Breadcrumb #588

AMANDA CLAIRE BUCKLEY

There’s blood on the news, but damn if they show it. At this hour? Even the veins pinking the whites of the anchors’ eyes are censored. It’s unreasonable. We have a 24-hour news cycle and yet no one’s ever bloodshot. No ruddy noses from winter winds. No blotched cheek from greenroom booze. If there’s blood on the news, it’s more of a suggestion. Innuendo. A wink before a duck behind the curtain. An irritating fade-to-black. They keep the blood behind the lens, beneath the foundation, shrouded in the teleprompter’s parentheticals. 

No, you can’t show blood on the news unless it’s dried or reenacted. Unless it’s blue. 

The FCC has rules. The stations follow them.  

At any hour, someone is eating dinner. At any hour, there are children. 

I’ve got a little belly where a baby is growing like a leech and my computer sits on top of it. My oven is preheating. I’m watching press briefings on CNN while searching Twitter for spin. I’m not watching CNN by choice. I mean, yes, I chose CNN, but only because earlier in October there was a primary debate on the channel. I swiped a friend’s cable password so I could watch.  Since then, it’s just been what’s on and I’ve had more time on my hands than I’m used to so—I don’t know—I’ve been glued to it. Studying it. Binging it—as much as someone can binge something cyclical, something limitless, something too broad to fit in one open mouth. 

It’s something to do. Something to pass the time. Something to balance other tasks with. 

The news and the reaction to it seem to happen simultaneously. A commentary to the commentary follows each story and then the third-stage analysis breaks back into a new life, another headline. It’s Gatsby-esque: everything beats against the current, borne back ceaseless into a cannibalistic past. Times don’t change much, but my goodness these times are electric. 

Everyone wants my attention. Everyone is lying. 

My waitressing job has started cutting my hours. No more weekends. I’m stuck with the Tuesday night shift, and I feel useless. 

I’m making eggplant parmesan. I’ve become a vegetarian since the whole baby thing. Look, I’m not sold on the choice. I miss meat, miss the tendons and the sinews. Meat is something I’ve ingested my whole life. But something about this leech in me—it’s got me thinking. Something about this unborn shrimp eating another living creature feels premature. Morally wrong. A child shouldn’t have to consume death before it’s alive. 

I don’t know where I got that idea from, but I can’t let it go. 

They say—that is recipes from the internet say—to salt the slices of eggplant before you cook them, so the flesh holds up in the oil, in the pan, and then in the oven. 

I did not think ahead enough to salt my eggplant. 

I’m not even sure I own an oven-safe dish. I’m more of a microwaver, honestly. 

Everything seems to happen simultaneously. 

I have a small TV from Target. I bought it back when I was working the weekend shift. I’ve set it up on my kitchen table so I can watch CNN while I cook. By cook I mean wait. My oven is still preheating.  I’ve only recently learned that increasing the temperature doesn’t lessen the cooking time. It just burns the food. Burning is different than cooking. Who knew?

I know I could do better. I try to do better. 

When my friends cook with me, they think ahead. They salt the eggplant. When they salt the eggplant, I can see, if I’m patient, the water in the flesh rise to the top of the pale green like little mirrored beads. Pearls.

“I’ve got a little belly where a baby is growing like a leech and my computer sits on top of it.”

There’s blood on the news, but instead of blood they say “assault.” 

FCC rules imply that explicit details to violent and sexual crimes are okay to air only if they are integral to reporting the story justly. For instance, it was deemed just to report on the minutia of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murders because the method of violence was sensational. Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing was sensationall. Bill and Monica were sensational. So were CK and Cosby. Weinstein. We heard all of the details. The kinks, the stains. Who owns a stain? Is all evidence public property?

When people say “sensational,” they mean “newsworthy.” When they say “newsworthy” they mean “earth shattering.” When they say “earth shattering” they mean “something we haven’t heard before.” 

For the most part, the anchors stick with “assault.” It’s so wide. 

On the news, everyone repeats themselves and hopes you don’t notice. 

When they say “assault” on the news, they can mean so many things. 

They shuffle their papers in their hands and move on. 

