haven’t had a dinner party since the Christmas holidays.
My mother is their charming host. She stands over them, rail thin in a god-awful orange and green striped one-piece. She nods her head vigorously and laughs like a fool at their jokes.
I can’t use the pool while mother has guests so I set myself up on a picnic blanket on the lawn. I follow mother’s rule—close but not too close—and eavesdrop on their conversation. I catch my mother’s eye and hold up three fingers, one finger for each drink. She nods quickly and tempers the volume of her laughter.
“Their Christmas party wasn’t even that good.” Mrs. Fletcher says flatly. “Card games and home movies, can you imagine?”
“Oh Helen, you would say that.” Mrs. Donnelly giggles. “If I remember correctly you and Rupert were so drunk you spent most of the evening under the mistletoe or in the toilet.”
All three women burst out laughing. I glare at my mother but it does no good. She stands there like an idiot; one hand on her hip and the other over top of her mouth.
Sensing a willing audience, Mrs. Donnelly continues, “And they weren’t the only ones enjoying the mistletoe that night…hmmmm.”
Mrs. Donnelly and Mrs. Fletcher exchange knowing glances and guffaw in unison while my mother’s face turns a bright pink.
“More drinks anyone? Helen? A top up? Wendy, same again? Eve? Eve? Do you want some lemonade??” My mother’s voice has reached the high note that only arrives when she is particularly distressed. I nod and watch as she hastily gathers up the empty glasses and heads for the kitchen, nearly stumbling over her orange flip flops.
The screen door barely thwacks close behind her when the laughter dies down and the ladies begin shifting conspiratorially in their loungers.
“Well, not interested in Christmas chat I guess.” Mrs. Donnelly drones, fanning away a small bee with her fashion magazine.
“Yes,” Mrs. Fletcher snorts. “What happened that night? I can’t remember much,” she moves a little closer to Mrs. Donnelly making her fat stomach roll with her. “She won’t tell me anything. If it’s anything like what I think it is I can’t believe Roger’s still with her! He’s a saint! Mistle-toe, my ass.”
“Christmas was a one time thing,” Mrs. Donnelly says definitively. “She told me that after Alan Dewart and Roger had that bust up, that was the last of it.”
“And you believe that?” Mrs. Fletcher raises herself up in her lawn chair and stares at Mrs. Donnelly with her mouth open. Her breasts flop heavily in her bikini top and she struggles to rearrange them. Her white skin has turned rough and red in the sun.
I can’t help myself. “Mrs. Fletcher, you should put on some sunscreen, you’re getting burned there.”
I point my finger at her ample chest and pass her some of my suntan lotion. She grunts something that I take to be a “thank you” and turns back to Mrs. Donnelly.
The picture of Mrs. Fletcher’s gigantic red breasts will not leave my mind. They undulate and swish and tremble back and forth. As a diversion, I take a disappointing peek at Mrs. Donnelly’s drooping cleavage. It leaves me sick to my stomach. I am surrounded by fat legs and flabby arms, drooping breasts and tired aching bones. I will never let that happen to my body. Never.
Their conversation is going ahead without me.
“It happens sometimes. You know as well as I do that Roger was on the road a lot last year, Virg nearly went batty there for a while what with Little Evie there…going through the terrible teens … She wanted attention, that’s all. It happens.”
Of course it happens. It always happens. Mr. Dewart isn’t the first neighbour to turn my mum’s head. I hear the gossip. Anyway, Mum’s behavior at the Christmas party is old news. But as Mrs. Fletcher says, there’s a lot of dirty laundry here that will never come clean. They’re right about one thing though. Poor Dad. Poor dumb Dad.
I roll my eyes, flop back on the blanket and take a deep breath. Somewhere mixed in with Mrs. Donnelly’s Chanel #5, Mrs. Fletcher’s Hawaiian Tropic and the fruity drinks Mother is concocting in the kitchen, I can still smell my roses. The yellow ones that Dad planted for me on the day I was born. The whole thing oozes sticky sentimental but it was a lovely gesture and one that Dad mentions at every given opportunity. He’s embarrassed me with the story in front of my friends quite a few times but I figure that’s nothing compared to what Mom’s doing to him so who am I to complain?
