Breadcrumb #261

CHRISTINA MANOLATOS

When you first came to help your sister Stacy move, you hadn’t been in your hometown in a decade. When she called to ask for your help, you had been 6 states over and were squatting/living? with some girl who worked in a coffee shop and read the horoscopes every morning. She liked your beard, and that’s probably all she liked about you, as you really didn’t have that much going on. So much so, that when you left to head back home, you hadn’t felt the need to let her know. While she was at work, you simply grabbed your coat from the couch, and got in your car.

    Stacy had moved into this apartment over a few humid days in July.  The thick, wet, air allowed the fresh paint smell to linger for practically a month. You remember the scent distinctly from the week you spent sleeping on her couch after you arrived. Her sister, also your sister, Bridget, had come only once to visit in that first month, and had come only once to visit her ever. Bridget had said she didn’t mind the paint smell. Bridget also likes the smell of gasoline, so why would she mind?

____

    It’s 6 years later, and it’s the second time Bridget has been in this apartment. You and she are standing in Stacy’s bedroom, and you are fighting. She is insisting that the pair of earrings she is holding in her hand are rightfully hers. She says Stacy took them from her when everyone was home for your father’s funeral last year. That had been the last time the three of you were in the same room together.

“She is insisting that the pair of earrings she is holding in her hand are rightfully hers.”

    Now it’s just the two of you in Stacy’s apartment. Bridget’s face is all blotchy red as she yells at you with her fists clenched tight around the jewelry. This is the kind of petty shit that is so Bridget. She paces back and forth within the room while she spews her bitter argument in a manner that sounds more like grinding metal than it does speaking. You haven’t seen her since your dad passed, and before that, what, 6 years? She still sounds like the bratty teenager you grew up with. No matter how much time passes, no matter how long you go without seeing her, she’s still the same Bridget.

_____

    In reality, you stood beside Stacy 6 months before she moved in, in front of a glass cased counter when she bought the earrings herself. They were small, and round, and if someone had asked you what they looked like before you saw them in Bridget’s hand, you wouldn’t have remembered. But you’re looking at them now, and it’s like you're back in that shitty corner store, freezing your ass off, and thinking, “Stacy, hurry up.”

    That had been the last time you and she had travelled together. Stacy made the effort at least once a year or two to come meet you wherever you were and spend a week in your nomadic lifestyle. How she could remain living in the town where the three of you grew up was beyond you. You couldn’t stand that place; the streets, the houses, the people. To you, every aspect of that town was like a ghost of your adolescence that you did not need hanging around. You shed it as soon as you could and hit the road. Somehow, Stacy never seemed to mind. Did she really not remember, or god, was she that good of a person that she could fight her demons that way? As a kid she always seemed happy. As an adult she always seemed blissfully ignorant.

_____

    You’re thinking of your childhood now while you stand watching Bridget yelling in Stacy’s room. Stacy’s bedroom is so tidy it’s immaculate. Stacy’s whole apartment is immaculate, like she never even ever lived there ever. There are no dishes in the sink, no laundry in the hamper.  As Bridget continues her rant, your eyes stray from the desk to the chair to the duvet cover. You know you unpacked all of this stuff, but you don’t recognize anything.

    You know how when you drive the same road enough times, you can anticipate every curve, every pothole? The same applies when you travel enough different roads. Every curve is the one you just passed, every pothole is the one you avoided 6 weeks ago. When you had pulled off the exit onto the main street of your own hometown, it looked the same as all the ones you’d driven through on the way there.

    Bridget’s bickering fades out as you realize Stacy’s apartment looks like any other one you’ve ever been in. Your eyes are darting as you struggle to find something to tell you, Stacy was here. Stacy is not here. You leave the bedroom and rush through the hallway to the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. You’re opening drawers and doors and overturning cushions and crying – god are you crying?! You hold paper in your hand, dishes, towels. You’re looking for her but you know she’s not there and it won’t ever be again.

    You wipe your face with your hand and choke back the guttural sound you feel crawling inside of you. Bridget is in the room again with you now. You can’t understand what she’s saying and you can’t even make out her face completely, but you know it’s Bridget because who the fuck else would be yelling on a day like today?

    You walk out the front door. You do not say goodbye. You get in your car, and you drive.

