Breadcrumb #473

JOSELIN LINDER

When I saw her that day by the side of the road, I smelled lemons. It was the color of her hair that hung by her shoulders and held through the citrus freckles over the bridge of her nose. I'd gone walking that morning because of Laurel's baby whose sobs had been waking me before dawn all six weeks since she'd been born. We were crowded now in my mother's house. Mom, Laurel and her baby, mom's fat boyfriend Frank, our little brother Grady, and me and the dog. When you added my mother's awake-time hollering, Frank's night time snoring, and the baby's all-the-time wailing, it just seemed like too much.

That morning, I walked toward her standing there in the distance, all lemons and beautiful. Her name was Callie Anderson and she had been in my seventh period the year before. She was waiting for something. I tried to imagine what it was. It was still early, although the sun was completely out. The air had that rarified summer-morning smell where promises live until they get burned away by afternoon. I liked how long it took me to get to her. It gave me lots of time to wonder her up and down.

She smiled a few feet too soon. It took me off guard. She waved down by her waist with her wrist bent awkwardly. I nodded and she looked back passed me down the empty street. I still wasn't close enough to her to say her name. I glanced over my shoulder to see what was coming while Mal ran ahead to where she stood. I didn't see anything on the horizon except the dead gold of the hills and the pale blue of the sky. When I turned back around Callie was bent over the mutt, patting her over the eyes and making a sucking kissy-face with her lips. I stopped when I reached them.

"Hey Callie," I said.

  "Hi Adair," she answered. It sounded good to hear her call me that. No one ever called me Adair, except my mom or Laurel when they were about to yell at me. Everyone called me Sonny.

      I was quiet then while she finished up with Mal.

      "What's its name?" she asked.

      "Mal-o-mar Jackson," I answered.

       "Seems like too big a name for a not-so-big dog," she said, and I liked it that she said it.

       "We just call her Mal."

      "That's good. She seems like a Mal." Callie crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at the dog sitting, looking up at her.

       I watched her for a minute to see if she was going to say anything else. When she didn't, I cleared my throat.

       Then she shook out her hair like she'd been someplace else and said, "You going somewhere?"

       "Yes and no," I answered.

       She nodded and sort of shrugged.

       "You?" I asked.

       "Nah. Just waiting," she replied.

       "For what?"

       "Nothing," she said vaguely.

       "Want to walk for a bit?" I asked her.

       "Sure," she said. I saw her eyes scan the horizon again before she turned to me sighing and then smiling.

      "Unless you need to wait." I said.

     She shook her head. "Nah."

      We started to walk. We didn't say much. We went down by the docks at the lake and talked a little about fishing. Callie said that someone once caught a fish around here that no one had ever seen before. She said maybe around World War II and that they never caught another one. She said that there was a museum over in Dauberville where they had it mounted and everything. I told her we should go see it sometime and she smiled at me. It was the most whole-faced smile I'd ever seen, the kind that you can't help but smile back to.

      I liked her story about the fish and I told her. It made me look at the lake a little differently.

“Callie said that someone once caught a fish around here that no one had ever seen before.”

      We didn't say much else. Mostly we just walked and threw sticks and rocks into the water that Mal kept trying to catch.

      "I have to go home," Callie said when we got to the edge of the old Porter property where some kids went to smoke pot and others went to make out. I couldn't tell if she was afraid I was going to try to kiss her. It felt like the wrong time of day for kissing with so much sun everywhere.

      "Okay," I shrugged.

      She looked at me with squinted eyes. "You want to walk me?"

      I shook my head. "I think I'm gonna go for a swim," I told her.

      "Well," she said, "maybe I can come right back. I just have to run home for a minute."

      "Okay," I said.

      I watched her walk away. She took steps that seemed too close together, not very economical. I figured for a second it was because she probably knew I was watching her. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine seeing her without her knowing she was seen. Her body was long with steady legs, swaying her hips around. I'd seen her walking a million times. When I opened my eyes again she was almost to the warehouse where she'd turn out of my line of vision.

      I looked out over the water. The grass everywhere was white-lit and fiery. Mid-summer had already sucked all the green out. I sat down by the edge of the lake and tucked my knees up. I thought about what it would be like to kiss Callie Anderson.

     I'd never spoken much to Callie unless it was something about school. I liked her. She was mostly quiet but when she talked it was always full of ways to look at things I'd never thought about. Teachers often told her she was wrong and you could tell it really rattled her. Mrs. Dunlap even made her cry once when Callie said that the Robert Frost poem seemed more like it was about finding something bigger, even though it seemed like he meant everything was small. Mrs. Dunlap shook her head and said, "No, Callie. Look at it again."