Now that I am thinking about Dad, it’s hard to stop, so I pull myself up and walk to the rose bushes by the fence. The bushes are all overgrown and their thorny tendrils have taken over a large part of the back yard. I push the bushes back with my bare feet to make room for me to walk and the thorns feel like little teeth resisting my advances. The roses themselves are heavy and wilting. Some of them have thrown off their petals, swooning in the summer heat. But most quietly linger in their prickly parlour waiting for the honey bees to come.
I kick one more time at the bushes and the impact rattles the fence. More rose petals fall to the ground and a strange buzzing sound emerges from the bushes. Little bees begin zipping past my head. I stand still and let two or three of them bounce off my forehead before I start trying to wave them away.
I hear a startled “Oh!” from the other side of the fence and Mrs. Dewart stands up rubbing her arm. She’s wearing a white sailor shirt and ratty cut-offs. Her hands are dirty from gardening. She looks the same age as my mum only prettier.
“Oh! Damn it!” She smiles at me. “You startled them Eve. There’s a nest right there.” She points to somewhere down in the belly of the rose bushes. “Be careful they’ve already stung me once.” Six or seven bees dance angrily around her but she just stands there smiling at me.
Behind me I can hear my mother returning with a tray full of drinks for her friends. She’s laughing her horse laugh at some dirty joke Mrs. Fletcher had told too many times. Mrs. Donnelly is snorting, it’s so hilarious.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Dewart. She … I didn’t mean to.” I step away from the fence slowly but it’s too late, more bees are buzzing around me, too angry to bother with the flowers, intent on punishing me for not looking closely enough.
One bee, then another and another stick me with their tiny stingers. I can’t stand it any longer and start spinning around, screaming at the top of my lungs. I call out for my mother and swat away the bees but they just seem to keep coming.
Behind me my mother and Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Donnelly start screaming my name. I can hear the commotion as they drop their drinks on the patio stone and come running toward me.
Across the fence I can hear Mrs. Dewart slapping the bees away but before I can say anything she turns and runs back toward her house, a swarm of honey bees trailing behind her.
Time Changes
by Sarah Nowell
n the fourth dimension, my parents rarely met. My father was early for everything—for work, for parties, for his birth. He was born four weeks premature in the Bombay General Hospital to his surprised fifteen-year old mother. My mother ignores Time; is wildly, improbably late. She might arrive for Sunday lunch on Monday, even Tuesday. My father’s clock was usually ten minutes fast while my mother’s numerous time-keeping instruments, all set to radio-Ceylon-time and calibrated by my father every week, were purely ornamental. The large wooden clock on the whitewashed wall above the sideboard in the dining room kept its own time, oscillating between fast and slow. Tugged between two competing wills, it often stopped entirely.
My parents met in a zoo at 11:30 am on the 20th of February 1970. My father journeyed fifteen hundred miles to be there. He had come to Ceylon to place his brother in the care of their only hope—the wise man that used growing, alive-things to cure dying animals and Men, spending his life gathering the strange plants in the Singharaja rainforest, grinding and mixing them, cooking them into murky potions. The shiny-backed manuals, annotated and memorised by the young students in the University, ignored his medicines. They were not hygienically produced, not stamped by a Board of Health, not as easy to dispense as capsules and cough mixtures. But the students and their masters could not stop the drag of time on the young man who was about to die too early. According to their textbooks, it was already too late, but my father knew better, he knew he had time to spare.
And so the two brothers made the slow journey, by three wheeler Bajaj taxi, by train, by boat across the Pork strait, by jeep through the arid semi-desert of the north of Ceylon, by bus over ridged mud paths through flocks of goats, by bullock-cart in dusty evenings and finally by river boat through the mangrove swamps, past the log-like alligators under the screech of unseen birds in the heights of the canopy.
Leaving his brother in the jungle, my father bided his days in the city. In the zoo a girl sauntered past pink flamingos lying in pools of sunset. As she passed the lake, the evening burst into a storm of swirling pink and feathers.
They were married on the 8th of December 1971. I was born two years later in the Colombo general hospital, absolutely on time, a feat never duplicated. Like the clock in the dining room I was subject to the sway of my parents.