• • •

Breadcrumb #260

CAROLINE REDDY

Lathan Byrd took a deep breath as he neared the clearing and looked up at the silver glow. The night sky had been drawing him forth for days. He was far from the elders, all of his kin and the village that lay beyond the grove.

    The young man smiled.

     It had been a while since Lathan had gone under .

     Sometimes he was a bull. Other times he a crow; flapping his black wings and cawing across the clouds. Tonight, he wanted to find out about the spirit who had pulled him into the muddy river.

    Lathan was ready for the journey. He was almost a man and didn’t have to listen to the old grandmother tales that had kept him from his fulfilling his destiny.

     And going under was the only way.  

    The first time he had crossed the realms he felt his body sinking through layers of moist dirt, plump worms and thick roots grasping at him; burying him beyond the plates of the earth. When he woke, emerging from his trance, he felt a bit disoriented and didn’t remember much about where he had been or what he had endured.

    As he had blinked his eyes, he realized that he was craving the juice of the cacti fruit and fried bread. 

“The first time he had crossed the realms he felt his body sinking through layers of moist dirt, plump worms and thick roots grasping at him; burying him beyond the plates of the earth.”

    Lathan lay the Mexican blanket over the dirt and scanned the area once more.

    No one had followed him and it was just as well.

    Lathan did not want to draw blood.

    Journeying across realms required a sacrifice: the blood of a pure heart. If he had fought those who might have tried to stop him, right before crossing over to the other side, it would have been forbidden and deemed bad form--a taboo.

    Lathan was desperate for answers from the ancestors.

    Answers he had been denied all his life by men who didn’t understand him. Men who waited for days or weeks for the right signs: for the wind to blow from the West, for the rain to beat down after a ceremonial dance, for gratitude to be given to the spirits helping them cross the realms. And the one journeying--he was to spend a few days in the sweat lodges, battling his demons and repenting for all his questionable past deeds. 

    Tobacco and hand-weavings from the women who had labored for weeks in the huts…would be blessed and brought to him for the official ceremony.

    The elders would chant, drum, and call to the spirits.

    Then it would be done.

    Lathan was gifted, and, perhaps cursed; for he had crossed the realms easier than most. He was the only one able to do it without much help from the elders. He knew it was dangerous but he didn’t have time for all the preparations.

    Before the next full moon the day of his birth was to be celebrated. He was no longer a child and would be pulled into duty: marriage and then working in the fields, an apprentice to learn the ways of earth medicine or the harsh training he would endure for the way of the warrior. 

    Lathan knew what he was to become.

    His father and grandfather had the blood of warriors-and that fate would be fallen on him as well.  

    He had to go under.

    The elders called it Ka-Peh-Tah-Oneh-the journey to the realm beyond.

    He wanted to feel himself being pulled away, dancing like the restless shadows of the night, shape-shifting from one land to the next...to find the answers he had long sought after.

    Lathan collected branches and began to set up camp. He looked into the spits and sparks of the flames: the spirits of the fire seemed content as he warmed up his hands.

    It eased his trepidation

    He had been fasting all week long: eating berries, juice and filtered water; hoping it would help with the visions.

    Lathan had brought the drum and the elements: red-orange leaves from an ancient tree for earth, the warmth of what he had built for fire, his grandfather’s old bow and arrows for air and a small buffalo-pouch filled with water from the well.

      He placed the elements in the four directions and looked up at the sky again. He closed his eyes and tuned into the sounds of the forest. 

      An owl began his night song and a swift breeze swept by him: blessing him perhaps.

    The spirits had arrived and he asked them for a safe journey home.

    Sometimes they were playful, and on one occasion he had gone so deep that he was under water...gasping for air. When he woke up he could hardly breathe.

    I want to know...he thought. 

    He was part African, Native American and had the blood of another ancient tribe-one that had been kept secret from him…since he was a little boy. He was told that it was for his own good.   

    Lathan needed to know what was beyond the flesh; beyond what he couldn’t see.

    He had been raised by his grandparents but there had been a hole. The line of the ancestors had been tethered.   

     “What happened?” Lathan had asked the medicine men when he had crossed realms the first time.

    “A spirit from the other side...was restless tonight...”

    “I’m not afraid of the dead...I want to go under again,” Lathan placed his hand on top of his grandfather’s.

