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Spring/Summer 2011 Edition of Magnets and Ladders

MAGNETS AND LADDERS

Active Voices of Writers with Disabilities

Spring/Summer 2011

This literary magazine is produced by Behind Our Eyes, Inc, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization of writers with disabilities.
Website: www.behindoureyes.com
Copyright 2011 Behind Our Eyes, Inc. All rights reserved.

This publication includes material from “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities” copyright 2007, Behind Our Eyes, Inc.

Editorial and Technical Staff

  • Coordinating Editor: Marilyn Brandt Smith
  • Fiction: Lisa Busch, Kate Chamberlin, Valerie Moreno, Marilyn Brandt Smith, and Abbie Johnson Taylor
  • Nonfiction: Kate Chamberlin, Valerie Moreno, Nancy Scott, John W. Smith, and Marilyn Brandt Smith
  • Poetry: Lisa Busch, Valerie Moreno, Nancy Scott, and Abbie Johnson Taylor
  • Technical assistant: Jayson Smith
  • Internet Specialist: Julie Posey

Submission Guidelines

Disabled writers may submit up to three selections per issue. Deadlines are August 15 for the Fall/Winter issue, and February 15 for the Spring/Summer issue. Writers must disclose their disability in their biography or in their work. Biographies may be up to 100 words in length, and should be written in third-person.
Poetry maximum length is 50 lines. Memoir, fiction, and nonfiction maximum length is 2500 words. In all instances, our preference is for shorter lengths than the maximum allowed. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are permitted provided you own the copyright to the work. Please cite previous publisher and/or notify if work is accepted elsewhere.
We do not feature advocacy, activist, “how-to,” or “what’s new” articles regarding disability. Innovative techniques for better writing; recommendations for classes and conferences; as well as publication success stories are welcome. Content will include many genres, and will range beyond the disability theme.
Please Email all submissions to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. Paste your submission and bio into the body of your Email. Submissions will be acknowledged within two weeks. You will be notified if your piece is selected for publication.

About Behind Our Eyes

Behind Our Eyes, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization enhancing the opportunities for writers with disabilities. Our anthology published in 2007, “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities,” is available at Amazon.com and from other booksellers. It is available in recorded and Braille format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Members meet by teleconference twice monthly to hear speakers; share work for critique; or receive tips on accessibility, publication, and suggested areas of interest.
Our mailing list is a low-traffic congenial place to share work in progress; learn about submission requests; and to ask and answer writing questions. We are preparing for a second anthology, and would like to have you come aboard. For the conference phone number and PIN, join our mailing list by contacting Lisa Busch at gjbusch@comcast.net.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Editor’s Welcome

by Marilyn Brandt Smith
We are attracted to writing by a sometimes unexplainable hold that draws us toward the top rung of our ladder to success. Then we feel a higher, stronger force and we keep reaching, climbing, shifting and shaping as we grow. Our purpose in this magazine is to showcase quality work by writers with disabilities and to share the writing challenge. Read us; write with us; stretch your imagination and share. We want to publish your fiction, memoir, nonfiction, and poetry.
Submission guidelines and links to join our group, subscribe to this magazine, and offer feedback may be found on our homepage at www.magnetsandladders.org.
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The Flower Boy

by Abbie Johnson Taylor
“This is very important. You must do a good job.” His father’s words reverberated in his head as Tristan sauntered down the makeshift aisle, dropping rose petals as he went. On either side of him were rows of white plastic chairs where welldressed people sat, anticipating the event to come. Colorful flowers and balloons festooned the yard. They reminded him of Christmas decorations as they hung from tree branches and swayed in the gentle breeze. Ahead of him stood an arch, decorated with more flowers. He was mesmerized by the sight and the music played by a violin and cello duet.
Uncle Rick stood inside the arch, waiting for his bride to appear. He was Tristan’s favorite uncle, and the only adult who paid any attention to him. Tristan remembered him saying, “This is something little girls do. But Heather and I don’t know any little girls, so you’re the man for the job.”
Tristan didn’t care if his duty was usually performed by little girls. He was glad to do anything for his uncle. If it weren’t for this adult who cared, he wouldn’t be part of the ceremony. He would be sitting with his older male cousins, watching and wishing. Tristan gazed at his uncle, who stood at the altar, dressed in his gray suit and wearing a broad grin. It didn’t matter that he was different, that he couldn’t play with other kids, throw a ball, run, or jump. He had an important job to do to make his uncle’s wedding special.
“Ha Ha! Look at the flower boy!” The words cut through the air, drowning out everything else. They came from Tristan’s older cousin Eric. “Hey, retard, don’t you know that’s what girls do? Are you a girl, retard?”
Eric always made Tristan’s life miserable at family gatherings. It was Eric who taunted him, tripped him, kicked him, punched him, and threw a ball so hard that it hit him square in the face, causing his nose to bleed. His other cousins ignored him and never intervened when Eric tortured him. Now, Eric was at it again.
Tristan stopped, clutching the remaining petals, not sure what to do. He remembered his father saying, “You’re only making Eric happy by letting him get to you. Just ignore him.”
But Tristan couldn’t brush aside the words that hit him like a fist and brought home the message that he wasn’t like the others. As tears welled up in his eyes, he considered turning and running back the way he’d come.
But Uncle Rick, his face red with anger, hurried to where Eric sat, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him into the aisle. “Ouch!” Eric said in surprise as he struggled to free himself.
“Look, wise guy, I’m not going to have you ruin the happiest day of my life,” Uncle Rick yelled. “Now you apologize to Tbone. Don’t call him retard. Say I’m sorry, Tristan.'”
The music stopped, and there was dead silence. People turned to stare at Tristan, Eric, and Uncle Rick. Eric continued to struggle. But Uncle Rick was nearly 6 feet tall, and although Eric was a couple of inches taller than Tristan, he was still no match. “Rick, what are you doing?” called Uncle Harry, Eric’s father.
“I’m doing what you should have been doing, teaching your son a lesson,” Uncle Rick answered. “Now Eric, are you going to say you’re sorry, or do I have to give you a knuckle sandwich?” Uncle Rick raised his fist as if to strike the boy.
In a flash, Uncle Harry was also in the aisle. “Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my kid!” he yelled as he put a protective arm around Eric. “You and Heather don’t have kids yet, so you have no right to tell me how to be a parent.”
But even Uncle Harry was no match for Uncle Rick. Rick’s fist sent Harry sprawling among the chairs.
“Heather and I are sick and tired of the way Eric treats Tristan,” Uncle Rick said. “If you and Wanda had any sense, if any of you had any sense, you’d teach your kids to respect Tristan and include him in their activities instead of ignoring him and making his life a living hell. Now, Eric, are you going to apologize or do you get the same treatment as your father?”
“I’m sorry, Tristan,” said Eric. For the first time, there was a quaver in his voice and a frightened look in his eyes.
Uncle Rick released Eric and returned to the altar to await his bride. Eric stumbled to his seat. The music resumed and Tristan continued his pilgrimage toward the altar, dropping rose petals as he went. But the spell was broken. He knew that in the eyes of everyone, he was different.
Abbie Johnson Taylor’s novel, We Shall Overcome, was published in July of 2007 by iUniverse. Her poems have appeared in Voicings from the High Country and Serendipity Poets Journal, her stories in Emerging Voices and Disability Studies Quarterly, her creative nonfiction material in SageScript and Christmas in the Country. She is visually impaired and lives in Sheridan, Wyoming, with her totally blind husband Bill, who is partially paralyzed as a result of two strokes. Please visit her Web site at http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com.
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Madness