      I always liked what she said. Usually I liked her answers better than the right ones.

      I laid down in the stiff grass and Mal came and licked my face. I half patted her while I pushed her away. She huffed down in a heap beside me and we stayed that way for a while.

******

It was the part of the day when the air has about sweat itself out and is ready to call it quits. I was standing up to leave when I heard her call, “Hey!”

     "Still feel like swimming?" she asked as she approached.

     "Sure," I said.

     I watched her pull her shirt over her head. She was wearing a red bikini top. I tried not to stare as she took off her pants, so I threw a stick for Mal.

     “Where’d you go?”

     “I had to pick up the kids for my stepmom,” she answered.

     "Oh," I said. "My parents split up too."

     "Let's not talk about that," Callie said flatly.

     "Okay," I agreed.

     She dove in. I followed. Callie splashed and kicked water at me. I chased her but she was slippery and kept getting away. She was laughing really hard and breathing deeply. I almost caught her but she ducked under and came up near shore. She walked out with her long limbs shining and her hair dripping water down her back.

     She turned to face me laughing.

     I wanted to watch her like that all night, dripping with lake water, laughing.

     "I want to dry off while there's still a little sun left," she called.

     I dove under and swam towards shore. I climbed out and laid down in the grass beside her. She was up on one elbow looking down at me.

     "Adair?" she said.

     "Yeah?"

     "I like your name."

     "Why?" I asked.

     "It's strong."

     I raised my eyebrow. People usually said it sounded like a girl's name.

     "I mean I always thought your name was just `Sonny.' But then in fifth grade, Mr. Kinley only ever called you Adair, remember?"

     "That's right," I said. "I think I took a lot of heat for that."

     "Well, I thought it was beautiful, and my stepmom had a baby name book around because she was trying to have a baby, so I looked it up. It means oak tree by a ford. Did you know that?"

     I shook my head.

     "See? It's a really strong name."

     I was staring up at her and she was looking down at me. I raised myself up onto my elbows. Her stomach made a noise and she looked down at the ground. When she looked back up she bent forward and kissed me quickly then she pulled back a little.

     "Is it okay?" she whispered.

     I nodded and swallowed.

     She came in close again and pressed her mouth against mine. I felt her tongue lick the space between my lips. I closed them together then opened them again and felt around a little for her tongue. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders. I dropped back down to the ground pulling her with me. I listened to the quiet sounds of her kissing noises. She kissed all around my mouth and then back on my lips. I rolled her onto her towel and held her head in one hand and touched her face with my fingers. The sunset light was purple and orange and she looked like she was made out of glass.

     She pulled me in so that my head rested just below her chin. I closed my eyes and felt one of her hands tangle itself up in my hair while she rubbed my shoulder with the other.

     She said softly, "I was waiting for my mother this morning."

     I moved my hand to her hip and squeezed her there.

     "She left when I was ten."

     We didn't move and suddenly our position felt awkward. I tried to listen closely to what she was saying and not think about it.

     "We were in her car and she pulled over, right there on that street where you found me." Callie's voice was steady and slow. "She told me to get out. She just said, `Get out.' And I didn't even say 'Why,' I just did."

     I ran my hand down her thigh and let it rest on her knee.

     "We were on our way to the grocery store. I thought she'd be there so I walked all the way to town, but I couldn't find her. So I went back to the place where she'd dropped me off and then went back the next day and everyday that whole summer and waited, like she'd just dropped me off but that she'd come back to get me."

     I turned my head so that my lips could touch the skin by the bone below her neck.

     She said softly, "I heard somewhere once that if you lose something, you should go back to where you last saw it."

     I picked up my head to look at her.

     Callie shook her head. "What else can we talk about?"

     I replied, "My sister's baby cries all the time."

     Callie grinned looking straight into my eyes. "I think it's funny that we all come out crying but it takes us some time to learn how to laugh."

     I leaned down and kissed her softly. I kissed her cheeks and her eyes. She let her head fall back and I kissed her neck. The sun had almost completely set. I picked Callie up in my arms and pulled her onto my lap. She draped her arms around my neck and leaned her head on my shoulder. I breathed the lemons in her hair.

We sat like that until the stars came out.

• • •. • • •

Breadcrumb #472

THOMAS FUCALORO

My mother was at her neurologist
being tested for dementia
and Alzheimer’s.

This is a poem in broken fragments.

My mother keeps leaving Styrofoam cups
of water lying around the house. Everywhere
you can find these white truncated cones
of tiny oceans waiting for her lips.

At the neurologist, they asked her
to draw a clock. She drew a cross.
Yes mother, we are all crucified
by time. You are a poet in picture,
you are a poet in rhyme. You were
my first clock.

