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They were down to their last three dollars. They had sold everything they conceivably
could live without from their little cottage – even their tin silverware. Well, they called it a cottage but it was really more of a hovel, left to only nature’s defenses. Now, they were desperate. Sylvia stared into the near-empty jar sitting atop an old linen tablecloth in the middle of their kitchen table. Perhaps the harder she stared, maybe the longer she didn’t blink, more money would just appear in the jar. Not much, just a quarter or two, but if she tried hard enough, maybe she could somehow solidify the aching hope in her heart for just a few more dollars to make it through this dry spell. A solid kick in her womb pulled her out of her reverie. Sylvia looked down at her swollen belly and let out a long sigh. She felt a flutter, like bubbles popping inside her. The baby must bedoing somersaults, she thought with a tired smile. INT. CLUB - NIGHT
Throngs of bodies move together on the dancefloor. Hot sweat rolls down their skin. Techno lights flash all over. Music blares over the speakers. JULIET (18) is in the middle of the dancefloor. She’s your typical girl next door. Except right now? She looks like a vixen from hell with her cleavage-revealing dress. ERIC (25) is dancing right next to her. Eric is like the thick, slimy grease on a gas station pizza. JULIET (yelling) Are you having a good time? ERIC A great time! Do you want to sit down? JULIET Sure! Juliet has to lean on Eric as they make their way to their seats. Finally, they sit down. Juliet takes a DRINK from a waiter who passes by. She drinks it almost empty before sitting it down. JULIET (CONT'D) I was soooo surprised when you decided to ask me out. ERIC Really? JULIET YES! I was like me? Me? He’s asking me out? You’re like the hottest guy I’ve ever met! Eric chuckles. ERIC Thank you. JULIET And- Juliet makes a gagging noise. JULIET (CONT'D) I need to go to the bathroom. She fed on me; I fed on her.
It was a Queer feeling, Falling. I tasted the fruit, and i choked. Is this how Adam met Eve? In this version of history, Marge never went to college / Marge went to college briefly / Marge went to an all-girls college in the Roaring 1920’s / in pre-revolution Iran / in 2022 Afghanistan / in 2005 Harvard, when the school’s President attributed underrepresentation of women in science to:
Controversy arose
when Marge wore pants / rode a bike / drove a car / played baseball / practiced medicine / Marge was jailed / sent to an asylum for reading too much and managing her own finances / Marge was rich and White / Marge was poor and White / Marge was rich and Latina / My sister’s hair, honeyed from the hair salon, fell between us. The tips of it brushed the
menu we shared. We sat side by side since the booths were comically huge, like everything else at The Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena. I almost tucked her hair behind her ear, my older-sister instincts rearing up even though we weren’t kids anymore and hadn’t been close for years. Her lunch invitation hadn’t been unexpected. It was the summer of 2007. I’d traveled from Florida where I was in graduate school to our home state of California to be the maid of honor in her wedding. The event was three days away and there was so much left to do. Tanning bed appointments, mani-pedis, a champagne brunch, bridesmaid dramas I’d been tasked with diffusing via flip phone, eyebrows to be waxed into thin perfect lines. After we ordered our salads, I thought we would talk about those things. Instead, she stared straight ahead out a picture window that faced onto Colorado Boulevard and roped me into helping her reconstruct the plot of One Magic Christmas. It was her favorite holiday movie as a kid. A father shot to death on Christmas Eve. His children driven off a bridge into an icy river. A mother grieves. The angel Gideon appears. “I need to tell you something,” she said after the waiter left our salads. I perked up, wondering if it had something to do with her fiancée. His favorite things were green smoothies and making fun of ugly people and he always pointed out when my sister had seconds. I put down my fork, hoping for a called-off wedding. She was a quietly intelligent nursing student. A hot girl who had been getting into Jesus. She was only twenty-two. Women keep secrets all the time. It was my mom who taught me to keep my secrets. She believed we