It’s kind of the same as how when I say I “hooked up” with someone I want to mean what you think I mean and nothing else. It’s a word with a funhouse definition—different depending on where you stand, who you are. I say “hooked up” when I want you to fill in the gaps with your desired color of paint. I want you to use broad strokes and easy shapes. I say “hooked up” when I’d rather not say I was paralyzed by a hand on my thigh. I say “hooked up” when it was little more than a kiss. I say “hooked up” when I’d rather not say I was asked three times before I removed my shirt. I say “hooked up” when I’d rather not say I said stop too soon–too late. I say “hooked” up when I got on my knees willingly, when I got on my knees unwillingly. I say “hooked up” when I’d rather not say anything at all, when I wish I could say more.  

I don’t like appearing naïve. It’s nice to imply expertise. That’s how you get the good sections. That’s how you get the weekend hours. 

I wish I knew how to cook. Really cook. Not burn. Cook. 

“Hooked up” could be a kind of “sex,” but “sex” can be a kind of “assault.” 

I don’t like how thin the line between the two is. 

I don’t know why we can’t keep the two apart. I can’t keep the two apart.

Sometimes there’s both “assault” and “rape” on the news. The news depicts both the way they depict blood which is to say they’re not depicted at all but suggested. Saying the word “rape” on the news is like taking a train cross-country with the windows blacked out: it’s a far way to travel–from here to there, safe to unsafe–still, the landscape of the nation remains a mystery. Saying the word “rape” tells you enough without telling you which states the train passed through. 

Saying “harassed” on the news is like saying “assault” on the news is like saying “rape” on the news is like saying “neutralized.” I heard the word “neutralized” on CNN the other day when, I think, they meant “stoned.”

I asked a friend if they’ve heard of the Kurds. My friend was visiting during the October debates and we were salting the eggplant because they had thought ahead. They brought an oven-safe dish. They tried to teach me how to make a meal without touching the microwave. I hovered in the corner near the dustpan and broom. They hadn’t heard of the Kurds. Neither had I. Not until CNN told me I ought to know about them. Not knowing made me feel small. 

What else in the world do I not know? What do I need to know? I check the headlines. I follow the money. What knowledge is critical to my safety? What streets should I avoid? What else am I forgetting? 

Hevrin Khalaf. That was the woman. I didn’t know a single thing about her until she died. Until she was “neutralized.” I hope people know about me before I die, but it’s unlikely anyone will ever know about me at all. 

I am disappointed in myself. 

I have too much time on my hands. 

I wipe my hands on my jeans instead of using a hand towel. 

I miss the rush of Saturdays. 

Someone on the news keeps saying “neutralized” when they mean “stoned” when they mean “war crime.” They are only quoting a statement. I know they can’t say what they really mean. Not on the news. Not on CNN. Not on Fox. Not on MSNBC. 

I don’t know what I look like when other people stare at me. 

In the grocery store. On the subway. Do they see that I’m growing? Am I overgrown?

I don’t know what a “war crime” looks like. I don’t know if I’ve ever lived through one. 

Where I’m from, there’s only traffic. Endless traffic. Honestly, I think, sometimes, traffic might be the worst thing I’ve lived through.

Does a “stoning” break through the blacked-out windows of the train? 

The steam from the pot of boiling water on the stove—the water for the pasta for the eggplant parmesan—fogs the mirrors in the bathroom of my apartment. My entire apartment changes when I cook. Everything gets smaller. The walls get closer together. The days start to feel repetitive. Everything shrinks until I can’t tell one room from the other. 

I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a TV. I stack headlines between the doorframes of my house. I line them up like cars stuck, bumper to bumper, in rush hour. If something “earth shattering” happens, I will know it occurred. 

I put my hands on either side of my hips. My hips have not really grown wider despite my gut gaining depth. I move my hands forward, holding steady as not to change the distance between them. I put my hands against the stove and say to myself, “This is how big you are.” I compare myself to the stove. I compare myself to how I think I look. I say, “This is how big you are compared to the stove.” 

On the news, they tell me how big the stove is in relation to other stoves.

I want to get a true sense of the space I take up. What is the accurate and just size of my life?

I wear the same coat no matter how big I am. No matter how pregnant I get, the days are the same length.  

I think through the portions of my meal thoughtfully. Not too little. Not too much.

Everywhere there are period commercials with the blue stuff. 

On sitcoms (have you noticed?) babies are born goo-less.