    Teno just stared at the boy with his stoic black eyes.

    One of elders began to hum and chant as he shook the red and brown rattle. Soon the earthly rhythm began to calm their nerves.

    “Why isn’t it at peace?” Lathan asked.

    His grandfather remained melancholic and silent. He bowed his head and stared at the kerosene lantern as if the answers were hidden deep in the golden orb that lit their adobe home.

    “Please...I’m not afraid. Send me back....”

    “The boy has a right to know,” his grandmother’s eyes were the color of turquoise. In them Lathan heard the sweet ancient songs gathered by campfires, and saw the many dreams that had been caught in dreamcatchers.

    “There is no reason to open that door,” his grandfather’s black eyes were like small coals- and Lathan didn’t dare defy him.

    Built for hunting and keeping secrets.

    Lathan left them all and stepped outside.

     I will find out on my own... 

• • •

Breadcrumb #259

CHLOE CRAWFORD LA VADA

It’s a boy,
the nurse declares,
indicating the pixelated penis,
the sonogram blurry as a
Rorschach’s.
They see what they want,
draw their own conclusions.

It’s a boy,
the mother says with pride.
She buys blue blankets,
periwinkle pajamas.
The father imagines teaching
his son to score touchdowns.

It’s a boy,
the banners cheers –
and blue is everywhere:
streamers, balloons, paper cups,
even in the eyes of the pink fetus
nestled in the blonde woman’s belly.
Her laugh twinkles summer-sky blue.

It’s a boy -
the first words the newborn hears
as the doctor ruptures the quiet, and passes
the swaddled bundle from hand to hand.
The new parents have no reason
to doubt, or to suspect that he could be wrong.

           With the birth certificate ink still wet
           (sex: M), mother, father, and child
           go home to a blue nursery –
           a blue life.

• • •

Breadcrumb #258

KASIA MERRILL

I stand in a Rite Aid holding pee sticks and condoms, even though I have little use for either. Options that depict a scene that is much too late. A poppy seed, the internet told me. No bigger than a poppy seed.

    I place my palm against the poppy in my belly, turn to the cashier with a look of desperation. Should I spend $15 on a plastic stick so I can discover what I already know? The cashier isn’t looking at me. He is staring out the front window, playing with a plastic yellow WWJD bracelet on his hairy wrist. I push the pee stick into the pocket of my hoodie, place the condoms back on the counter.

    “You don’t need these anymore?” he asks.

    I head straight out the door. Nobody asks the right questions anymore.

_____

    One pee later and I am slurping soup for both my poppy seed and me.

    My mother picks a blond hair from my shoulder, tucks the tag in on the back of my sweater. Her fingers are cold against my skin. I cast her a look. Her eyes water. She sits down across from me and sucks soup from her spoon.

    “What’s wrong?” she asks.

    I open my mouth, close it. I could tell her, but I know how it will go. She is a hijacker of my emotions. She will feel my sorrow tenfold of how I feel it. She will cry and I will hug her, tell her it’s okay. Guide her through her misconduct of my own feelings.

    “Nothing,” I tell her. Lift the bowl to my lips and pour it in.

    Her eyes roll in her head as if I am seeing something she isn’t, as if I am a medium able to gauge ghosts and she’s looking for them. I don’t tell her that the ghost is in my belly. I don’t tell her I’m carrying the poppy seed of a dead man, a man buried not two weeks ago after being found in the driver’s seat of a running car.

“I don’t tell her that the ghost is in my belly.”

    Her eyes catch something and widen. “Are you upset about Derek?”

    “I’m not upset.” I finish the soup, drop the spoon into the bowl. “Stop obsessing over me.”

    When she reaches for my hand, I storm to my room and slam the door behind me. I lie on the carpet and fold my fingers over the world suspended in my skin.

    There’s a light knock and, when I turn, I can see my mother’s pink terry-clothed slippers in the crack beneath the door, framed by dust bunnies and cat hair.

    “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to upset you.”

    I feel sorry for my mother, but it is a strange kind of pity. It is the kind of pity you have for someone when you are the cause of their pain. It is strange to victimize your own victim, to want to save someone from your own wrath. I wonder if the little poppy seed in my belly will feel the same about me one day, will emerge with my likeness and my cruelty and have a personal obligation to be my despair, if only for the reason I have forced it too often to be my consolation.