by Janet Schmidt
Insanity possessed me. Janet was winning the war of destroying me.
Shock and denial were replaced by depression and the absolute conviction I was completely mad. There is a Hell and I was in it. The choices were: check out or check in. I chose to check in to Saint Vincent’s psychiatric unit. Someone else had to monitor my daily living. Someone else was going to protect me from the inner voice of the personal demon telling me to kill myself. The choice of the psychiatric ward, at Saint Vincent’s, was less crazy than suicide.
It seemed incredibly important my parents be protected from the truth of my insanity. Dealing with my divorce was difficult enough for them.
If I had made better choices this horrendous condition would not have occurred. How could I be so inept? I’ve never been able to meet their, or our, religion’s expectations of how I was supposed to develop as an adult. No doubt I was always on the fringe of lunacy. Nonetheless, I could play it so Mom and Dad wouldn’t have so much to explain about me.
“Mom, I can’t take your offer of a trip to Oregon. I’m so tired and I don’t feel well. I can’t handle it.”
“Alright, Janet, if you’re sure. Your dad and I just thought a visit with Carole and a change of scenery would do you a lot of good.”
“Mom I’m going to Saint Vincent’s to rest.”
“Okay. You do what you think is best.”
“Mom, my doctor thinks I need to.” The word psychiatrist wasn’t mentioned. Doctor was okay. It implied physical healing. Their daughter would get better.
I was safe from Mrs. Janet Murphy Marshall, formerly Mrs. David Marshall, yesterday’s rubbish. Whichever one wanted to get rid of me didn’t stand a chance here.
There were four of us to a room on the psychiatric unit at Saint Vincent’s. During the day the beds were made up like sofas. The routine was simple and mandatory. We got up in the morning, showered, dressed, went to breakfast, and took our medication. We ate lunch and took our medication. We ate supper and took our medication. All the medication kept my assassin too drugged to strike. Janet was safe from Janet. She may have lurked in the shadows of my days and nights, but I couldn’t see or hear her.
There must have been some kind of recreation room to keep us busy. It was of no consequence to me. Sleeping was on my agenda. I did so with the aid of some pretty, little pills. I roused myself from sleep only when I was expected to eat and swallow cups full of those wonderful, multi-colored, magic, numbness inducers. They provided blessed relief from the voices dictating, “Kill yourself, Janet. Don’t be a coward.”
Though I slept long and often, I knew immediately when someone entered my space. More often than not, if an individual didn’t announce the invasion of my space, especially in the dark of night, it elicited terrified screams. After all, the invader might be Janet. Perhaps she had escaped the bondage of medication to torment me into killing us. People developed the routine of awakening me from a distance.
The rooms were over air-conditioned. At night my roommates would spread magazines across the top of the unit to keep out some of the cold air. “Gotta keep the nuts cool so they won’t crack,” I thought to myself.
During the day the magazines were piled on the windowsill. I suppose they were intended to entertain us during idle moments. I don’t recall looking out of the window. Why would I? It was dangerous out there. Looking inward or outward was to be carefully avoided.
Eating was almost as important as sleeping. I never lost my appetite. I was always hungry. I was “queen of the clean plate club.” Seconds, thirds, and desserts were devoured with great momentary pleasure. Little did I know voracious eating was a symptom of my depression.
All of the patients in the psychiatric wing had to eat together in the dining room. One of the patients kept asking me my name when we were seated at the same table. “I get shock therapy,” she explained, “and it causes short term memory loss.”
None of us, as I recall, discussed with each other why we were there. Someone did mention the nun in the group had passed out from too much alcohol and scalded her arm under the hot water faucet in her bathtub.
I don’t remember anyone asking me to tell my story. I guess we all knew this was a temporary oasis. We were only strangers momentarily sharing the same place.
The psychiatrist assigned to my case was a quiet manprobably in his late fifties. He was very kind. He seemed not to be put off by my taciturn demeanor. He didn’t probe or try to push me into self-revelations. Then again he was probably only there to monitor my medications and my mood to determine whether or not I was out of my mind. Undoubtedly, he was going to decide if I should return to the land of the living. He came to the room one day when I was lying half-asleep on my sofa. I decided if he cared whether or not I lived or died, he would awaken me. He didn’t. He just left the room. Who was going to care enough to help me live? He returned again to say he had visited me before and thought he should let me sleep.
“Janet, I called your father,” my friend, Myra, informed me one evening when she came to visit during my first week as a mental patient. “He should see this place and find out you are not locked behind bars like a raving maniac.”
“Yeah.”
“Janet, I tried to explain to him you had to work this through in your own way and you were getting good help. But he should come to see you and the special conditions here.”
“I suppose so.”
The most difficult time of day was the evening visiting hours. If my roommates had visitors I couldn’t go to bed and sleep until they left. I longed for the escape into drugged sleep. I had to sit in the ward lounge in the glare of florescent lighting. My body language clearly stated, No Trespassing. I didn’t want to visit with anyone. The minute hand plodded around the clock face slowly wiping away the time used up in waiting for the visitors to leave.
One evening, Myra asked, “Janet, do you want visitors or would you rather just be left alone?”
“I guess I would just rather be alone and sleep, but I can go out on Saturday if the doctor says it’s okay.”
“Why don’t we go someplace then? Where do you think you might like to go?”
“Maybe we could go shopping for some things for my apartment.”
“Alright. Call me if you get permission and we’ll go to Shoppers World in Framingham.”
The psychiatrist gave me permission to spend Saturday afternoon shopping with Myra. She left me alone to think my own thoughts during the ride to Framingham. If being dead felt this way then I was dead. I waded through the atmosphere around me with leaden feet unengaged with my surroundings, my friend, and myself. Myra suggested we go to Sears. I followed.
“Janet, what do you want to buy?”
“Some wastebaskets and a lamp for my apartment, I guess.”
“Do you have any money with you?”
“I have David’s credit card. It’s good until the divorce is final I think.”
Myra helped me pick out some stuff.
On Sunday Dad came to see me. After lunch I was sitting on the edge of a patio lounge, beginning a conversation with the guy using the other half, when a nurse informed me, “Janet, your father is here.”
Annoyed at the bad timing, I entered the building to greet him. “How are you doing, Babe?” he inquired uncomfortably as he kissed me on the cheek. There was no hug.
“I’m doing alright.” Dad wouldn’t be able to deal with any self-revelation on my part. His philosophy demanded nothing more than the answer I gave him. We went to my room and sat on my sofa.
“Is this your room?”
“Yes.”
“It’s nice. How are you feeling?”
“Alright. I’m sleeping a lot.”
We conversed like casual acquaintances talking a little about nothing. We partedglad to have it over.
When Dad said goodbye, he gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. As I watched him walk away, he seemed cloaked in sadness. Gone was the jaunty, business-like stride he usually exhibited and the tuneless whistling or humming he did under his breath. He appeared hunched over. Drawn in upon himself as he vanished from my sight into the murkiness of the hallway. A profound melancholy washed over me.
I longed to run after him and comfort him but I had nothing to give. My inner resources were depleted. I couldn’t comfort myself; how could I comfort anyone else?
Oh, Dad, why couldn’t I throw myself into your arms, crying and tell you how I feel. Why couldn’t you embrace me and ask about my pain? Why couldn’t two people who obviously love each other be able to communicate? Why couldn’t I say, “Dad, I’m so lost, so weak, please hold me and let me cry and still love me?” Why couldn’t I?
It wasn’t in the plan for me to end up in a psychiatric ward being cared for by strangers. I was broken. Was I ever going to get fixed?
What horrible sin had I committed? What was my crime? Am I so despicable a human being I am condemned to this hell? Is this my punishment because I can’t believe in the God presented to me in my childhood? What is going to become of me?
Lee, a Worcester Poly Tech student, with whom I had a rather disappointing one-night stand, visited me. “Janet, I brought a book of poetry. Let’s go out on the lawn and I’ll read some to you.”
Lee was always trying to stage life. If I went to his place to listen to music we were both suppose to wear headsets and lie on the floor becoming immersed in the music. His personality was a bit unusual.
“What I would really like to do is look at the babies.”
“Let’s go.”
We took the elevator to the maternity floor. “What are you doing up here?” demanded an irate nurse. We left in a hurry.
The next stop was the lawn of the hospital. Lee proceeded to carry through on his poetry reading scenario. He staged the way we sat, like the cover on a Victorian romance novel. I felt like an observernot a participantin this little scene until an angry voice quickly returned me to reality. “You are to come into this building, right now,” commanded an irate nurse.
“I had better go in. I guess I’ve been bad.” Getting up I wandered toward the voice I could not see.
“Someone called me saying one of my patients was roaming the halls and was out on the lawn. You are not to do that again.” I went meekly back to my room. Lee didn’t make a return visit.
During the course of my second week on the psychiatric ward one roommate left. An older woman replaced her. Every night, we three veterans were awakened by her incredibly loud snoring. This cacophony was accompanied by the noisy sound of gas being expelled. We would giggle uncontrollably, shushing each other so as not to wake our sleep-disrupting roommate. We soon discovered she would probably be able to sleep through the upheaval of World War III. We used this opportunity to engage in some humorous conversation concerning our new roommate’s discordant serenade.
One morning, a roommate entered our room crying because the bitchy head nurse (the same one who reprimanded me for being on the lawn with Lee) had said her skirt was way too short. “All of my clothes are this length. This is the style. I don’t have anything else to wear.” I was actually able to muster the energy to comfort her and agree this was no way to treat people in our condition. Did this mean I was getting better?
I was the bitchy nurse’s next victim. “That dress is way too short. It’s inappropriate on this ward.” I just walked away angry. Was she afraid we were going to get the male patients all hot and bothered and engage in some type of assignation? Where? We couldn’t leave the ward without permission. We certainly couldn’t sneak out at night. We were locked in and checked on periodically. Perhaps she was just jealous of our youth.
She probably mourned the demise of prefrontal lobotomies and ice baths. At least at Saint Vincent’s, therapeutic treatment was humane. I wondered later whether or not her job was to see if we were alive enough to get angry.
The inner voice continued to torment, “Watch it. Janet seems to be exhibiting normal behavior,” it warned. “We mustn’t let it continue. She hasn’t paid her debt yet. She may decide to live. We can’t have that. She has got to pay for her sins.” But the voice didn’t seem as loud any more.
The psychiatrist came to see me shortly before my dismissal. He told me I had an appointment to see the referring psychiatrist, who was the chief administrator, at Worcester State Hospital the following Monday. My two weeks were up on Friday. Did I have some place to go?
“Yes.”
Myra picked me up. I returned to her sofa at night. This time, however, I had a plethora of pretty, little pills to make me sleep and to elevate my mood during the day.
I kept my appointment with the psychiatrist at the state hospital.
“Janet, we have a new, young psychiatrist who’s just out of the service and joined our out-patient clinic staff. Your insurance would cover his fee. Would you like to have me arrange an appointment for you?”
“Yes.”
Janet Schmidt and her husband Karl live in Vermont. Though visually impaired since birth, she earned several college degrees and pursued careers in education, rehabilitation, and psychology. Janet has written a memoir, several essays, and is currently editing her collection of children’s stories. Recently she served on a team editing material for an anthology. E-mail her at: janet_schmidt@hotmail.com.
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Please God, Not My Baby

by DeAnna Quietwater Noriega
Molly Foster sat nervously on the wooden chair in Doc Taylor’s examination room. Gently she rocked her 4-month-old daughter in her arms. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that, even though there were some signs of a problem, it didn’t mean Jamie would be severely afflicted. There were treatments and procedures. Maybe she was only marginally affected, please God. There was no history of such a thing on either side of the family. Surely she was only imagining things. Mama always told her not to borrow trouble, and here she was, with her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest over something that might not mean anything.
The door to the hall opened. The measured footsteps of the Doc, and the lighter tap of his nurse Velma’s shoes, reverberated on the smooth tile floor as they entered the room.
“What seems to be the problem, Molly?” asked Doc as he lightly touched her shoulder; then ran his sensitive hand over Jamie’s downy head.
“Doc, I know some babies are more sensitive than others, but Jamie’s sensitivity is different. She hates it when the sun is especially hot. It doesn’t matter if she is perfectly cool, say, in her bath out in the screened-in porch. She starts to fuss. Whenever we are outside, she hides her face.” Molly lowered her voice. “Her eyelids are odd. She flutters them when I touch her. You don’t think”
“Now Molly girl, don’t get too worried. Let me have her for a few minutes. I’ll do some simple tests.”
Doc Taylor lifted the baby from her mother’s arms before treading carefully out of the room, followed by the nurse. He took the baby into another examination room.
“Velma, get my photoflashometer from the desk drawer in my office.” In moments, the nurse was back, placing the instrument on the table with a heavy clunk. The doc turned the instrument to its lowest setting. As it gave off a hum, he passed it in front of the baby’s face. Gently, his sensitive fingers stroked Jamie’s satiny cheek, and touched her silky lashes. They fluttered against his touch. “I’ll be right back, Velma. I just need to do one more test.”
Doc Taylor stepped out the back door. Lifting his face to the warmth of the sun, he reached into his pocket. Drawing out his gold Braille pocket watch, he swung it back and forth in front of the baby’s face. She turned her head to follow the swinging object. Her small hand reached toward it, and she cooed with delight.
With a heavy heart, Doc returned inside to tell Molly the bad news. “I’m so sorry Molly girl,” he said, shifting the baby into her mother’s arms, “your baby is a visioner. She responded to my photoflashometer. Now that just means she perceives light, which isn’t very serious. But when I swung my watch in front of her, she followed it with head movements. We can limit how much she is distracted, of course, by bandaging her eyes whenever she is taken outside, or you open a hatch to let air into the house.
“But you know, if she is allowed to use vision to explore her world, she will never learn to use her other senses effectively. She will be dependent on vision for too much. This will distract her from developing normally. It will stunt her mental growth and limit her to only being able to manage during daylight hours, or outdoors when there is sufficient light. But if we are careful, and protect her from light as much as possible, it may not be so bad.”
Molly held her daughter close as tears rolled down her face. What would everyone say? How would they treat her precious little daughter? Would she have to live with loneliness and ostracism? What about her education? Would this vision thing, this learning disability, limit her to performing menial outdoor tasks? Would she have difficulty finding a husband because of the fear her condition might be passed on to her children?
Oh, how could such an awful thing happen? Well, whatever it took, Molly vowed she would fight to raise her child as normally as possible. If hard work and love could prevent Jamie’s condition from ruining her life, Molly would be there for this little person entrusted to her care.
DeAnna Quietwater Noriega is a softspoken, outspoken advocate for minority understanding and acceptance. She promotes her causes and reflects her Chippewa heritage through her published writings. In the Peace Corps in Western Samoa, she established a school for the blind. Her seven dog guides watched her rear three children, manage a family business, and work in social services.
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Jungle Fever in Georgia