On the days my father picked me up from school, we would always have time for an exploration in the town or market before it was time for swimming class, or French tuition, or piano lessons. There was always time to investigate the little food carts on the side of the road, to spend time choosing the ripest mangoes and papayas, to watch the mice play in the gutter, to give careful ten-cent pieces to slumped beggars.
With my mother’s careless treatment of the fourth dimension, journeys were always more fraught, with barely an even chance of success. When we traveled to Colombo city to visit my grandmother, we would catch the ten past six train home, the last of the day. My otherwise demure granny would drive witlessly over roadwork areas, talcum-powdered hand jamming the horn into impatient shrieking, crashing through traffic cones, even, on one memorable occasion, driving over a roundabout (denting the sign that informed us the roundabout was sponsored by the Bank of Ceylon), in an attempt to get us to the station. My mum and I would jump out of the car at the traffic lights, dodging the three-wheeler taxicabs to cut through the market in the old Dutch fort. We would dash past the bloody bull carcasses, skipping past the lady who sold piles of herbs for a rupee and arrive panting on the platform. Sometimes, the train would be just pulling away and we would haul ourselves on (my mother, too terrified to ever ride a roller coaster had no fear of throwing her child onto a moving train). Or the guard might take pity on our screams and call an emergency halt. Or we would miss it.
My parents, who were never in the same time, are now outside it. The passage of the seconds that is turning me grey, moving my skin earthwards, can do them no more harm. But somehow they still change, as I do, their silhouettes shifting in my memory as I forget and as I remember.
Today, as I finally committed myself to the dread task of clearing out my parents’ bedroom, their times collided. My father’s alarm clock on his bedside table, placed there by my mother two years ago as if he were still alive to wake to its beep, went off simultaneously with my mother’s Seiko. It was seven am in both worlds. A perfectly harmonious start to a day in which neither of them would exist. Like Freddy’s little ashen body, they have avoided time forever.
I have two pictures of where we lived. The first; a little pink bungalow on the edge of creasing waves of green paddy fields belonging to nearby farmers. Crucified scarecrows poking heavenwards on a blue hot noon, shirtsleeves flapping emptily in outstretched grimacing welcome.
The second; me sitting indoors while the October monsoon rages outdoors, our driveway turning into a stream of red mud, potholes turned into little seas where my abandoned paper ships have sunk in sodden disintegration. Damp cows lying under dripping spikes of coconut trees and, as dusk falls, the insistence of mosquito-mothers and a mangy pariah barking in forlorn bravado.
The smell in both these pictures is the same; the smell of heated fruit; the odour of tight orange flesh turning into pulp, into liquidised mush. Tiny airborne molecules of fruit emanating from my father’s concrete-floored factory behind our house.
My father bottled time in jam jars for posterity. I remember him sitting day after night in the kitchens of the factory, swathed in steam, dripping with sweat and condensation, sterilising fruit juice and marmalade in enormous tin saucepans of boiling water. He boasted that the preserves once bottled, would never go rotten until opened. To prove it he placed a sample of each variety on a shelf and there they stayed, spider-webbed. Strawberry, mango and pineapple flavoured time capsules. Old-gold marmalade.
During the day, the factory-girls came in—girls with names of flowers. Araliya. Manel. They would fill the grey space of the factory with their bright dresses, their giggles and chatter. At the end of the day they washed at the well, removing the little molecules of fruit from their bodies with Lifebuoy carbolic soap. Manel told me that Lifebuoy soap was the best soap for bleaching the skin, to make it fairer, more like mine. Beautiful Manel in her red dress and streams of jasmine in her hair.
When I was fourteen, my mother got pregnant. The hospital told her it was a boy. She called him Freddy. We would take Freddy to the park and I would talk to him through my mother’s stomach, telling him of the kites; crow-kites with their tails jerking, ordinary diamond-shaped ones in every colour and my favourites, the long stripy snake ones. I thought a little boy would like hearing about kites and the hundreds of paper pinwheels in the sellers’ carts (one for five rupees), and the candyfloss and paper cones of fried chickpeas and coconut. I promised to bring him back once he was properly alive and buy him one of everything.