    I yell the news through the door, tell it to the slippers in the door crack.

_____

    With the haunt of poppy seed in our house, my mother begins to hum more often. To buy tiny shoes and vitamins. To use high-pitched voices when addressing my belly and rub my shoulders when I’m too tired to push her away. She does Poppy’s astrology charts based on the due date and hangs it in the kitchen next to my own. We can’t see Poppy yet, but my mother seems to sense it everywhere.

    I take the poppy seed to visit its father. We stand on his grave and look down at him, somewhere beneath the dirt. I explain how he died — strung out and alone, the driver’s door open and his wallet missing. The dashboard beeping as the keys dangle from the engine. Poppy seed does not yet have an opinion on the matter.

_____

    My mother has nightmares that I lose poppy seed, that poppy seed emerges deformed, that poppy seed’s life results in my death. I lie in my mother’s bed, brush her hair from her forehead. I do not tell her that I have had the same panics, the same anxieties.

    Instead, I hum to her. I let her put her hand on poppy seed’s little world. We fall asleep like this, curled into each other. Russian nesting dolls with painted faces.

_____

    When I go to the doctor, they tell me poppy seed is not a poppy seed at all. Poppy seed is now a grape.

    My mother hangs Grape’s first photo on the refrigerator, next to a painting I did of Elvis when I was three years old. It falls off every time I swing open the door to eat cottage cheese from the carton with a spoon.

    My mother’s excitement is big, impending. It pushes into me, and I find I have no room for both our emotions. I have no room for myself at all anymore, I am being pushed out and away. My organs are being squished by the growing vegetable inside me. A foot on my kidney, a head pressed to my ribcage. A grape, a kumquat, a lemon, and, in a few months, a pumpkin. Always existing, never fully seen.

• • •     • • •

Breadcrumb #257

LARRY GARLAND

There’s something about a forest that seems to sooth the soul. Peace settles among the trees of deep woods like it has moved in to stay forever. But a deeper reality contradicts that calm. Don’t let your guard down, for violence visits there, too.

    I tried to like hunting. It’s expected of a Southern boy living in the countryside. Even more so for one growing up there half a century ago. Our Tennessee farm was evenly split between open, rolling fields and stretches of wooded, steep hillsides and ravines. Those wooded stretches were fingers reaching out from the deep woods of a state forest preserve adjoining our farm. The fall I turned 12, my father gave me a bolt-action single-shot rifle—a Remington, perfect for taking to the woods. My father said, “Son, that’s the best beginners rifle there is for shootin’ squirrels.”

Late autumn is prime time for squirrel hunting. By then, leafy treetops have abandoned my part of the south for the season. Left behind are barren branches looking like fingers grabbing for the sky. They seek a handhold against the howling winter winds yet to come. Squirrels are out and about in abundance. This is their busy season. From treetop nests of sticks and leaves—homes with a view—they make their daily commute to aerial fields of acorns growing on the branches of nearby oaks. Their job is to pluck acorns and bury them in secret larders under the detritus of the forest floor. After a day spent buttressing their winter food reserves, and maybe some time cavorting and sunning themselves, they head home again to be rocked asleep by swaying branches.

    Those brown balls of fur are exposed as they venture overhead, as they leap limb to limb, as they race up and down the trunks of trees. The fallen leaves have turned mostly brown, but many are brushed still with a touch of red or gold or purple. They have just enough life left to complain at being kicked about by scampering paws scurrying across the forest floor. That crunch can give away a squirrel’s location.

    A forest is never silent, so I hear them. I am quiet; they don’t hear me. A forest is ever moving, so I see them. I am still; they don’t see me. From hunts with my father, I’ve learned to sit patiently on the ground, waiting serenely so forest creatures won’t know danger lurks.

    I know the habits of these squirrels. They nap midday. But they get hungry. I have staked out a spot here in our woods where I know squirrels love to feed on the plentiful acorns of our tall oaks. I am determined to drop a squirrel, so I wait in ambush here. But these are clever animals. They know to run down the backside of a tree trunk, putting themselves on the far side of danger by placing the tree between them and the disturbance of any sudden movement or suspicious noise from below. I have curled my legs underneath me on a cushion of moss with my back braced against the rough bark of a chosen oak. A few deep breaths serve to still my mind and body. I inhale the rich smells of the dark and musky forest, and hold it for a time, before expelling that last big breath. Then I consciously will a more shallow and quiet breathing pattern, one with a rhythm more conducive to listening for the sounds of squirrels chattering among themselves, high in the canopy above my head.