by Albert Cooper
I was standing in my front yard the other day when a young lady named Consuelo came up to me and said, “Mr. Cooper, I know you’re a blind man. I don’t mean to get into your business, but I’m very puzzled about something you do. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. Go ahead and ask me anything you like.”
“Sir, I’ve been watching you. I’ve noticed every time you walk out of your house to get in a car to go somewhere, you always stop at the end of your walk and bend over toward the car as if you’re looking in there. But it can’t be because you’re looking, I know you can’t see so, why do you do it?”
I turned toward her with a chuckle. “You can call me Coop. That’s the nickname I got when I was a little kid. Now, to answer your question, I have to tell you a story. Come on; let’s sit down on my front porch so I can explain.”
As we walked up the steps I began telling her the following story: It’s funny now, but it could have been dangerous then. It’s all about people judging each other, and making assumptions based on somebody’s race, color, gender, religion, or physical size. You can learn a lot by seeing how people treat each other.
Nobody would have ever thought, fifty years ago when I was born, I would be telling you a funny story about something that happened to a big black blind man. You see, I was a sighted kid who got into all the same kinds of trouble the other kids did except, I was bigger than they were. I got teased a lot. By the time I was fourteen I weighed two hundred eighty-five pounds and was almost six feet tall. My shoe size matched my age for years.
Finally, I decided to turn my size into an advantage. I became the best defensive tackle in the Georgia high school football program. I earned a scholarship to the University of Louisville and played football there. People didn’t hurt my feelings about my size anymore. Though I liked the attention I got from playing, it wasn’t what I wanted to do beyond college.
In 1981 I was ready for my twenty-fourth birthday. I got up that morning all excited about celebrating with my little family. It was a special day all right, but not in the way I expected. In two hours my life was to change drastically, because I was shot in the face with a twelve-gage shotgun by a man who didn’t take time to find out much about me. He was afraid of my size and jumped to the wrong conclusion. After several surgeries I had to face the fact I was going to have to learn to live as a blind man.
Ten years later I was pretty well used to being blind. On my thirty-fourth birthday I decided to have some fun. My cousin called me about going to Atlanta to celebrate. My neighbor, Pap, agreed to watch the house while I was gone. He took me to the bank so I could get cash for the trip. We laughed and joked on the way to the bank. He parked right in front of it.
While I was inside, withdrawing my cash, folding it according to its denomination, and storing it in my wallet, two or three customers pulled up in their cars, and asked Pap to move up so there would be more room for parking. He did assuming he could catch my attention when I came out of the bank and help me find his car. Meantime, he noticed a good-looking woman in a short, red skirt hanging out across the street. His eyes and his mind were on her, not on me.
Unfolding my white cane I exited the bank. Moving down the sidewalk I ran into a man. When he apologized I could tell by his accent he was a white man. He said he hadn’t realized I was blind, and he shouldn’t have been in my way. I told him it was all right, no harm done. We went our separate ways. Upon reaching the curb, I opened the car door, and got inside. Turning to Pap I said, “Let’s ride.”
“Help me! Help me! Help me! He’s gonna rape me! He’s gonna rape me!” screamed a white woman in the driver’s seat. She kept getting louder.
I’m sure I was as scared as she was. What was going on? Where was Pap? “Ma’am! Ma’am,” I tried to exclaim, but she wasn’t listening. I knew better than to try to touch her arm to get her attention.
“This man, he got in my car! He’s gonna hurt me! He’s gonna rape me!” she hollered.
I could hear car doors slamming. They told me later people were standing around trying to figure out what was going on. People came out of businesses. Traffic was backing up. By this time, I had figured out what must have happened. I decided the only way I could prove to her I wasn’t going to hurt her, and the only way I could shut her up, was to get out of the car. I opened the door, but someone immediately slammed it against my leg. I couldn’t move. Maybe they thought I was trying to run away from the scene of the crime. I just wanted to get away from the screaming and not draw any more attention to myself.
The woman’s husband apparently heard her yelling from inside the bank and came dashing out to save her. He was the white man I had run into when I was leaving the bank. Finally the light must have dawned. He started trying to calm his wife. He told her I was blind and pointed out my cane. She was having none of it. “He’s got a weapon! He was gonna rape me! Get him away from me! Get him out of here! Call the police!”
Where was Pap through all this? Why didn’t he come to my rescue? I was getting nervous. This woman was crazy.
Finally, the teller who had helped me with my withdrawals, and who had seen everything through the window, came to my defense. She explained to the husband how I happened to get into the wrong car. His wife wouldn’t listen to her either.
The traffic backup, the horns, the screaming woman, and the approach of the police got Pap’s attention. He came back to the couple’s car to investigate. By this time the man had moved and I had hurriedly gotten out of the car. I just wanted them to get on their way and let me do the same. We walked toward Pap’s automobile. People in the crowd who knew me started teasing. These black folks thought it was hilarious, but I hadn’t seen the humor yet.
“Coop, I didn’t know you liked little-old, white women now.”
“Yo, I didn’t know you were lookin’ for white meat these days.”
“What’s the matter? You got a little jungle fever?”
The police came down to Pap’s car to talk to me. They had already talked with the white couple and wanted to make sure everybody was telling the same story. I couldn’t understand why those folks who thought it was so funny hadn’t tried to help me. That woman thought because of my size and because I was where I didn’t belong, I had to be up to no good.
The bank teller came out again when she saw a policeman had me out of Pap’s car with my hands in the air. She told them what she had seen. They seemed to be satisfied. I got back in the car and turned to Pap, “Get me the hell out of here.”
Pap was laughing so hard he could barely drive.
It was about four weeks before I felt comfortable going back to that neighborhood and bank. I made several calls, thanking the teller for her assistance. Now before I get into any car I stand about a foot away from the door and lean forward to hear voices or to ask questions before getting in.
When people want to hear a funny story about a mistake somebody made because of their blindness, I can always lay ’em in the aisles with this one.
Albert Cooper Jr. of Americus, Georgia, earned a football scholarship to the University of Louisville. At twenty-four, he was blinded as a result of a gunshot. He taught chess and karate to older children through the AmeriCorps program. He speaks and writes about advocacy issues for the disabled. Albert has a gift for making humorous stories come alive.
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Telling the Truth

by Heather J. Kirk
I have a terrible habit of telling the truth, which often gets me into trouble. Each time, unsuccessfully, I vow never to succumb to its power over me again. The affliction only worsened with my late-onset Attention Deficit Disorder.
As a child, I was a model student. Now I’m incapable of sitting through a TV commercial. Okay, bad example, especially since I haven’t owned a television for more than ten years. I could run a racket of selling televisions donated to me by people who think I must be impoverished. They can’t believe someone would make a conscious choice not to own an object so culturally pervasive as a TV set.
What was my point? Oh yesthe ADD seems to have shortcircuited the portion of my brain that provides verbal impulse control, intercepting and evaluating thoughts before they leave my mouth. I’m not mean necessarily, just not tactful. I routinely warn people about my condition, especially when prompted with, “Can I ask you a question?”
I warn, “If you don’t really want the answer, it’s best not to ask.”
Some people forge ahead, in spite of my preparatory honesty. “Do I look like I’ve gained weight?”
“Well, kind of. I mean you have, haven’t you?”
Then there are dangerous phone conversations: “What are you wearing right now?”
“A bra and underwear.”
“You weren’t actually supposed to tell me!” he explained.
“Oh” (Note to myself: If your goal is to cool a relationship, never tell a man you are only wearing undergarmentseven if it’s the truth!)
At times, I feel transmuted into Jim Carey’s “Liar! Liar!” character, who physically loses the ability to lie. Picture this: I exit the Post Office, after hours, with vending machinebought stamps in hand. A beggar asks, “Do you have any change?”
I freeze and look him straight in the eye, uncharacteristically quiet as I run through the range of a “normal” person’s possible excuses. He becomes nervous, and backs away slowly, still caught in my gaze. Suddenly my uniquely insensitive answer blurts forth, “Yes! But I’m gonna keep it!”
The man, in shock, begins a mantra, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” bowing like an old Japanese caricature. “It’s good to have a little change in your pocket, isn’t it?” he exclaims, ecstatic at my response. I feel good, too, almost ecstatic myself. Telling the truth rarely has such a positive effect.
Although my writing style can be spontaneous, the revision phase allows me to collect my thoughts, delete any uncalled for honesty, and create a desired result. Still, writing has its drawbacks. Since friends and family are familiar with my lack of experience in telling lies, my poems, essays, and even fiction often create unintended problems. I get in trouble when I write in the second or third person, because people see themselves in every “he,” “she” or “you”and I get in trouble when I write in the first person, because everyone thinks the “I” is me.
Sometimes I keep editors guessing. When they ask me for a short bio, I sit back and ask, “Are you sure you want to know?”
Heather J. Kirk chose the identities writer, photographer and graphic designer when extreme levels of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue migraines made it impossible for her to continue working as a social worker. Through the arts Heather shares beauty and insight with others, and finds purpose and passion.
She’s contributed to various journals and anthologies such as Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul, and Alive Now. Heather’s own poetry book is titled We …a spirit seeking harmony for a world that’s out of sync. Ms. Kirk is Phoenix Home and Garden’s April 2011 Featured Artist.
View her literature and photography: www.HeatherJKirk.com.
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The Wandering Butterfly

(Gaelic: an fileacn fanach)

by Michael Coleman
During my childhood, I had two very serious accidents which resulted in the loss of my eyesight. Despite this, I retained a distinctly visual mind.
Over two decades ago, when I lived in Switzerland, I planned a trip to Ireland.
At the time, I was going out with a girl named Claudine. She had a friend named Brigide. Claudine spoke to Brigide about me, and spoke to me about herso we only knew one another indirectly. We were both going to be traveling to Ireland at the same time, and decided to travel together. Renting a Toyota, we set out from Dublin in the east, across the Emerald Isle.
Brigide was extremely visual and profoundly uncommunicative. In this island of forty shades of green, she must have taken forty thousand photographsand we stopped countless times. The trouble was, when we stopped the car, it died and wouldn’t start again, so she told me to get out and push, so we could get going. We repeated this drama over and over and over.
When traveling with this lady, at times, when I attempted to speak, I was brutally cut short. She growled, “Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate.” And when I found myself frozen in a stunned silence, she imperiously commanded me to keep her company and talk to her. I couldn’t win for losing.
Finally, we arrived in the northwestern county of Donegal, spending the night in a breakfast house (a bed and breakfast).
The hostess served us scrumptious pieces of apple pie. There was a wonderful, crackling fire. Even the hostess glowed with life. The whole atmosphere of the breakfast house nourished my spirit.
My traveling companion, on the other hand, was like an astronomical black hole that devoured all life, light and hope. Though physically personable, she seemed utterly impersonal. There was a heavy, angry, corrosive silence that joylessly engulfed any desire to communicate.
The lifegiving glow of the hostess made one feel lighthearted, but this heavy, empty, hateful presence eradicated the slightest vestige of mirth.
We set out the next day along the west coast, weaving in and out of one enchanting inlet after another.
It was raining cats and dogs. This lifedraining female threatened to put me out in the cold, drizzling rain. I wouldn’t be intimidated. I maintained, “Brigide, I think we should separate.”
Twenty miles further up the road, she retracted her threat, urging, “I really don’t mind our traveling together, Michael.”
Finally, we stopped at a charming little village called Killala in County Mayo. We spent the night in a lovely breakfast house. I found myself once again by a warm, crackling fire, with another lifegiving, personal presence.
Brigide, silent like death, went to her room and read her book about transcendental meditation, and I stayed and chatted with the host for about two hours, after which I decided I wouldn’t travel with her any longer.
The next morning, at the breakfast table, out of the blue, Brigide pleaded apologetically, “I really don’t mind our traveling together, Michael.”
After a brief, almost ominous silence, I replied, “But Brigide, I do mind. You’re one of the most unbearable women I have ever met.” At this, she erupted like Mount Vesuvius.
Despite the fact that we were still at the breakfast table, the host, apparently startled by the uproar and sensing the tension, opened the door. This Swiss female volcano, attempting to conceal her true feelings, sputtered nervously, with a heavy, French accent, “It is a wonderful breakfast and it is a beautiful country.”
We set out again, stopping in front of a little grocery store in another village. In the shivering rain, she removed my suitcase from the trunk, opened it, dropped it in the grimy, wet gravel and piled about five books on the open suitcase. She slammed the door furiously and, as she sped away, the car seemed to spit gravel back at me with contemptand I have never seen her since.
I stuffed the books in the suitcase, sat on it and closed it, and then made my way to another breakfast house in the village of Oughterard (“high cream” in Gaelic). There my spirit thawed out amidst a warm, loving environment.
It was the owner of this breakfast house who sold me the land where I had a house built more than twenty years later. The house is located less than a mile from the sea.
Michael Coleman (from County Galway, Ireland, B.S. from Louisiana State University, law degree from University of Denver) was blinded after childhood accidents. He has worked as an instructor and an interpreter in several languages and enjoys outdoor activities. He has visited and lived abroad for years and supports communication and mutual understanding among people, as the best means of promoting disability acceptance.
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Leaving Oz

by Valerie Moreno
After all of the twisters,

Witches and pitches,

Yellow brick roads

That led to more glitches
Where scarecrows talk,

Lions are teary

And a tin-man’s wish

For a heart makes him weary
Facing the dangers with courage and awe,

Then finding the wizard’s a man with a flaw,

Still, when Dorothy decides to say goodbye,

Now I’m the one who begins to cry.