women were meant to swallow our pain, our questions, our discomfort for men, for anyone really. When I would ask her why she would answer, “That’s just the way things are.” She felt pride about how well she could keep her secrets of unhappiness. But the truth was, it was no secret. It was written all over her face, in her tone, in her living. The only ones oblivious are ourselves. I have secrets of how I lost my virginity. There was coaxing, manipulation, and the giving of Xanax to help keep me quiet. Most of my sexual relationships have been pills to swallow, both literally and metaphorically. Lies, abuse, and manipulation from boys led to the constant stream of pill-taking, to normalize all the things I had to keep secret. Friends would talk about their first times, and I would make up some story so as not to get asked, “Are you okay?” I had no idea if I was okay, which is what the pills and all the drinking were for. I didn’t want the question in the room, so I made up a normal story, a story anyone could believe. Shame comes with secrets, and eventually, shame eats us all whole. You start to feel disgusting that you have things to hide. Not because you did anything wrong, but because they happened and you regret them, hoping they would go away forever. –––– The room was tiny. $975 a month, and yet my suitcase just barely fit into the open patch of floor
between the bed and the desk. Jumbles of my clothing covered every available surface, half sorted into piles. It was small, but it was home. Or rather, it was going to be. Despite the muggy heat of the Toronto summer, the first thing I had done upon entering the room was rush to the window. Cracking it open, I was accosted by the clamor of the city. Car horns honked, and street cars rattled. People in expensive suits scuttled below me, eyes scanning their phones, hands clutching their lattes. The skyscrapers across the street appraised me from beneath scrunched eyebrows, their roofs stretching up to touch the cerulean sky. Climate-controlled air rushed out and in crept the smell of grease from the corner hotdog stand, woven together with the nauseating stench of the subway. It was all so overwhelming. So loud. So foreign. What an adventure I told myself, pausing to look in the closet mirror and bare my teeth like a used car salesman. In the name of Jesus the Messiah,
I declare that I am born out of God, Carved and painted with the envisionment of evil. Black hair runs down my curves and red lips, sweet with sin, Make me a victim of temptation and vengeful lust. Father forgive me for the falsehood Of desecration of holy marriage unions And Adam's taste for the Apple- The truth is choked in his throat and in the blood of the first murder on record. In the name of Jesus the Messiah I declare that I have never harmed a child- My spirits find safety under my wings and wisdom in my fall. I embrace the moon and it's four stages, worship my dark, inner feminine energies, and Her divine manifests. Content Warning: This short story includes scenes of bullying, violence, and slight gore
The stone hit Ava in the back of the head. She stumbled and fell, spilling her schoolbooks out of her arms and onto the dirt road in front of her. Gravel dug into her palms as she threw out her hands to break her fall. Her knees skidded painfully across the ground. “Have a nice trip!” a boy’s voice called out from behind her, to a chorus of laughter. “See you next fall!” Ava brushed her long, black hair out of her face. She was hollow-boned and delicate, looking far younger than her 11 years. Her dark eyes welled with tears. She quickly wiped them away with the frayed cuff of her sweater. A chilly autumn wind blew across the Kansas field, causing the corn stalks lining the road to whisper in the breeze. Somewhere in the distance, faint and far away, a gas-powered tractor growled. It was probably from Mr. Conklin’s farm – he was the only farmer in the area who was wealthy enough to own a tractor – but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t close enough to help her. Nobody was. She was on her own. A group of kids about her age, two girls and a boy, ran past her. One of the girls stuck out her tongue. The other laughed. Their shoes kicked up clouds of dust into Ava’s face as they passed. The girls were sisters, Sarah and Beth Winters. They were pretty and clean, with crisp red bows tied in their flaxen hair. They were the kinds of girls who had everything they needed and got everything they wanted; they never had to ask for anything twice. They wore matching blue dresses with warm red sweaters that looked like they were bought from a department store. Not handmade, like Ava’s shapeless brown smock. They weren’t twins – Sarah was two years older than Beth – but they were inseparable. Even now, they held hands as they skipped away into the distance. Ava hated them both, equally. Yeh-Shen’s golden slipper kept shrinking one inch
Smaller until it found its rightful owner When footbinding was in vogue in China, the most Desired shape was the three-inch golden lotus It took two years to achieve this revered shape, girls Had their feet bound from the age of five or six Sometimes binders opted for a slightly softer Shape – the butterfly or cucumber foot |