But Freddy was born too early. He was too tiny to breathe properly and his heart wasn’t ready to pump. He tried very hard and the doctors and the nurses tried all night to save him. A consultant was called from Colombo. But it was all too late.
The next year, we sold the factory and moved. We opened the jam jars off the window ledge and ate the ten-year old time. Bottled before Freddy. The jam was sweet in my mouth.
After that, my father’s time became unpredictable; sometimes it was twenty minutes fast. On other days, just as I would get used to it, and start subtracting the correct period, he would change it back by ten minutes, and I would be late for the bus. But I always worked it out in the end.
A few years before my father died, his brother, who he had not seen since he left the jungle more than twenty years ago, came to visit from Bombay. They found that both their watches were fifteen minutes fast. I remember how they cackled with laughter, delighting in the discovery of a mutual ruse. My uncle told me how their mother would always keep her clocks fast. Trying to trick her children to school on time. When they were young, they too evaded the spare time; dodged the trick, as I did. But now it was a shared inheritance, a genetic tick.
Until his death, my father trapped time; capturing it on little framed rectangles of shiny photographic paper, or on scratchy home videos. He would give me gifts of saved time; of our past moments he had saved, often against my will. He gave me a photograph of a little grey body, all splayed arms and legs. For several moments I did not know who it was; Freddy had become the one point in their past that both my parents would not mention. I thought perhaps my father simply skipped those hours —wound his watch forward, whilst my mother reinvented the tale. For her, real events were merely a skeleton. She would ribbon the flesh of her imagination over inflexible facts, changing history to suit her fancy. She would curl the past into improbable shapes, pushing history away impatiently, kicking it and wrestling with it until she smoothed its contours. Telling her stories with total conviction, full of absolute untruth or gleeful embroidery so that it was impossible not to believe her.
And now, here I am in my parents’ bedroom, with two jangling clocks in my hands. For this one moment, we are all in the same time. I take Freddy’s picture out of my wallet, where it is hiding behind business cards and stamps, and kiss it. I slowly remove the batteries from both clocks. I leave them, hands pointing at the same minute, on the bed with Freddy’s picture.
Young African Girl
Janet Butler
Relaxing Between Poses
Janet Butler
An Italian Village
Janet Butler
Via Bontempi
Janet Butler
Art
Untitled Elizabeth Waugh
From Under the 10 Freeway
Elizabeth Waugh
Jenifer
Elizabeth Waugh
I would rather be dumb
Elizabeth Waugh
Art
fig21sw
Alexandre Nodopaka
Art
Art
Untitled
Duane Locke
Cat
Gus Sacks
Pipe
Gus Sacks
ArtArt
Contented
Alan Clark
Black Cloud Over America
Herb Rosenberg
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Mirror, Mirror
SCENE: A man and a woman are sitting on a bench at center stage, the man to the right of the woman. The stage is dark, except for a light which shines on the man and woman.
RACHEL, the woman, is holding a large, ornate hand mirror in her right hand. She looks appraisingly at herself from all angles. Suddenly her eyes open wide and she stares intently at the mirror, moving it to her right and turning it slowly, counterclockwise.
RACHEL. Write it down, what we just saw. Tell the world. Tell them, tell them what we saw. Go on, tell them. Don't hide anything, not anything. (Arthur writes rapidly, then looks up. Rachel is still looking in the mirror.)
RACHEL. A story! But you can't do that, Arthur. We're not living in a dream world. You're only supposed to be writing truth now, Arthur, truth. No. Arthur, you can't write a story, you just can't do it.
RACHEL. Of course not, because it's not a nice story. You wouldn't want me to listen to a story that's not nice, would you?
RACHEL. Tell me your story, I want to hear your story. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it isn't there; one can't bury one's head in the sand, if you know what I mean.
ARTHUR. (sits up straight, clasps hands in lap, stares straight ahead; speaks quickly.) Once upon a time there lived a herring named Gorilla. Now Gorilla was a very lonely herring—yes, very lonely indeed,—because, although he worked very hard at the office to provide for his wife, whose name was Prick, and support her in the manner to which she was accustomed, she just went through his money like water. (Pause) And (pause) she wouldn't even go to bed with him. The only sex Gorilla got was running around after her and doing the best he could, which was pretty good actually, considering there were 14,902 little Gorillas swimming around. Well, one day Gorilla just got fed up to the gills, and he said, "Look here, Prick, you're not being very nice." And Prick looked at him with her big blue fish eyes, and wiggled her tail suggestively. And Gorilla said, "If you don't stop being such a cold fish, I'm going to run away. (Pause. Rachel looks at him expectantly.)