Wanting the magic to stay as it was,

Aching to keep the little girl in Oz.
Valerie Moreno of Linden, New Jersey, wrote fiction as a child and added articles and poetry as an adult. She has published in Dialog Magazine for the Blind and in the regional magazine of the Secular Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church. She writes about social and spiritual issues for their newsletter and has served as associate editor.
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Lady Collingwood Models Her Birthday Suit

by Mary-Jo Lord
In that dreamy state between

consciousness and deep sleep, I ride

naked on the back of our tandem bike.
My husband, in full control as he

steers us around the corner off Collingwood and

on to Truewood, brakes to

cross Avon Manor. I beg

“Please, let’s just go home.” We

pass many people. I

wonder if they know I’m

naked. One quick reach forward tells me my

husband is fully dressed.
I separate myself from the

dream and ask, “Is this how

Lady Godiva felt? What

statement am I trying to make?” or

“Am I like the emperor in his

new clothes,

utterly stupid or unworthy of my position?”
We stop at the neighbor’s. I

long to ride home and

disappear undercover. I

somersault into morning as a

fouryearold Peeping Tom exclaims,
“She doesn’t have any clothes on!”
MaryJo Lord has a masters’ degree in counseling from Oakland University and has worked at Oakland Community College for fifteen years. She writes poetry and memoirs. A section of her work is published in a Plain View Press anthology called Almost Touching. She lives with her husband and son in Rochester, Michigan.
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Step Up to New Writing Challenges

Poets, journalists, publishers, novelists, and teachers share their secrets with us two or three times a month on our Sunday night teleconferences. When we don’t have a guest, we share our own work. Recent exercises included: flash fiction, holiday memoirs, poetry, newspaper reports or features, and a story within a story.
As exemplified in the exercises below, a nudge from one of us often results in interesting diversity.
Traffic on our e-mail list complements our Sunday night sessions.
If you are a disabled person interested in writing, or wish to refer a disabled person to our list and conference, send a message to blachance3@roadrunner.com.
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“Watcher” Exercise

DeAnna Quietwater Noriega suggested the following assignment:
Write a poem or story of any type with a main character being a watcher using this scenario:
“The small figure was caught in the glare of the headlights of a passing car. Fine silver-gilt hair gleamed and fluttered in the rush of air from the vehicle. The watcher stepped deeper into the shadows.”
The following questions were to be answered within the piece:
“Who is the small figure? Who is the watcher? Why is the watcher on this road or street?”
The following are samples from the exercise.
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Rescue

by Ernest A. Jones
She was a lovely thing. Her long silky hair draped down, completely covering her shoulders and neck. Although quite small, she was no infant. Her bright eyes didn’t miss a thing as she appeared to be searching for something. Cautiously, she moved down the road, unaware that danger lurked in the shadows. She really should not have been out alone at night. She had no business here. Still, she moved along unconcerned.
Suddenly, she sensed a presence, and started running across the road in front of a passing car. There was a squealing of tires as the driver slammed on his brakes, stopping only inches away from her. Quickly, he got out of the car and scooped her up.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I am so happy I found you. The kids are crying since you ran away. I have already fixed your cage more securely, so you will be safe from now on.”
With this, the man climbed into his car, turned around, and headed for home. His children’s silky long-haired guinea pig lay nestled safely on his lap.
Just as he started down the highway, his headlights picked out bright glowing eyes lurking only a dozen paces from where he had stopped. He knew those eyes. “Well, little girl,” he said. “Looks like I found you just in time. That coyote would have had you if I hadn’t rescued you when I did.”
Ernest Jones, Sr. worked as a registered nurse until failing eyesight forced his early retirement. He has one published book, and his monthly newspaper column, Different Views, offers encouragement to other blind people. Ernie’s monthly church newsletter column delights the young. Hobbies include gardening, walking with his guide dog, and writing. E-mail him at: theolcrow@charter.net.
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The Walk Home

by Marilyn Brandt Smith
I seldom walk this way, but since it’s late,

The highway tempts me, offers smoother tread.

Approaching from the woods, my traps all set,

I see that rain has left a silver sheen;
Lights from a passing car direct my gaze;

Am I the first to come upon distress?

Tendrils flutter, motion draws me near.

A child, a wounded dog, what have we here?
Hurry home and call for help from town?

Lift this bundle, see what I can do?

I touch the unfamiliar, pull away,

My God! It’s only broken bails of hay!

I murmur thanks, and soon go on my way.
Marilyn Brandt Smith holds degrees in English, education, and counseling psychology and has worked in rehabilitation in several states. She has written for, and edited, small-circulation magazines and is the primary editor of “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities,” published in 2007. Marilyn was the first blind Peace Corps volunteer. She lives with her family in Kentucky, and has recently published flash fiction, disability and healthcare essays, and recipe columns. E-mail her at: merrychristmas@insightbb.com.
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Reach for the Next Rung, Resources

Check out these websites for submission requests and interesting opportunities.

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Keeping an Artist’s Journal

by Nancy Scott
Do you want to know yourself better as an artist? Do you understand your unique motivations? Do you know which alternative techniques work for you? Try an artist’s journal.
I am a writer. Much of what I say here, though, can be applied to any artistic form.
By 1993, I wanted to write five hours per week. Not tracking my creative time allowed me to lie to myself. I also wondered what inspired and encouraged my art.
From the beginning, my journal had rules. I used a 5 x 8-inch notebook, so no long entries. (I kept a larger journal for life ramblings.) Entries were weekly (Sunday through Saturday). I noted where ideas came from, what I was doing when I became inspired, how much time I worked and on what specific projects.
June 26 to July 3, 1993: Rough drafted Vignettes of Dying Mother 2 hours. Idea from possible market Poets and Writers. 5 hours presentation for Lions. Can the speech also be an article?
I listed books I liked, what times of day were most energized for work, the environments I preferred, what experiments I tried, and landmark acceptances or rejections.
After six months, I read it back and found working patterns. Journals show what you’ve completed, what you’ve started, and what you’ve ignored. And you can’t lie to yourself.
October 6 to 12, 1996: Class didn’t like my poem May Mittens. Go deeper. Revise half hour. Chased manuscripts by letter that have been out for more than six months 1 hour. Two hundred copies of my first chapbook delivered Friday. Scary. David and I celebrated with Irish coffee at Pearly Baker’s. The book is real.
August 30 to September 5, 1998: Sandy’s birthday card modified published in the Express Times. My first local newspaper column. Good advocacy about a wheelchair-user and a blind person. Comments from friends, people on the bus and even a cashier at Weis’. Shift of Weather 2 hours. Will submit for second newspaper essay? I am not invisible. I am not just a wacky blind person. People here now know I am a writer. The headshot they published must look like me.
March 21 to 28, 1999: This feels like writer’s block. Half hour looking through rough draft poetry for ideas at 6 A.M.
In 2001, I began keeping the artist’s journal in my Braille ‘n Speak. Now, I can find things with key words. I still reread the journal at least once a year.
July 22 to 28, 2001: Linda is a gifted keyboard player and singer. What would it be like to be a very talented blind person? Would I trade my broader mediocrity? Of course, I only see her gift and not her struggle. I sang for her and it was fun. Music is fun for me and writing is serious art.
August 18 to 24, 2002: Bent Angels half hour. Furniture moved 23rd so no time to write. Will I be able to write in my new apartment?
September 1 to 7, 2002: Found far benches behind the building. So here I am ready to eavesdrop, but there’s just machinery making the weird noises and wind chimes. Wrote about my bench. Moving Around 2 hours.
February 16 to 22, 2003: Radio commentary essays edited for local NPR station Roses, Heatwave, Feeling Fifty, and Plural of Rhinoceros 3 hours. I still don’t read well in studio. Using Braille n Speak at writers’ workshop was odd. I wanted to stop and listen like I could if I were taking notes with a tape recorder. I can write so much faster than people with pens, but I make too much noise and feel too visible. Also, I can’t read my work back in the workshop. (No Braille display.) I know people who listen with headphones and speak work back, but I can’t.
April 27 to May 3, 2003: Kathy says I can’t have the necklace engraved with 300 bylines and counting yet because I’m only at 298. What is my obsession with 300 published pieces? I barely noticed 200. Perhaps I will not make 400?
May 18 to 24, 2003: My brother Mark died in his sleep this week. I knew something was wrong when I didn’t hear from him over the weekend and he didn’t answer his phone when I repeatedly called. Friday night, he called saying he was cold, but I know now, his building still had heat. The day after Mark’s official death, May 20, my radio essay My Parents’ Gratitude List ran. It is byline 300. Perhaps Mark or other dead relatives nudged. It must mean I should keep writing. I need reasons and deadlines. Being around other artists and reading others’ work gets me working. Potential markets get me working. Morning, sunshine, chirping birds and just enough isolation help. Moving and outside are necessary, too. I am the last of my family left here. I wrote a lot based on Mark’s humor. Will I find things to write about now?
September 7 to 13, 2003: Is Bad Diet; Good Diet real writing or ego? 2 hours. Strange to do very long piece in journal form and think it could be published. I need this intimate writing just now. Radio interview for my essay in Cup of Comfort for Women was too much talk about blind people stuff and not enough author stuff. My fault. Practiced for Cup of Comfort reading and wrote intros. 2 hours. Don’t have enough balance to wear heels anymore.
May 30 to June 5, 2004: Weeding Braille files. What I need to keep is changing. Why am I still keeping the old procedure manual we wrote for our National Federation of the Blind chapter, and the resource list for the NFB Writers’ Division from the early 1980’s? Will anyone even remember that I edited all those cassettes? Good practice though. Don’t want to work; just want to plan it. I need too much help from sighted people. Need to learn more technology? Barbara Sher goals not helping. Connections reading audience around ten people felt very labored. But questions afterwards were good. Write a poem a day for a week.
December 12 to 18, 2004: I want security, divinity, to make a difference, and respect from some people. Maybe a book manuscript of radio essays. I’m also collecting the long essays calling that book The Clay Never Hardens. I’m not writing new stuff, although people like this year’s Christmas card.
March 27 to April 2, 2005: Sent poetry chapbook Fourth Person Singular for contest. Listening essay 1 hour. Art is not lonely; it is being very present. Art keeps me from abandoning myself. Dorot telephone poetry class new semester. Revising radio reading service volunteer handbook 3 hours and it’s different having to edit with other people. Put six notebooks of clips into big safety deposit box along with list of what I’ve published. I need tangible accomplishments. No one can take or misjudge them away.
February 26 to March 4, 2006: Major rent increase. I must make more money and work smarter. Kathy has convinced me to do a reading and a writing ideas workshop for Girls’ Night Out. They’ll pay me. I’ve never done a workshop, but talking it through with Debbie has helped me decide how and what I’ll present. Kathy will print hand-outs and go with me. Kathy thinks I can do this. Can I teach anything?
March 26 to April 1, 2006: 15 people at my workshop with almost no publicity by the promoters! It felt fun and energized. I think they liked it. Do it again someday? $100 was my stipend. Next time, need contract in writing and amount determined ahead of time.
July 2 to 8, 2006: Maryanne will page-format my poetry chapbook for self-publishing. It’s now called Leveling the Spin and has 19 poems. Computersmith Enterprises will convert my home-recorded cassette of Leveling to cd, though I do not read well for microphones. I’m tired of waiting for the next book. And all this help showing up means it is meant to happen.
December 10 to 16, 2006: Leveling the Spin has new cover and Kathy and I have proofed, pleased God, for the last time. I’ve been slow doing audio but it should be finished soon. Next, I will work on an essay collection. For the year: 19 bylines and 1 performance, 5 mainstream and 14 disability, 15 prose and 4 poems, not enough money as usual (just under $300. but 365 bylines altogether. Amazing that my first piece was published in 1983. Next year, I’m finally getting a poem in Kaleidoscope after trying for five years. And I’m reading my Ice Poems on January 7 as part of a college art exhibit. 3 hours on Keeping an Artist’s Journal but it’s too long. Some things never change.
Nancy Scott of Easton, Pennsylvania, is an essayist and poet. Her 500-plus bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and as local radio commentaries. Recent work has appeared in Kaleidoscope, The Lutheran Journal, Opening Stages, and Whole Living Journal. Her second chapbook, Leveling the Spin, is now available.
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Squashed Baby Pigs