Now you tell time
I am ready to go.

You don’t.

But I try to find you anyway.
You have left a map. A trail
of breadcrumbs shaped like
Styrofoam cups. All over.

“Make sure they don’t stop the Lorazepam,”
my mother says to the neurologist.

Lorazepam is used for the treatment of anxiety
but she gets that from her psychiatrist
not her neurologist. It also causes memory loss
and impairs judgment and coordination.

An estuary is
where a river’s current
meets the sea’s tide.

It connects the river to the sea.

The neurologist asked her,
“What’s today’s date?”

She says, “November 23rd, 1948.”

That is my mother’s birthday.

No estuary here.

This is a poem in broken fragments.

Her right hand shakes
more than her left
helping
to keep her body
still.

She remembers how to spell her name
but has trouble writing it down.

It’s that damned clock again.

My mother reminds the neurologist
of the Lorazepam again. She can’t wait
to bring that tiny ocean to her lips

where the river’s current
meets the seas’ tide.

That is where she wants to be now
amongst all this Styrofoam
floating down the river
into a sea of everything

but her.

• • •

Breadcrumb #471

RAJNI MISHRA

The woman pushes the door open with one hand, holding her bag in the other, and enters the salon. She walks over to the reception where she's greeted cheerfully by a young girl dressed in a white shirt and black skirt. The girl says with a well-rehearsed smile, ‘How can I help you, ma’am?’

‘I have an appointment at 6:30 pm for a haircut.’ She glances at her watch. The time is 6:27 pm. She's never late for an appointment. The girl at the reception checks her system and asks the woman to wait for two minutes. The woman's usual stylist is on leave today so she has opted for another stylist. She needs the haircut today. It can't wait till tomorrow. Because she has made up her mind. The woman likes the casual and friendly ambience of the salon. The huge glass walls are covered by the trees outside. Her usual stylist has come to know her hair too well. At times, she doesn't even have to say a word and he does what she needs. She hasn't changed her hairstyle in seven years.

Today is different. She wants a change. She needs a change.

 **

She has prepared for this moment all night. She had her coffee in the morning like a silent prayer. After reading for an hour, she watered the plants, made eggs and laid the breakfast on the table with the coffee. They ate breakfast in silence, the woman and her husband, she read her book and he flipped through the news on his tablet.

While leaving for office, he said, ‘I will be late today. How does your day look like?’

‘I have to do some shopping for my trip’.

‘I envy you. I wish I could take a sabbatical too’. He failed to hide the cheerfulness in his tone.

‘I will be done by dinner time though. So let's go out for dinner today. I will see you only after two weeks then’. He planted a kiss on her lips.

It tasted bitter.

‘Hi, ma’am’, the stylist says, ‘Please come this way’.

 **

Seven years ago, the woman’s father tried to kill himself. After he was discharged from the hospital, she left her home. She cut her hair short for the first time in years. So short that she didn’t have any to tuck behind her ears. The world was not so round as she imagined it to be.

 **

‘You have beautiful hair’, the stylist says.

‘Thank you’.

‘So what do you have on your mind?’

‘I want them short’.

He shows her a few pictures on his phone and she picks up one.

‘Let’s go for a wash, ma’am’.

He gently massages her hair. He has soft hands. Unlike her husband’s. Her husband has firm hands with a strong grip. Does the other woman feel the same when he touches her? Does he hold the other woman the way he embraces her? Does he fuck the other woman the way he fucks her? She is surprised at her own thoughts. She chuckles at the word ‘fuck’. She likes this change. Since she found out about the other woman, she hasn’t made love to her husband. She has been fucked by him though. She has watched herself being fucked by him. This word is so detached and dirty - fuck fuck fuck.

‘Please get up, ma’am’, the stylist says.

He wraps a towel around her head and shows her the way.

Snip. The hair begins to slip down from her shoulders to the ground.

 **

She comes home from work and is surprised to see her husband home early. He looks up from his laptop and tells her that he has to go out for dinner. She lays out his clothes while he takes a shower. A message appears on his phone. She walks out of the room and fixes a sandwich for herself. He leaves. She follows. He comes out of the building after 77 minutes. The woman thinks if she should confront him or ram her car into him. But this corner of the world is turning flat.

 **

Her head feels light. Most of her hair is gone. Scattered on the floor around her.

Have they been acting with each other since the beginning or they didn’t realize when they turned into strangers?

Confrontation never helps. They would argue, her husband would feed her stories in the name of the truth, she would believe him because he’s nice. Without her notice, his guilt would seep into her and fill that void of lies.