ARTHUR. I ... I forgot. (Stares straight ahead, begins to pound on head with fist.) Run away, run away, run away.
ARTHUR. (still pounding). I'm pounding it into my head run away, run away, run away ... (He continues as Rachel picks up the mirror and looks behind her again.) RACHEL. Arthur, Arthur quick. (Arthur stops pounding, leans over and looks in the mirror.) Oh Arthur, look at that, just look at that.
RACHEL. What do you mean, 'imagine that?' What's that supposed to mean? Imagine that. Can't you ever express yourself, Arthur? Don't you realize that the ability to express oneself is the most important thing in the whole world?
RACHEL (interrupting). Shut up, Arthur. Yes, to express oneself fully is most important, most important, and not everybody can do it, you know; why in some countries they're not even allowed to do it. Did you know that?
RACHEL (interrupting). That's right, they can't even open their mouths. Almost impossible to believe, isn't it? (Arthur nods his head meekly.) Well, you just remember that, Arthur, and from now on, you either express yourself or you don't say anything.
RACHEL (mimicking). Yes, Rachel. What kind of an answer is that? Is that expressing yourself? Oh, Arthur, won't you ever learn? (Arthur lowers head. Rachel rolls eyes, sighs, and picks up mirror.) Now look, Arthur. That dirty baby is just lying there. Why doesn't somebody go over and pick it up? It won't bite.
RACHEL. Oh, Arthur, that's silly. How could it bite anything if it didn't have any teeth? Of course it has teeth. Good thing, too, to keep the people away.
RACHEL. Their own business? Why, it's ... it's ... it's right on the tip of my tongue . . . Oh, Arthur, haven't you learned by now that you don't ask embarrassing questions; you just keep those things to yourself.
RACHEL. No, Arthur, no, that's very good. You must never hesitate to tell the truth, because the truth is all we have, Arthur. Don't you see? It's all we have. We must always tell the truth, and we must make people believe it in any way we can, even if we have to lie to do it.
RACHEL. Arthur, you're not expressing yourself again. How can you see what I say? Words aren't pictures, you can't see them. Do you see what I'm saying?
RACHEL (ignoring him). Look at that. There's a man going to pick up that baby. Shocking. Positively shocking. I hope you're writing this down, Arthur. (Arthur begins to write.) Are you writing this down, Arthur?
RACHEL. Yes, Arthur, truth ... Now listen, write what I tell you, because it's true and we must let everyone know the truth, as we can plainly see right here in our mirror.
RACHEL. Well, then, stop arguing and write what I tell you. (Arthur sits with pencil poised above paper.) Are you ready, Arthur? (Arthur nods several times, very rapidly. Rachel takes deep breath. Coldly.) I see ... I see ... (Arthur writes.) I see a dirty, ugly, disgusting man picking up a dirty, ugly, disgusting baby. Yes, I see it all very plainly. Are you getting this, Arthur? ... I see it very plainly ...(Pause) Oh no! Oh no! Oh Arthur, this is the worst of all. Even I can't believe it! (Arthur looks up, disinterestedly.) Oh Arthur, what can we do? It's ... it's so dirty! Right there, right there on the street ... there's ... there's a woman, and she went up to the man and the baby, and ... and the man kissed her, right there on the street! (Arthur straightens up, looks interested.) Oh Arthur, oh no, I think...I think they're in love! ARTHUR (grabs the mirror from her, looks in it frantically). Where? I want to see! Oh please, please, let me see! RACHEL. No! Only the truth, Arthur, the truth, oh Arthur, only the truth! (She tries to grab the mirror back. Arthur continues trying to look in it. It drops, falls to the ground, and breaks. They sit motionless, staring at it, and slowly look up and stare straight ahead.)
P. E. Boslet, 1965
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