Writing Childhood Memories

by Tara Arlene Innmon
In the depths of our hearts, we often feel tugs from the old and the young that make us appreciate the past and the present. The experiences of my life shaped me into who I am now. I want to go back into my childhood and bring back that little girl and write her stories in her voice. I also want to include the adult I am now who thinks she has learned some lessons.
I sit down to write this essay, but little Arlene, the child I was, tugs at my arm. Little Arlene intrudes into the writing whenever I, the adult, write about her. Even now she complains, saying, “Why do you have to write an essay? What the heck is that?”
I tell her, “I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m done. It won’t be long.”
She wraps her arms around her chest and glares at me. “You’d better tell it right,” she warns.
As a child I followed my mother into her garden, down to the basement, and in her kitchen. I told her about the things that interested me: what someone said in school, what happened on TV, or what one of my brothers just did. I knew she wasn’t listening. I vowed that when I had my own children I would sit down, face them, and really listen to them.
I wasn’t able to do that. Food had to be cooked and dishes had to be done. My son’s chattering exhausted me. He persisted in telling me stories just as I had told my mother. That child’s voice has to come out and eventually find a listener.
The child’s voice is not especially reliable, but does it matter? As I followed my mother around the house telling her the stories of the things I did when I was out in the world and away from her, I embellished my stories to see if she would turn around and look at me and say, “Really?” with interest in her eyes rather than the bored, tired look I usually saw. Once I got caught.
I was leaning against the sink in the crowded kitchen, with its green linoleum, and my mother was stirring something in a pot on the stove. I really wasn’t supposed to be in there. Maybe she would like to hear about what happened during the week I’d been with Becky, the neighbor girl on her grandparent’s farm in Montevideo? It was the only time I’d been on a farm, and I loved it. My career choice at the time was to marry a farmer and have many kids and play with them in the barn and up the trees in the woods. My mother had grown up on a farm and looked bored and distracted as usual, as I spoke. What could I say to make the story more interesting? She had told me before that sometimes a mother pig would roll over and crush her babies.
“A mother pig had babies.”
“Oh?” she said looking bored at the clock hanging on the greasy wall in front of her.
“Yeah, and the mother was really huge and she turned to her other side and some of the cute pink babies got killt”
She turned and looked at me, “Really? That happened at our farm, too. How many were killed?”
My heart pounded. She actually listened to me. “She had a lotta babies, I don’t know how many, but three of them were squashed flat!”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Oh it was. I cried, but Becky didn’t she said she’s seen that before.”
Later that day, Becky came over to see if I could play. My mother said, “Becky, I heard about the baby pigs that were killed when the mother rolled over them. That’s too bad.”
Becky told her, “That didn’t happen.” They both turned and looked at my red face.
When I told the story that way, I saw the squashed pigs, and I still can. The ten and under child experiences fantasy the same as the “real” event. The adult reliving memories sometimes slips into the fantasy she may have experienced as a child.
Once at a workshop on writing from movement, we did an exercise that involved lying still and then moving as the body directed. I wiggled my feet, but suddenly, Arlene was wiggling my feet. She said, “Memories come from wiggling feet, of bare feet in berries and dandelion stickers.” We were in my grandmother’s backyard. At the time, I was losing vision from glaucoma and couldn’t see my handwriting, so I used a tape recorder to write. I turned on the recorder, but before I could get it all down, she ducked under the willow and said, “Willows cover, hiding, peeking out.” I kept wiggling my feet to keep her going, and crawled under the willow branches to join her. She popped out again saying, “Next to berries, luscious berries, poisonous to birds!” She ducked in and bounced out again and again in delight.
With my cumbersome adult body and tape recorder buttons, I tried to keep up, her words screaming through the tangled yard. I shaped those words into a poem, but how much changed going through my adult vocal cords and vocabulary? How much did I forget, she spoke so fast, and how much did I inadvertently direct with my knowledge about her future?
As a writer in the first memoir draft, I let the child have her way, and I write what she says in my mind. Her world is small, she only partially understands things outside herself and she doesn’t know the future. I know the troubles she will get herself into, and I squeal, “Aha!” as connections are made. I write down these nuggets of insight as they occur. They get stuck in between the child’s words, jarring a reader and confusing him as to which narrator is speaking, the child or the adult. Weeding out the adult voice from the child’s and deciding when to allow the adult to have her say, without interrupting the flow, becomes the baffling job of revision.
My mother, the adult who couldn’t listen well to me, is now a part of my adult self. Not only couldn’t I listen to my children, but also I am unable to listen well to little Arlene every time she speaks.
When the child hunches over, looks down at her tightly fisted hands, and mumbles, “I don’t want to remember this,” the writing gets hard. Who is speaking? Is it little Arlene, my fantasy-writing assistant, or the grown-up Arlene who knows how it will all turn out?
And what about the reliability of the adult voice? What can I say about my making things up now as an adult? I sanction the adding of details of events and conversations I don’t remember as a necessity for the sake of creating an interesting story. I don’t squash pigs anymore, but my mother is dead and I’m still looking for a reader to turn and look at me and say “Really?” with interest. Besides my uncanny ability to be inventive, I also am trying to remember things that happened almost fifty years ago. Now I look at those vague memories through the filter of therapy and the experience of raising my own children, perhaps remembering their childhood voice more than my own. Perhaps my own children are reflected in little Arlene’s proddings.
And what about the squashed pigs? If I stretch the metaphor as I stretch the truth I can talk about how my mother squashed little Arlene’s voice and, yes, her spirit, flattened her so she could grow up, and be less annoying to other adults.
I came out of school believing I couldn’t write. The Scandinavian culture in which I was raised in the Midwest tended to have that effect on childrenpreferring silence and work to self-expression and creativity. “Flattened, kilt,” the writer’s voice in me could only whimper out a poem or two for many years, and silently scribble its complaints in diaries, never to be shared.
What did this squashing do to the child’s perception of self and stored memories? This sounds bitter and hopeless. I am not. I’m excited and hopeful about my writing. I admit, the more I write the more thinly I stretch the “creative” in “creative nonfiction.” I started out with the naive belief I would only write what I truly remembered. That’s not fun and not interesting to read. I want to let both the child’s and the adult’s voice fly like a hot-air balloon set free. Then, during revision, I can pull those voices back in again, deciding what stays and what doesn’t.
My goal is for the child and her feelings to be understood and appreciated. I’ve learned my lesson about getting caught in the act of a clear lie. I want to tell what I believe is the truth. I want that small child to be finally understood.
Tara Arlene Innmon was working as an occupational therapist when she began losing vision. She turned to her first love, visual art, and exhibited across the United States. When totally blind, she started writing, publishing numerous pieces in literary journals. While earning her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction, she is writing her childhood memoir. E-mail her at: tarainnmon@visi.com.
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Butterfly

by Judith Hendrickx
I wrote this piece after a counseling session for parental loss/bereavement with a young adolescent of thirteen. I am a hospice counselor. Her father was killed only months before. In counseling I also use art therapy and sand tray. She was sitting by the sand tray, arranging a family of tiny dolls, representing her family. She was also sitting beside a large window, with a garden outside. Her silhouette was outlined by light shining in from the window.
I then noticed a Monarch butterfly, hovering on the other side of the window, above her blonde hair. It had been a very long time since I had actually seen a live butterfly, due to my vision loss. The butterfly appeared to be very large, and extraordinarily beautiful. For me, this image was surreal, otherworldly, and all that I could see was the child, the sand tray, the beautiful butterfly; all surrounded and highlighted by beams of light. Did the butterfly represent her deceased father watching over her? Perhaps.
I was touched deeply, and I still am as I recall how moving this archetypal visual/mind/spiritual experience was.
She is sitting at the table, light reflecting on her golden hair.

Golden sand shifts, moves. A sand tray

moves and shifts like time.
Beyond the glass window, butterfly wings flutter.

Wings move, light reflects golden auburn wings.

Light reflects Monarch wings of bright intensity.

Colors of transcendence,

shades of impermanence,

colors of approaching autumn,
Day of the Dead the child reminisces.

Candles glow, reflect a ritual,

reflect time passed away.

Outlined in black, like a shroud of death

wings flutter, beams of light capture gazes.

Oh, wings of time child of phases,

goldenhaired child with autumn leaf wings,
For a moment, all time is suspended.

Child of light with wings of light,

she is a messenger of memories remembered as bright,

memories of being Daddy’s babe again.
Judith Hendrickx holds graduate certification in rehabilitation counseling and art therapy. She provides individual and supportgroup counseling regarding vision loss for a community resource program in Santa Rosa, California. Working through grief is often necessary. She uses art therapy as well as experiences gained through her own vision loss after six retinal surgeries.
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Why Should God Bless America?

by Andrea Pulcini
America the beautiful, America the freed,

America the wasteful, the needy, the greed.

America the sunlight, America the rain,

America the sinful, the hateful, the pain.

America the proud, America the brave,

America the intolerant, the spiteful, the grave.

America the rich, America the poor,

America the wrathful, wanting more, more, more!
America the hypocrite, America the insane,

Don’t do as I’m doing, just do as I’m saying.

America of the diverse, America of the same,

America of the righteous, America of the lame.

America of diversity, yellow, orange, red,

Armed forces, policemen, terrorism dread.

America of ghettos, and the avenue of stars,

Afraid of landing in the courts, longing to land on Mars.
America the tortured, America of the tamed,

America of the brainwashed, and always inflamed.

America of convictions about what’s right and what’s wrong,

From too much information, watching television for too long.

America that kills doctors in favor of pro life,

America going out in the hood with a gun and a knife.

America the opulent, America overdressed,

America the frightened, the shamed and the oppressed.

America the uninvolved, America asleep,

America the lazy, America, what the bleep?
America I love, America I hate,

America that diets so we won’t be overweight.

America strives for thin and fit, constantly working out,

America wants to be Botoxed from both within and without.

America is split, but can reunite once more,

If you’re a Democrat marry a Republican, if you’re a prince marry a whore.

I love all of America, the sex, music and drugs,

But the drug companies take advantage of us, they’re turning into thugs.
And what ever happened to a state’s right to govern?

Did it fall into the oven? Get eaten by a coven?

Were leaders tagged by McCarthy? Let’s bring back McGovern.
America is powerful in all shapes and sizes,

Sometimes good, sometimes bad, only God criticizes.

So lay your demons all to rest, for none of that matters.

We all have them, we all know, it’s just like “Shoots and Ladders.”
Remember that game when you were a kid?

Going up, then down backwards, then forward till you did

Get it right in the end, if you were able.

Life’s a game like that, or is it a stable?

I think it’s a movie with men like Clark Gable.

There’s drama and pain, laughter and shame,

Like in a book, music or on Cable,

Life will surprise you, make you think twice,

Like a microorganism you find on your table.
There’s a way to play nice, it’s right here and right now;

So don’t be a pansy, don’t be a cow.

Be a dragonfly, and zip and then zing;

Be a panda bear, or any damn thing,

That you want to be, just tell me your wish.

The world understands that we don’t have to fish.
America, play nice, America, play fair.

Their toys? Our toys? Why can’t we all share?
Andrea Pulcini spent time abroad as a child. She will complete her memoir while earning her M.F.A. in creative writing. She has worked for large maritime corporations and, recently, for an independent living program. In 1998 she was diagnosed with bipolar syndrome and spent two years in and out of rehabilitation facilities.
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Now, About That New Waitress

by Elizabeth Fiorite
Most of us regulars at Sally’s Diner thought we knew the new night shift waitress pretty good. She was a lookerand young, too. She told us her name was Barbara. When Mike called her “Barbie Doll,” he got served last and found that his omelet and black coffee were cool.
“The name is Barbara,” she informed him. So, like I said, we all thought we knew Barbara, okay. But not after last Friday night.
When the 11 P.M. shift from the factory ends, the diner always fills up fast. Mike is standing by our favorite booth, close to the counter. He waves us over. I see Barbara is working the counter, and I give her a little smile, which she returns.
All of a sudden, this new guy, not one of us from the factory, comes dashing in. He runs up to the one empty stool at the counter; leans over it, and in a hoarse whisper, he says, “Bunny!”
Barbara looks up from the glasses she’s been filling and drops one of them. You can hardly hear the crash, there’s so much other clamor going on, but I’m close enough to hear almost everything this guy is saying. Barbara doesn’t even look down at the broken glass and ice cubes on the floor. Her mouth has formed a perfect little O.
The guy says, “Bunny, I’ve been lookin’ for you ever since I got out. You got to come with me. I won’t make the same mistake. I got everything figured out.”
He starts talking faster. Barbara moves closer to him. Without breaking her gaze, she reaches under the counter for her purse. I try to signal the guys at the booth to pipe down so I can hear what this guy is saying. Later, I tell the police I didn’t hear nothin’ and I didn’t see nothin’. I figure Barbara’s got her reasons.
“Your ma’s dyin’, anyway, and you don’t need to be stayin’ in that dump with your drunk of a father.”
He starts to say more, but Barbara pulls a small pistol from her bag, points it at his chest, and fires. The pop of the gun is barely heard, and by the time the guy hits the floor, Barbara returns the gun to her bag, which she slips over her shoulder as she disappears out the door.
Elizabeth Fiorite is a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. She has a master’s degree in education and has been a teacher and principal in Catholic elementary schools. Presently, she is a social services counselor at Independent Living for the Adult Blind in Jacksonville, Florida. Elizabeth has been legally blind since 1990.
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Beyond the Call of Duty