    Soon enough a bushy-tailed rodent wrapped in a fuzz of fur makes its presence known. He springs atop the leaves of the forest floor, scurrying here and there in spurts, stopping at times to listen for sounds of danger. I am his danger this day as he goes on his way to his private larder for his evening meal. I am prescient, like some god, for I know this: he’ll have no need for a fur coat this winter, nor even for the dinner he is seeking this day. I unlock the safety, take aim at his head, and tenderly pull the trigger of my Remington.

    Pop! goes the rifle with its gentle kick as the cold bullet pushes off my chest and shoulder, and springs forward from the aim and intent of my eye toward its warm target. Almost instantly, there comes back to me the start of a loud echo from the firing gun. It drags behind it a small scream—whether of surprise or pain, I don’t even consider. My only thought is this: I didn’t get off a clean shot to kill it right away.

    I jump up and run toward my injured prey. It begins to flee, trying every few yards to ascend the trunk of a tree. Invariably, it climbs a vertical foot or two and then falls back to ground. I’ve done so much damage to a forelimb that it can’t manage the climb. Every time my victim falls, it takes off running again, with me racing after it. Soon, my breath is coming as insistent puffs and I am sweating. This chase goes on for some time. Run. Climb. Fall. Run. Climb. Fall. The squirrel keeps glancing over its shoulder at me in pursuit. Each time it does so, I see blood and big eyeballs staring. Eyes that are wild-eyed terrified.

    Thinking back, I must have looked wild-eyed, too. That poor squirrel kept trying to climb a tree like ancient Sisyphus, who perhaps even now is trying to roll his boulder to the top of the hill. That leaves me the role of a capricious, vindictive giant—a very small god. I am looking down at a trail of blood, and I am tenacious in my tracking. But now I’m starting to have qualms about what I’ve done. My prey is demonstrating tenacity, too. It has a strong will to live, and I can appreciate that. At least, it has a strong will until the moment it doesn’t.

“That poor squirrel kept trying to climb a tree like ancient Sisyphus, who perhaps even now is trying to roll his boulder to the top of the hill.”

    That soft bundle of fur finally gives up. It stops running and turns in its tracks. As it rises up to stand on its rear paws, it stares me straight in the face. I look back into those pleading eyes and something inside of me melts. That squirrel can’t utter words, yet some form of communication is flowing to me. A creature that had felt so alien and devoid of the gift of emotions I had presumed only humans possess is now showing me its fear and longing. Through the wet windows of those dark eyes, I see wistfulness and other sentiments that I cannot name. Two questions from me now fill the space between us: little creature, are you cursing me or forgiving me? And are you begging me to let you live or to put you out of your misery?

    That day, I couldn’t discern what last wish that creature might be asking of me. It had been created by a greater God than the one I had made of myself—a would-be god who on a whim had aimed to end a life. Anything I had left to give, I’d give. But what did it want from me? What I want most is to make it right. To undo everything. To unshoot that innocent squirrel, to unwalk my way to the deep woods, to unload my shiny new gun at home, to untake that murder weapon from the gun rack on our living room wall, to undress myself from these constricting clothes now trying to smother me, and to un-get up from my warm bed earlier this cold day. But I can do none of that.

    That day, I had brought violence to those woods. So what was left? What could I have done that moment for that small creature whose life I had recklessly toyed with? I fired one more time and put the spent ball of fur out of its misery. Spent, I say, for unnecessarily I had spent a life, one that was not mine to cash in. I couldn’t leave that injured animal there to die in agony or to slowly starve. So I left that ball of fur where it fell dead. I left it lying atop a bed of purple, bruised leaves sprinkled with bright red drops like holy water. But first, I fell on my knees and let my hot tears light the fire of a funeral pyre, one that still burns in me. Then I stood up and walked home.

    “Take this gun back, Daddy,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t hunt no more.” Just as that squirrel had done, my father looked at me with eyes that spoke without saying a word.

• • •