She is sitting in the middle of a dark cloud. Her thick, luscious dark brown hair surrounding her on all the sides. The stylist grazes the hair on her neck with a razor.

 **

‘Since you are born, we haven’t been happy. You are a curse’, her mother used to say when the woman was a young girl. She could never understand the reason but she felt guilty. She was impregnated with the guilt. She felt guilty for her father losing his job. She felt guilty for her being groped by her music teacher. She felt guilty for her father’s suicide attempt. She felt guilty for the world not being round.

“Without her notice, his guilt would seep into her and fill that void of lies.”

She remembers the first time she cut her hair. She felt light and liberated. She felt free. The guilt was in her hair she thought.

Her husband wanted her to grow her hair. He loved to pull on her hair during sex. Sometimes he slept with his face buried in her locks.  

Does he pull the other woman’s hair the same way? She is sure he does.

 **

A gush of hot air makes her shut her eyes tight.

She opens her eyes and smiles at her reflection in the mirror.

‘What do you think about it, ma’am?’ the stylist says.

‘Guilt-free’.

 **

The woman wonders if her husband has come to this restaurant with the other woman. She waits for him at the table he has booked for them.

‘Oh’, her husband says as he pulls the chair and sits. ‘Why did you cut your hair so short?’

‘There were just too many patterns. My head was getting heavier.’

‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me about it in the morning?’

‘I didn’t feel the need to.’

‘How can you be so reckless?’

‘I am hungry.’

His attention is caught by his buzzing phone. He picks it up and reads the message. The woman sees the glimmer of a smile in his eyes. His world is round.

He keeps the phone aside and places the order. The message has his mood lifted again.

‘Is the hairlessness the part of the preparation for your trip?’

‘Yes. This is where it begins’, the woman says.

Her world is flat.

• • •. • • •

Breadcrumb #470

RACHEL AYDT

“But when he calls me, I will be able to meet my family at God’s table.”

- Gillian Welch, “Orphan Girl”

Orphan: One Deprived of Some Protection or Advantage

My wispy septuagenarian neighbor Nick paces my block with a bulky camera around his neck. Nearly half a century ago, he was an extra in The Godfather. “I was in that scene where all the Dons sit around the table,” he says. “They were trying to make the peace after Don Corleone’s son, Sonny, was slaughtered by a brigade of hitmen.”  I remember the scene, but he tells me about it anyway.  

I always learn a lot about Nick when we stop to digress, for example, how he used to box at Gleason’s Gym, “back when it was still in the Bronx,” and that the East Village Boy’s Club was his second home because he grew up orphaned. In addition to his camera, he carries around a crinkled newspaper photo of Queen Elizabeth everywhere he goes.  “See her in this picture? She’s giving me a thumb’s up.” I find wonder in this man-child who carries a crinkled newspaper clip of his fantasy Queen Mother from a New York daily.

  Ours is a tight East Village community in New York made up of multiple tenement buildings. When someone dies, a flier is hung in the vestibule on the cork bulletin board with a black and white photograph, a paragraph about their contributions to the community, and information about the wake. I’ve come home to find fliers blowing beneath a single thumbtack with a photo of Marva, who walked with a cane in the rain to my son’s 4th birthday party before skies cleared and everyone else showed up an hour late. I’ve come home to find Maritsa on a flier, who had chirpy lovebirds and a Puerto Rican flag hanging on her fire escape, and leaned from her window to holler down when she saw us walking by. “He’s gonna be a football playa!” In my bones, I know Shirley is next. When she sits in her beach chair on the sidewalk next to her home healthcare aide, she reaches her shaking hand towards me, looking confused. Her fingernails haven’t been cut in a long time. At least she’s not looking for her dead dog Gizmo anymore, who she took over from Hank after he died, the same Hank who took mint care of his Cadillac so he could drive his wife to and from her cancer treatments in style. Both of their faces were also on fliers. I feel orphaned when the elders on my block die.

“In addition to his camera, he carries around a crinkled newspaper photo of Queen Elizabeth everywhere he goes.”

  There is something ridiculous about my literary-infused idea of what it means to be an orphan: Ragamuffin dresses, calloused feet, and matchstick girls huddle in the cold, furnished with warmth from scraps of tinder. The most rollicking of them have their own soundtracks. Cue up Oliver Twist and Lil’ Orphan Annie, and their Hollywood posses who swell up in choral waves of support, either with extra spoonfuls of porridge or hard-knock broom and mop dances. There is a wide bridge between the orphans created by Dickens, and by Hollywood, and the reality of earth-bound parental abandonment. There’s a primal satisfaction in the fantasy endings when Mr. Brownlow and Daddy Warbucks, respectively, put aside their misgivings to embrace the scrappy but vulnerable children who tumbled into their lives. In these redemptive endings, we can say goodbye to the turned-out child wrangler Fagin, and his literary sister Mrs. Asthma, who ran her orphanage with a cruel streak. There is a distinct and satisfying Before and After with these collective mythologies. Before, there was destitute, abandoned, and empty. After, there was abundance, love, and comfort.