by Bobbi LaChance
It was a hot summer night in Portland, Mainewell over 100 degrees. We left the windows open when we went to bed, hoping for a breeze. Half awake and half asleep, I heard footsteps in the kitchen. One of the children must be sneaking a cookie. I thought I heard the familiar clink of the glass lid on the jar, but I didn’t want to wake up.
On the edge of drifting into a deeper sleep I heard footsteps tiptoe into my bedroom, then tiptoe outsqueaky floorboards. From the kitchen, I heard a strange noise, then all was quiet. With sudden awareness, I bolted upright in bed listening. I heard another movement in the kitchen. “Oh My God,” I thought, “there’s someone in the house. Are my children all right?” Ever so slowly, as my feet touched the floor, reaching down, I unhooked my guide dog, Wicket, and crept softly toward the bedroom door. Wicket stayed right at my side. Just as I reached the threshold of the doorway, I slipped my hand around the door molding and flicked the kitchen light on.
Suddenly, I heard a scream as my five-year-old daughter, Lisa, barreled into me yelling, “There is a man in the kitchen!” I felt Wickets fur go by my leg, and then all hell broke loose.
My seven-year-old son, Christopher, appeared to the left of me in the hallway. “Mama, I’ve got my baseball bat, I’ll get him.”
I heard a menacing growl, and teeth clicking as if to bite. For an instant, the room seemed still, then a voice screeched, “Call off that dog! Call off that dog!”
Christopher started toward the intruder. I grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas and pulled him close to me. Sure that the bat was our defense, he was not letting go of it. “Where is he?” I cried. There was a roaring in my ears, and I could hear my heart beating.
“Wicket has him pinned between the refrigerator and the cabinet,” Christopher told me. “Every time he tries to move, Wicket acts like he’s going to bite him.”
Once again, Christopher stepped forward with his bat raised. I pulled him in again.
“Call off that damn dog!” squealed the man.
I held my two children tight against me. The roar in my ears wouldn’t stop. I could neither think nor react. I felt my daughter quivering against my left side, and noticed warm liquid on my toes as my daughter lost control of her bladder. As I reached behind me and dialed zero on the phone, the growling and cursing continued.
“Operator,” said a voice.
“Police!” I yelled into the phone.
In a matter of seconds, a male voice responded, “Portland Police Department.”
In one breath I said, “There is a man in my kitchenmy guide dog won’t stop growlingmy daughter just peed on the floor because she is scared.”
“Where do you live, ma’am?” asked the officer.
“I don’t know,” I hysterically answered.
Again the shrill voice of the man cut through our conversation, “Get rid of this dog! Get rid of this dog!”
“He’s in the kitchen,” I stammered, “the children and I are here aloneI am blind.”
“Ma’am,” said the officer very patiently, “can you tell me your address?”
“Address,” I repeated. “Let me thinkwhat’s my address?” Today they could find me instantly, but our trouble that night preceded 911.
“I need your address, ma’am,” the officer said again very patiently.
“I don’t know,” I repeated, agitated by these questions. I stood holding the phone away from me as if it were some strange object. Nothing made sense.
Christopher grabbed the phone out of my hand and began talking to the officer, telling him, “Her name is Mommy, but her real name is Jenny Gilmore, and we live at 12 Myrtle Street, second floor, in Portland. I have a baseball bat, and he is not going to hurt my mom or my sister.”
Relieved that Christopher had answered the officer’s questions, I took back the telephone. “There is a man in my kitchen and my dog is holding him at bay and I have two very frightened children,” I told the officer with a great deal more composure. The dog’s growls seemed to get deeper, and I could hear the snapping of his teeth.
“Don’t you try to move,” threatened Christopher holding up the bat.
Tightening my arms around him, “Down, hero,” I said.
“Mrs. Gilmore, someone is on the way,” the police officer said in a reassuring voice, “I will keep this line open until the officers arrive. Can you tell medoes the intruder have a weapon or is he armed with anything?”
“Christopher,” I pleaded, “Can you see from here? Does he have any type of weapon?”
Christopher responded, “No, Mama, I don’t think so. He’s standing between the cabinet and the refrigerator. He’s sweating like crazy, and he’s got his hands over his ears. Mama, he looks scared Wicket is going to bite him.” I repeated what Christopher told me.
“I will continue to keep this line open,” repeated the officer.
We felt a moment of relief, knowing the police were on their way. “Mama,” Christopher whispered, “He’s starting to move. I bet he wants to get away.”
Wicket, seeing this movement, suddenly lunged forward, giving three ferocious barks. I could hear the sound of his snapping teeth. “Get him away! Get him away! He’s gonna kill me!” he screamed.
Suddenly, whether from anticipation or fear, silence prevailed. I could hear the ticking of my kitchen clock, as well as traffic in the street below. The refrigerator motor kicked on. Every muscle in Christopher’s back tightened. I hugged him closer to me as he raised the bat in his hand, whispering, “I’ll protect you and Lisa, Mama.”
In the distance, I could hear sirens wailing, then I heard the sound of car doors, slamming, heavy footsteps in the stairwell, and a loud banging at my front door. Christopher bolted out of my arms and ran to answer it. Doing as he had been taught, he asked, “Who is it?”
“Portland Police Department,” boomed a voice from the other side.
Christopher opened the door wide to let the officers in. There seemed to be mass confusion as two police officers entered the kitchen.
My daughter Lisa, squeezing my waist tight, burying her face in my nightgown, in a muffled voice asked, “Mama, They’ve got guns. Are they going to shoot us?”
I couldn’t find my voice, but I patted her shoulder reassuringly. Finally, I leaned down and whispered, “No, sweetheart. They’re here to help us.”
The roar in my ears became louder. My legs felt like rubber.
One of the police officers sized up the situation very quickly. “Ma’am, take a seat there at the kitchen table.” Gently, he placed his hand on my shoulder, guiding me to the chair. My daughter dragged her feet as I pulled her along with me.
Christopher came to stand at my side, bat still held tightly in hand. Evidently the man tried to move from his position, teeth snapped and the growls sounded like they came from a wolf instead of my gentle guide dog. The officer pulled out a chair.
“Check out the rest of the apartment.” He ordered his junior partner.
“Call off this dog,” pleaded the intruder. The senior officer didn’t respond. Leaving the situation alone, he began filling out his paperwork. The intruder begged again, “Please get this dog away from me!”
The officer replied, “Your troubles have just started, pal, never mind the dog.” When his partner returned, explaining that the rest of the apartment was secure, the senior officer told him, “Cuff him.”
His partner asked, “What about the dog?”
The senior officer very quietly said to me, “Ma’am, call off your dog.”
“Wicket,” I said, “come.” Wicket obediently came around the corner of the table, sat down, and put his head in my lap. I rubbed his shoulders and ruffled his ears to let him know that everything was all right. “Good boy,” I whispered.
After the man was removed from the apartment, the senior officer shut and locked the window through which the intruder had entered. “Better have your landlord check this window tomorrow,” he suggested. “If you need further assistance, just call.”
As soon as the police left, Christopher, Lisa and I pushed the refrigerator in front of the window. I bathed Lisa, and found her a clean nightgown. We decided to leave the kitchen light on for the rest of the night. Crawling into bed, I began to shake from head to toe. If this was a nightmare, I just wanted to wake up.
“Mama, can I sleep with you?” came a small voice from the bedroom door.
“Sure,” I said,” lifting the cover, “Come on in.”
“Christopher’s coming, too.”
I heard small bare feet on the kitchen floor, then Christopher came through the doorway. “Can I sleep here, too?” he asked, “That way I could protect you.”
Feeling warm tears in my eyes, I threw back the other side of the covers. He crawled in, baseball bat and all! The three of us snuggled together.
All of a sudden I felt the weight of two paws on the foot of the bed. I reached down, “Just this once,” I said. As a smile crossed my face, I felt the dog’s weight settle across my feet. “You deserve this, Wicket. You went way beyond the call of duty.”
Bobbi LaChance has two grown children and resides in Auburn, Maine. Her housemates are her guide dog, Kaddy, and a Maine coon cat named Pepper. She performs live poetry, but her passion in life is writing. She has completed three novels, which she is attempting to publish. Her hobbies are reading and baking.
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Her Day Versus My Day

by Brad Goldstein
For six months after my stroke, the only time I left the house was to go to therapy or to accompany my parents, relatives, or close friends somewhere. It wasn’t because I was afraid of falling or getting hurt. It wasn’t because I couldn’t drive, because there was a bus stop right outside my development. My reason was embarrassment. I didn’t want to be seen.
After eight months, I finally gathered the courage to leave my house alone. I got on the bus and went to the local mall, first to the computer store, then to visit the store I worked at before my stroke. I couldn’t speak well enough to be understood, and still can’t for that matter. Instead I use a machine to type into, and then I hit “speak” and the machine speaks the words I typed.
I started to get hungry, so I stopped at the food court. I sat down to eat and noticed two middle-aged women sitting at the next table. What brought my attention to these two ladies was that one of them had a loud, high-pitched, shrill, irritating voice that I’m quite sure, under the right circumstances, could shatter glass. She spoke with a New York accent, and waved her hands and arms around like she was conducting an orchestra or trying to signal a plane.
“How was your flight?” her friend asked.
“Yesterday was the most awful day in my entire life,” she responded as she threw back her head and rolled her eyes.
I wonder what percentage of people actually believes that when they say it. By the way, when someone starts out by telling you, “yesterday was the most awful day in my entire life,” excuse yourself politely, maybe say you have to use the restroom. Then climb into your car and drive away. If the person doing the bitching drove you, call a cab. Trust me, you’ll live much longer.
“So we arrived at the airport an hour early to do our bags and go through security and, of course, our plane was delayed an hour and a half. So we just had to wait at the terminal. I got up and complained to the flight attendant at the counter three times.”
Can you believe they made her and her family sit in an airconditioned building, for over an hour? Those bastards!
“So the plane finally arrives.” The plane was just an hour late. “And I get stuck with the seat behind some four-year-old who is screaming and kicking my chair during the whole flight.”
She should actually consider herself lucky. I always get stuck between the reeking drunk who belches during the entire flight and overweight women with bad body odor. You’ll never find a scented candle with that mixture of aromas.
“Then to make matters worse” “Oh my God, you mean it gets worse?” “Jamie, my youngest, is whining that his ear is hurting him. So we finally arrive at Fort Lauderdale airport. The plane lost our luggage.” Can’t you just hear the violins playing? “We finally got our luggage this morning!” Do I hear trumpets? Thank goodness. One more day without her luggage and she would have had a nervous breakdown.
Let me compare my worst day with hers. I went to sleep on January 12, 2004, around midnight, but before I did, I took some Tylenol and my allergy medication because I had a mild headache. I woke up at four o’clock in the morning. My headache was much worse, my speech sounded garbled, and I was extremely dizzy. I didn’t call 911 or wake my parents, a mistake I will regret for the rest of my life. Because I had anxiety attacks in the past and the symptoms felt quite similar, I didn’t want to make my parents pay for another visit to the hospital.
I awoke at eight in the morning, and by that time, my speech was completely unintelligible, and I felt very weak. It wasn’t like a virus or the flu. My head felt achy, sore, heavy, and empty. This wasn’t normal, and I knew it. Despite all my efforts to stay awake and go get help, my eyes closed and I began drifting back to sleep. I hoped all these symptoms were just a result of being tired.
When I next woke up, at approximately ten, my body wanted more sleep, but something told me if I didn’t get up and go for help, I might not wake up again. It took all my effort just to roll over. My body felt like a bag of rocks. I managed to get one of my legs off the bed and onto the floor. When I tried to stand, my leg immediately collapsed from the weight of my body and I came crashing down to my knees. I crawled to my door and tried to lift my right arm to turn the doorknob. Much to my dismay, my arm just stayed at my side, like the arm of a corpse. I used my other arm and hand to turn the doorknob, which proved to be difficult, since that arm remained partially crippled from my brain tumor when I was six. I managed to turn the knob and saw my mother standing behind the kitchen counter making her morning breakfast.
My body wobbled from side to side as I desperately tried to move forward toward her. With her help, I got back to a standing position. She asked what was wrong, but I could only respond with incoherent grunts and moans. I motioned for her to give me a piece of paper, which she did. I wrote in big scribble letters, “can’t move arm, can’t move leg, can’t talk, please help.” She leaned me against the counter and ran to wake up my father. We called my cousin, who is a pharmacist, and asked him which hospital we should use. Despite being scared, I was actually laughing uncontrollably during all these events, yet I felt no reason to be amused. Later, I learned that uncontrollable, inappropriate laughter can be a symptom of a stroke.
All three of us rushed to Fort Lauderdale to the hospital. We filled out their forms and waited forever before I was taken into the emergency room. Finally, various doctors examined me, and authorized tests. After reviewing the results, they gave my family a diagnosis. At only twenty-five years-old, I, Brad Goldstein, had suffered a stroke.
Yet, despite all this, January 13, 2004, was not the worst day of my life. Before my parents accompanied me to intensive care, kissed me goodbye and then left the hospital, my mother asked me if I was scared. I could not speak, so I used a board they gave me with all the letters of the alphabet on it. I spelled out “No.”
“Why not?” my mom asked.
I used the board to explain, “I am only twenty five years-old. I could not have had a stroke. This all must just be a bad dream.” I was in such a state of denial that I believed this without a doubt in my mind. I believed that any minute, I would wake up at home in my bed. My body would be as it always was, and all of this would be a fading memory.
The day after was the worst day of my life, because on that day, it became real. I could no longer deny it. Do you think that lady at the mall would like to trade worst days?
The reason this lady got me so miffed is quite simple. I want to live this lady’s life where the biggest problems are some minor inconveniences on a flight to my winter vacation. Because, after all, that’s just what they were; minor, annoying, insignificant inconveniences. Yes, they’re stressful, yes, they’re frustrating, but we all have to deal with them. However, we live through them and put them behind us. And, after all, I still have her inconveniences if I take a trip where everything doesn’t fall in place as it should. I just add hers to my own. What if we switched roles? I would gladly walk a mile in her shoes, wait in the terminal, or efficiently complain about lost luggage without having to use a machine. Would she as willingly spend one hour playing my part?
Brad Goldstein was born in northern Illinois. He earned his B.A. in multimedia from Columbia College in Chicago. Brad works as a web designer for the American Alliance, a company that aids the disabled in job searches and advocates on their behalf.
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Secrets

by Nicole Bissett
Dawn Bennet put on the finishing touches of her makeup and paced the living room of her studio apartment. She stood before Lorette Robins, her best friend from childhood, who was lounging on the couch. It was Saturday night, and Lorette was there to offer moral support.
“Well,” Dawn said, clearly fishing for compliments.
Lorette smiled. “You look great,” she said.
Dawn smoothed her black pants and straightened her red sweater. “Am I too informal?” she asked.
“Like I said five minutes ago, no. You weren’t too informal in the other two outfits you put on tonight, either.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know, I’m a pain. I just want to be sure.”
Dawn had already changed twice. The first time, she wore her favorite blue dress but thought she looked like a church secretary. The second time, she wore a new pair of jeans and a big green sweater but decided it was too casual.
“Should I just call this off?” Dawn waited for Lorette to say yes. No such luck.
“If you don’t meet him, you’ll never know if it will really work out.”
Dawn stopped pacing and flopped down on an armchair opposite Lorette. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I just don’t know if I can go through with this. I hope it doesn’t matter to him.”
“It won’t matter,” Lorette assured her. “Not if he’s the great guy you say he is. Just give it a chance.”
“I hope he doesn’t think less of me when he finds out.”
“If he thinks less of you, he’s shallow, and you wouldn’t want him anyway. I just don’t know why you wouldn’t tell him. Telling him would have taken away some of this tension.”
Dawn shrugged. “I guess I should have. I just didn’t want it to be all we talk about. That happens, you know.”
“But if it was all you were going to talk about, then you could have found out before tonight.”
“I know, I know.”
Three months ago, Dawn had been seeking a source for a story. She had to interview someone who represented the other side of a skirmish with a local teacher’s union. The only one she could locate was Jack Slade, a public relations representative for the state department of education who worked out of Los Angeles. Jack gave her an interview, and afterward, they communicated by phone and emails on the quiet. They talked of politics, religion, their dreams. Everything exceptone significant thing.
Two weeks ago, when Jack began pressing her to go out with him, Dawn explained that it was against the ethics of journalism to date sources. That was no lie, and it served as a good excuse. If the Gazette knew she was meeting him, she’d be fired. But that was the least of her worries.
Now she had things on her terms. He saw an attractive picture she had taken before her world turned upsidedown a year ago. She hoped that image wouldn’t change after tonight.
At twenty-six, Dawn had forged an admirable career in journalism, working at the city section of the East San Diego County Gazette. She was proud of this aspect of her life, after all she had been forced to overcome. Jack knew her as a competent career woman, but he didn’t know the most obvious thing. Too many people treated her with less respect when they knew.
In the end, despite all the concerns, curiosity and strong attraction won out. Jack had a threeday weekend and convinced her to meet him if he came and stayed at a hotel. This would be her first date in a year and a half.
Dawn sprayed on some Rare Gold, her favorite perfume, and brushed out her waistlength blond hair. At five-foot-five, she had a slender figure with curves in all the right places. She hadn’t smiled much in the past year, but when she began talking to Jack, things started changing. The mere thought of him could bring a smile to her face. Dawn wondered, as she went to her closet for a jacket, if she would lose that after tonight.
“I feel nauseous. I better cancel.”
Lorette rose from the couch and went to her. “You’re fine now,” she insisted, putting a reassuring hand on Dawn’s shoulder, “let’s just go.”
The January night felt like true winter, with a chill that was becoming more characteristic of California by the year. It felt good to sit in Lorette’s car and bask in the warmth of the heater. Too good.
“You’re gonna be okay from here?” Lorette asked as she directed Dawn to the door of Laurie’s Diner.
Dawn nodded. “As okay as I’ll ever be. Think I should change again?”
They both laughed. “Into what? You didn’t bring anything.”
“Into someone else.”
“You’ll be fine.”
Dawn pulled her collapsible white cane from her purse.
“Thanks a million,” she said. “I’ll call you if he turns out to be Ted Bundy.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Okay, okay. Here goes nothing.” She opened the door and waved goodbye.
The small diner was warm and had the atmosphere of a cozy living room. Dawn went to the front counter with her cane, and a woman approached her there. When people saw her cane, they were often anxious to assistwhether she needed it or not. Tonight, she needed it.
“Hi there,” she said. “I’m Carol, a waitress here. I believe I’ll be serving you. Are you looking for Jack Slade?”
The question threw Dawn off guard and she felt her face grow white. “Uh, well, actually, yes.” Dawn was sure the pounding of her heart had to be audible.
“He’s been waiting for you. Here,” she offered her elbow. “Grab an arm and I’ll take you right to him.”
With a trembling hand, Dawn took Carol’s elbow gratefully. She didn’t want Jack to watch her negotiate the restaurant with her cane. Knowing her luck, she would run into a table and knock over a drink.
“Dawn, I’m here.”
It was unmistakably Jack. Dawn would know that voice anywhere. It was strong and confident, yet soothing. She had come to associate it with good humor and depth of character.
His tone suggested everything was all right, but Dawn wished she could see the look on his face. Surely he saw the cane under her arm. Surely he had to think something was strange about her holding on to the elbow of a waitress.
It seemed Carol and Jack shared some kind of knowledge between them. Though she couldn’t see them, Dawn sensed they were exchanging knowing glances, or smiles, or something.
“Here he is,” she said.
Jack stood and took Dawn’s hand. His hand was rough, as if he was accustomed to physical labor. His grip was firm and warm.
“Thank you,” he said to Carol. “Now I have to do something about this twit.”
He often teased her this way on the phone, and it occurred to Dawn that he knew. Furthermore, he seemed amused.
“You’re more beautiful in person than in the photo,” Jack said, letting go of her hand to pull out a chair for her. “You didn’t tell me you were going to be this beautiful. Was there anything else you forgot to mention?”
Dawn laughed nervously. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Jack placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Sit down,” he offered.
Dawn collapsed her cane, put it in her purse, and sat beside Jack.
“You know,” he said, “you really didn’t have to keep your blindness from me. Why did you?”
Dawn removed her coat and placed it on the back of her chair. “I didn’t want you to think of me as different. I haven’t let myself get emotionally involved with anyone since I went blind a year ago. I guess I was too afraid.”
“Were you afraid with me?” The amusement was gone from his tone and replaced with concern.
“Very,” Dawn admitted.
Jack took her hand between his two. “What did you think I would do if I knew?”
Dawn shrugged. “It wasn’t so much that I thought you’d decide not to meet me. Like Lorette said, if you were going to react that way then you would have been shallow and not worth meeting.”
“Well put.”
“Well, I was more afraid you would just look at me as blind instead of Dawn. People do that. They can only relate to me in terms of blindness, and they don’t know how to talk with me on any other level. That’s something I’m still adjusting to, and it gets old fast. I couldn’t take that from you. I didn’t want you asking how I did my job, or how I cooked, or dressed myself and all that stupid crap, before we’d even met in person.”
Jack was quiet at first, then suddenly laughed out loud.
“What’s funny,” Dawn asked, annoyed.
“Just so you know, since we’re into exposing truths, I’ve known you were blind for two weeks now. I just figured you did these things somehow.”
Dawn was stunned. Two weeks ago, he had started pressing her to meet him more persistently. “How did you find out?”
“I called the Gazette and told someone named Cathy I was interviewing with you, and she told me you had already left with your driver. Since I had been suspecting something was up for a while, I asked her why you needed a driver, and that’s when she told me you were blind.”
“That Cathy,” Dawn said, “what a mouth. Not that she was supposed to help keep the secret, but”
“The point is, it wouldn’t have mattered if you had told me when we met on the phone. I happen to work with a guy who’s blind. I see how he does things.”
“You mentioned that.”
“Last week, right.”
“To get me to tell you.”
“I couldn’t get you to bite.”
Dawn’s face reddened. “I’m sorry.”
“No harm done,” Jack said. “It was just a waste of fear on your part, and I could have put your mind to rest.”
Then a thought occurred to Dawn. “Why didn’t you put it to rest, then?” she demanded. “If you knew for two weeks, you could have done that.”
Jack laughed. “Well, that’s true, and I’m sorry. But I thought I could get you to tell me. When you didn’t, I wanted to see if you would really go through with meeting me.”
For a moment, Dawn felt annoyance, then, finally, peace. Everything was falling nicely into place.
“I just haven’t dated since I’ve gone blind.”
“It’s okay,” Jack said. “I’m honored to be your first blind date.”
They both laughed.
“Would you be offended if I asked you a question?” he asked.
“Probably no more offended than finding out that you’ve known about my blindness and didn’t choose to tell me.”
“How did it happen?”
“My blindness?”
Jack nodded. Then, remembering Dawn couldn’t see his answer, he said, “Yes.”
“Macular degeneration. It took my vision away slowly, so I had time to adjust, but I’ve had a harder time adjusting to people’s attitudes and dumb misconceptions.”
Carol approached their table then. “I see you two hit it off just fine,” she said.
“You could say that,” Jack said.
“Ready to order?” Carol asked.
They ordered dinner, and ate slowly. When the shop closed at ten, they walked hand in hand on a nearby beach and talked until the chill of the evening was more than they could stand.
Dawn felt safe with Jack. He didn’t seem uncomfortable guiding her when they walked.
He stood five-feet-ten, with lightbrown hair and hazel eyes. Lorette had described him when he sent his picture, so she knew he was handsome. Jack smelled of cologne or soap, as if he had just taken a shower before their meeting. The package in person was even better than on the phone, and Dawn found herself more attracted to Jack as the evening wore on. She wondered if he would kiss her on the beach, but he didn’t.
He drove Dawn home at 11:00 pm, where they talked on her couch until 3:00 am. Dawn felt good discussing her feelings about blindness, and her adjustment to it, with Jack. She inwardly cursed herself for keeping this side of her life from him.
At 3:00, Jack rose to leave.
“Why don’t you stay?” Dawn suggested. “On the couch, that is. It’s three in the morning.”
“No. We arranged what we arranged. I’ll call you tomorrow morning when I get up, whenever that is, and we’ll have breakfast.”
He took her into his arms, and the two finally enjoyed their first kiss. It was tentative at first, then grew deeper and more passionate. Jack was on the stocky side, which Dawn liked, and his embrace was strong and protective.
“Goodnight,” he said when they parted. “I’m going to leave before I change my mind about staying.”
“Smart move,” Dawn said.
At thirty-four, Jack had already endured a painful divorce, and he needed time to rebuild his life. Tonight had been a painful reminder for Dawn that there was still much she had to come to terms with, and she needed time for those adjustments.
For the first time since the day the doctor told her she would soon be totally blind, Dawn felt happyno, elated. She knew dating a source would be frowned on at work, and she would be fired if her editor found out. But she wasn’t going to let work take this chance for happiness away. Jack hadn’t been in the story’s photograph. Few people knew of his presence in her life anyway.
For the first time in a year, she felt like an attractive young woman with possibilities to live for, not just some blind wonder whose only life was work.
She could hardly sleep when Jack left. A ton of bricks had been lifted from her shoulders. She had conquered yet another hurdle. Now it was possible to see herself on a date and perhaps even married. There had always been a question in her mind about that. Better still, there were no more secrets between them. It appeared, at least from Jack’s perspective, the big secret wasn’t really so bad. As for the rest of her concerns, they would work themselves out in time. Now that she knew he could accept her blindness, she was sure of it.
Nicole Bissett lives in La Mesa, CA, with her sixteen-year-old son Eddie. She holds a bachelors degree in journalism with a minor in English.
Her profile articles appear regularly in Today’s Vintage Magazine and the Insurance Journal. She has written for “The Jonestown Report,” and has been a volunteer transcriber for the Jonestown Institute. Several of her pieces appeared in “The Gratitude Book Project,” which became a number one Amazon best-seller in December, 2010. She also acts as a ghost-writer for Kevin Cole, a life coach who founded Empowerment Quest International.
Nicole can be reached at softllc2011@gmail.com.
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Trauma, Heartbreak, Joy