* 

When my husband and I applied for our wedding license in Philadelphia, we were sent to an unassuming room called the Orphan’s Division in an ornate state building downtown. “The word ‘Orphans’ in the name of the Court is derived from the general definition of orphan as one lacking protection,” their website reads, “not the common association of a child deprived by the death of his or her parents.” I’d never considered my future marriage as a thing that would land me in a state of protection, an orphan finding shelter.

Orphan: A Young Animal that Has Lost Its Mother

For three years in a row, the mourning dove on my fire escape has come back to her hard-scrabble nest. She lays two eggs the size of quarters and alternates day and night shifts with her mate until they hatch. The first year they emerged but disappeared.  When I glanced at the landing below I found them tucked into a potted plant, dead. The next year new eggs hatched, and the babies grew from mangy pin feathered creatures to cooing beauties. Within a week, one got stuck in between the slats and died, his neck broken. This spring, one hatched prematurely. Draped in a U-shape over a stick poking from the nest, it was barely the size of my pinky, its downy feathers matted down by rain. Still, its mother sat on the second baby. A few days later mother bird stared into my window. I cracked it open for fresh air, stuck my head out, and offered her a few crumbled Frosted Mini Wheats. Threatened, she raised her left wing in a defensive posture. Sitting in the nest was her other baby, the size of my palm, his beady eyes shining. I closed the window and let them be.

Orphan: A child deprived of one or usually both parents

When I was 24-weeks pregnant I nearly died from the sudden appearance of blood clots that crept from my left foot to my kidneys. An unsuccessful surgery led to a more successful one, and for two weeks I recuperated at the now shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital in lower Manhattan. Before the surgeries I signed a DNR form and included my unborn son in the waiver. Being a Catholic hospital, an ethics committee came into my room one, two, three, and four times to debate my decision.  

“I want him to come with me if I don’t make it,” I explained, over and over again. I’d heard the risks of babies born at 24 weeks. Undeveloped lungs, cerebral palsy, life-long care. They responded over and over again. “We have a world class NICU. There’s a blue balloon we could put over the fetus’s head to keep him alive in an incubator. If your husband loses you, he could still be a father.” I didn’t want to die, and I also didn’t want to leave my husband with a premature baby with a blue balloon over his head in an incubator. This did not come to pass, but these conversations were stark and unbearable.

Orphan: A first line (as of a paragraph) separated from its related text and appearing at the bottom of a printed page or column

One of my favorite editing tasks is cutting orphans, those pesky one and two-word hangnails that reach beyond their allotted space on the page. Easiest to cut are articles and adverbs, useless adjectives and redundancies. When this is done, the columns align as they are supposed to. There are days when I look around and sense invisible fibers that connect people and birds and balloons and fire escapes and musicals. Eventually they snap, making orphans of us all.

• • •

Breadcrumb #469

ASPEN JUNE

After the ceremony he takes you out on his boat. His grad students are there too, leaning their beautiful bodies against the rails, wetsuits folded down at the waist. Strapping themselves into equipment like they know how to keep themselves alive under a hundred feet of water.

Luckily you are the only person on this boat who can drink this good champagne because you are the only one not planning to increase the pressure inside your body till your blood wants to bubble in its veins.

He handed you his award to hold while he’s diving. It’s just a ceramic disk on a ribbon striped like the flag. You could have bought it at a party store, or at least a good mimic. The edge of the ribbon is making your wrist itchy where you’ve wrapped it.

“It’s just a ceramic disk on a ribbon striped like the flag.”

You lean your elbows on the railing. It’s just windy enough to pull bits of the dark surface up into foam. You’d never get into it like he does, like his students. They go under like they’ve been fantasizing about that cold wet on their thighs.

The water looks at you like it expects something from you. You are wondering what he’s been giving it when he goes down and kisses its floor. Why does it think it can keep him?

You have to do this thing to get him back and you don’t need anyone to tell you. He’s not the only one who can know secret things about the ocean.

You set the champagne glass down by your feet and unwind the ribbon from your wrist. It falls fast but there is a moment when the ribbon spreads itself out on the water before the disk pulls it under.

But you have saved him, look, there he is, rising from the water, pulling up his mask, laughing.

• • •