by Kate Chamberlin
“I want to know what happens to those babies,” my Features Editor railed. “The moral and legal issues surrounding the adoption of a baby are emotionally charged. The moral code in our society says abstinence from sexual intercourse is best until there is a committed, legally sanctioned and spiritually blessed union.”
“It’s called marriage,” I inwardly groaned.
“Where there is a tear in society’s moral code, there is the reality of unwanted pregnancies. The moral and legal dilemma becomes what to do with those innocent babies. I want to know what happens to those babies.”
My assignment was clear. I started with several phone calls making some interview appointments. Little did I know just how indepth my investigative reporting would be.
When I walked into the home for unwed mothers, I didn’t see anyone in the front living room/lobby. Then a movement caught my eye, and I noticed a figure ensconced in an overstuffed armchair. She was barely discernible between the multicolored upholstery and her maternity top. Her very young face was nearly hidden by the mound of her belly now ninemonths pregnant.
Her pouting little mouth reminded me of a tiny rosebud not yet in fullbloom. I’ll call her Rose.
“I can’t afford to keep this baby,” Rose said in a soft voice full of finality. “My parents took in my first baby when I’d just turned 17. They’re old and don’t want another bastard. I can’t afford to keep a baby.”
“Would it be too oldfashioned of me to ask about the father?” I tentatively ventured, not wanting to break the rapport we were establishing.
“The first baby’s father was older than me,” Rose said. “I was into drinking, drugs and sex. He didn’t mean anything to me. And I know I was just a warm place to park it for him.”
I put my hands on hers. She didn’t pull away, but there was no warmth in them. Her eyes never left her lap to look at me. “I thought this baby’s father was real cute. He had a girlfriend, but I figured he liked me better. He told me to get rid of the baby, because he’s already paying child support to another girl.”
While we were talking, a social worker came into the room with a teen so pale I’ll call her Lily. Her story was a bit different from Rose’s but just as traumatic to her and her family.
“My boyfriend and I are very much in love,” Lily told me. “We want to be married, but our parents won’t let us. They say we’re too young. I’m already fourteen and he’s sixteen. We know what we want. This isn’t fair.”
Later, the social worker told me the babies of the girls at the home are placed in foster homes immediately after birth until an adoptive couple can be found. If the babies are healthy, their wait is very short. If the babies have drug addictions or other health or physical problems, the wait can be longer.
“Once the girls decide to give up their babies,” she explained, “they’re not encouraged to hold their newborns.”
“Don’t they need closure?” I asked fighting back the tears stinging my eyes. “These are but children themselves. How do they heal the emotional wounds?”
“We provide counseling services,” she said, “but some of the girls are still very angry, rebellious or have that It won’t happen to me again’ attitude. We do what we can, although the girls make the final choices about their lives. The infants are the ones who have no choice. The pregnancy may be unwanted, but there’s always someone who wants the baby.”
I looked forward to my interviews with Rose and Lily each week. It became much more than an indepth investigative reporting assignment and I think they enjoyed talking with me, too. They’d begun to trust me. I wondered if I could have made a difference in their lives if I’d met them sooner.
After Lily’s tiny, underweight son was stillborn, she and her parents moved out of state. They enrolled her in a private, therapeutic high school where her mind was challenged for the first time.
One day, Rose introduced me to her mother. I’ll call her Iris, because Rose’s mother had perfect posture, was well educated, had her own career, and was always a proper lady.
Iris was confused by her daughter’s behavior.
“One psychologist told us Rose is very angry,” Iris said during one of our afternoon tea times. “She said Rose was angry at us for not doing anything to be angry about. It doesn’t make sense.”
The scent from our rosehips herbal tea wafted warm and sweet adding poignancy to the moment. “Rose would talk about running away even as a little girl. We always took her seriously and tried to deal with each incident. Things escalated and the school got involved. Their confidentiality rules shut us out. They wanted us to talk to them, but they’d never share anything with us. Did you know they can get an abortion for a pregnant high school student without even notifying the parents? We went through the courts to have her declared a “Person In Need of Supervision” (PINS), but it came too little and too late to help Rose or us. I remember sitting in the waiting room of the social service worker who prepared the PINS petition. Rose started talking with a scruffy derelict of a youth waiting there. I listened in horror and embarrassment as these two discovered which parties they’d been to and people they knew. Social Services too quickly backed the child instead of really talking with the parents. We couldn’t get the support we needed as parents, especially after she turned sixteen.”
Late one evening, Iris telephoned me. “The hospital called me,” she said in her perfect voice trying to hide the tremor. “The police found Rose beaten and drugged in a back alley. They said she’s been stabbed. Will you go with me to see her?”
Two months earlier, Rose had given birth to a sickly little girl, left her in the hospital and disappeared for parts unknown.
Rose now lay in an ICU with tubes going in and out of her, machines whirring at the head of her bed breathing for her. Her lovely little face was swollen. The rose bud lips cracked and bruised.
“Tomorrow would have been Rose’s twenty-first birthday,” Iris sorrowfully whispered as the heart machine showed a flatline. “I was so happy to have given birth to a daughter.”
Iris gently brushed the blood caked hair off Rose’s forehead as her tears splashed an unconditional blessing of love on her child for the last time. “I never thought it would turn out like this.”
Three weeks after Rose’s funeral, I went to meet Iris at the hospital nursery. She saw me through the glass and came closer. She held up a rather jaundiced little baby with very dark eyes, so, I’ll call her Susan.
Later in the hospital cafeteria sipping the now familiar rose hips tea, Iris explained how she’d gone about finding Rose’s second baby. “We loved Rose’s first baby right from the start,” Iris said with a tone of contentment I hadn’t noticed before. “We thought that having them live with us would allow Rose time to learn how to be a mother and get her life in order, but she was really still just a child herself. When she found out she was pregnant for the second time, she took it upon herself to run away. Eventually, she ended up in the home for unwed mothers. They contacted me and did some counseling with all of us. It was too little and too late. After Susan’s birth, Rose ran away again.”
Iris’ tears threatened to spill over, but she continued, “We’ve found such joy in being with Rose’s first baby. I wondered what happened to the second one. Susan was so sickly; she’s been in the hospital since her birth. Perhaps a miracle will happen and a heart and a liver will be found for her. We’ve been certified to adopt the first baby and we want to adopt this baby too. For now, I just cherish the time I have with her.”
“That’s very altruistic,” I said gently. “It’s going to be very hard to raise two little kids at ”
“My age,” Iris finished my sentence when I paused to find the right words. “My husband and I are middleaged. We’re healthy and can financially handle raising children now better than we could with our first children. We have the time, patience and wisdom gained through experience we didn’t have as young parents.”
“What about your career?” I asked indelicately.
“Rose’s toddler is in day-care a couple of days a week, then he’ll be in school. I can fit my work schedule around the children’s schedules. The day-care is very good,” Iris said with enthusiasm. “She is a registered cottage day-care provider. It is in her homea wonderful old home just around the corner from mine. There are only a few other children and they each get lots of TLC. We’ve gone through such trauma and heartbreak. It’s hard to imagine the depth of joy coming out of so much sorrow.” Iris said.
I thought back to what the social worker said when I first met Rose and Lily at the home for unwed mothers: An unwanted pregnancy doesn’t mean the baby isn’t wanted by someone.
Kate Chamberlin, M.A., became blind when her children were young. Her teaching career continues through her Study Buddy Tutoring Service, Feely Cans and Sniffy Jars Program, and popular lectures. She is a published children’s author, Anglican educator, newspaper columnist, and proud grandmother. Visit her website at www.katechamberlin.com.
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Shore Wars

by Gertie E. Poole
Dolphins danced in the bright orange sunlight as the coast came alive on a brisk Atlantic morning. The sound of the impact as they crashed back into the water blended with the pounding surf on shore. The wind buffeted seagulls like spirited kites over the ocean. In the tide pools below, several hermit crabs scoured the lines of shell and rock for tasty morsels. Turning over pebbles, salt-frosted sea glass, and half angel shells, Buster came upon a rather large shell. It was intact, roomy, and in excellent condition. He thought it might be suitable for a new home.
Glancing about guardedly, and confident no one was watching him, he eased out of his shell to try the new one on. Knowing he was vulnerable without his armor, he hastily shifted shells. He carefully inspected the inside spirals and found it to be much larger on the inside than he originally thought. Disappointed that it was too bulky for him to haul around and not very comfortable at all, he sighed and, wriggling free, reached out for his good old home he had left next to the new prospect.
Panic gripped him and he angled his eyes all around, not seeing his shell. He stretched out as far as he dared with seagulls flying overhead their keen eyes wouldn’t miss a naked hermit crab. He frantically felt the silt for any sign of the shell. One of his eyes spied a movement off to his right and there was his home, dragging down the beach. It had been stolen while he afforded himself the luxury of new house shopping.
Reversing to anchor himself into the clumsy oversized shell, he took off in pursuit. He had to get it back! It was heavy work hauling the newly acquired shell and Buster huffed with the strain, neglecting to see the momentary darkness of the shadow that passed over him.
He didn’t realize he was under attack, since he had the criminal in his sights now. The seagull descended upon him in a furious assault of beak and wings. He tucked in and scuttled for the clump of windswept sea oats, trying hard not to lose sight of the culprit who stole his residence. Plunging himself into the soft sand within the oats, he buried himself and hid from the hungry bird.
Discouraged at not finding the crab, the gull took off for better prospects and Buster swiftly resurfaced and tore out of the saw grass, heading straight for his target with determination. Splashing in a tide pool, he dodged the larger crabs who were notorious for their bad temperament. He could not lose sight of his one and only possession.
Fiddler crabs snapped huge claws at him, raking the cumbersome shell he had been compelled to use. A sharp strike from one of the larger crabs forced him into a roll until he collided with the soft sand dune. Reeling from the blow, he rolled back upright and, frantically searching, found the villain a few yards ahead of him. He poured on the speed but was kicked carelessly by a beach-goer carrying a large cooler and an uncooperative umbrella. The huge shadow had crossed over him like an eclipse, but it was too late to dodge out of the way. The reckless kick had propelled him into the surf and hindered his attempt to catch the fiend. Pulled with the incoming tide, he swam in a frenzy to reach the shore before the hoodlum escaped with his home.
Footing was precarious as he pushed the loose broken shells out of his way, trailing a stream of water from his heavy shell, and regaining top speed. Hampered by an obtrusive piece of driftwood, he launched himself upward, clawing at the crevices to support his weight. Decayed pieces of grey driftwood flaked off as he tried to grip the sturdier strata in between the worm-eaten sections. Cresting the top, he tucked in and plummeted to the sand, immediately engaging his claws to dig deeper and move faster. He strained, reaching a pincer out to barely touch the shell that had once been his.
The thief twisted around, and thrust a menacing claw at his eyes and Buster ducked and countered, bravely snapping back and wielding his claws aggressively. Locked in battle, they tugged and spun out into the shallow tide pool, drawing the attention of the gulls milling about the dried seaweed.
The largest of the flock pounced on the renegade hermit crab and tossed him onto the dry sand. Grasping the kicking crab in his beak, the seagull began pounding the shell on the rocks to dislodge its inhabitant. Buster lost no time in fleeing and he took shelter behind the rocks. Digging in, he turned his anxious eyes away in horror and cringed at his foe’s misfortune.
Ripping the offending smuggler out of the coveted shell and making a snack of him, the gull flew away. Buster turned his frightened eyes to the sky for a moment and then bolted to claim his prize. He quickly changed shells and scrambled into the safety of the surf for a well-deserved respite. He sat very still for a moment, realizing he could have easily been the one who perished instead of the unfortunate crab that had committed the crime. He backed into the cool darkness of the familiar shell, leaving out only the tips of his claws as he bubbled in relief. There’s no place like home.
Gertie E. Poole’s fantasy novels include “Realm” (2007) and “Magic Trash” (2008.) She received multiple awards from the Florida Writer’s Association for her books and stories. Visit www.elfwood.com to read her work. We recently received word of her passing. She served as a critique editor for the “Behind Our Eyes” anthology. “Fantasy is the respite of a weary world.”

 


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