• • •

Breadcrumb #587

MEGAN WILDHOOD

We are asked to peel potatoes.
We are told to put the skins,
which my sister can produce in one
long spiraling strip, into a dented metal bowl

 between us. We will save them for soup.
I think. I do not think the popular thing is true;
death is not a part of life.
(My sister finishes flaying her spuds, bounds off

 into the unmowed yard.)
It is harder than that;
It is not as if life and death amicably separated
like an out-of-love couple so that they may find 

more satisfying companions.
(Dad reaches inside for breath enough to call his girl back
but she’s been eagerly received by our land’s high, hard tresses,
blonde like Mom was even up to this day last year.) 

I will not outlive my grief.
When Mom laughed, she laughed from her soul,
they said. I remember it like that now.
Her grief howled like wind in tunnels, too. 

I will not outlive my grief.
But maybe it is not impossible to live;
extremes can exist back to back.
I give you the zebra, I give you grief, I give you a naked potato 

in accidentally sliced fingers. Dad is still looking into where
his girl disappeared, past it now, to the yard of stones
showing sayings. Death is a part from life, he whispers,
(grazing the pane with his fingertips). It will always be as hard as that.

• • •

Breadcrumb #586

SANYA KHURANA

While I worked at my loom, pedalling methodically, two bare brown feet on my right pedalled not mechanically, but rhythmically. They moved buoyantly and seemed to dance. But the hands — the hands, which weren’t at work, were surprisingly festered with fresh open blisters, tender white skin trying to form over them in vain. The hands looked like they had been scrubbing, slaving, scraping. But the feet were beautiful. Although they had corns and hard, cracked carcasses, they were strong with beautiful rippling muscles.

As I was observing this pair of brown feet, I heard the clicking sounds of master’s sandals nearing and all the white feet began to pedal faster. But not the brown feet. The two brown feet began to fumble in their dance, like a graceful aerial dancer whose ribbon tears, sending them spiralling to the floor. Along with the sounds of master’s sandals came one more pair of new white feet.

Master came directly to the brown feet and ordered them to walk to the other room and work with hands so that this new pair of white feet could work with the machine. I glanced up and saw the tender, dry brown lips try to protest by fluttering like paper. But before the lips could part like two pages that engulfed words of promise, master slapped the book shut.

“I glanced up and saw the tender, dry brown lips try to protest by fluttering like paper.”

“GO,” he yelled. And the two brown feet scurried out.

I saw through the glass partition between the machine and handiwork rooms: two brown hands and two white hands working on a king size bedsheet. It didn’t look strange that brown and white were working together like one pair of hands, grappling together at a web of threads in myriad colours. The needle in the clean and soft white hands nodded sturdily. They were beautiful hands, like the hands of a piano-player. And the two colours of the hands looked beautiful as they danced together, like the juxtaposed keys of a piano creating graceful music. But the brown hands seemed to be dancing to a different music. The needle in the sore brown fingertips trembled like a leaf, dancing like the shivering brown lips. 

Brown hands, white hands, yellow and cracked nails, clean and trimmed nails were working on the same sheet. Within a few weeks, it was ready. I could see it through the glass door. It was resplendent with an intricate, kaleidoscopic all-inclusive Persian border and a prosaic, western center. It was scintillating with a spectrum of colours. Seeing this the smiling white lips said, “in this bedsheet’s design, your thread is wound up in mine.”

The brown and white hands began to shake out the imprints of their palms from the bedsheet. And although the bedsheet had already braided the brown and white hands in such a tight plait, the brown hands continued to quiver. It was easy to smooth out the imprints from the sheet, but the matter of the mind different. The brown hands had hand been whipped and slashed and crushed by so many white hands that the mind was much more creased than the sheet and a gentle white hand’s pat wasn’t enough to ease it.

If only those brown feet would return to the loom at my right and I could point out to them that our pedalling was parallel. If only I could show them that although brown hands, white hands, brown feet, white feet in semblance seem apart, their temperament, their nature and their skill have the same heart.

• • •

Breadcrumb #585

CHELSEA FONDEN

remember the view from the porch in the forest glade, 
the night like a test tube around you
sizzle & spark, moon wafting
the way you held hands and your breath 
when your co-workers won’t stop complaining about vacation homes 
and everybody’s not answering because they’re struggling, 
or they’re pouring out, fast 
as tea from your grandmother’s kettle— 
when the steam hit her skin she muttered hell’s bells 
and other things in Swedish you got the gist of.
you weren’t related, but you still say you’re Swedish 
and maybe you are
because no one knows who your grandfather’s father was, 
some man named Rodney

remember when you get bad news, 
maladies common as popsicle sticks—
the hope is 
we all vote to live. 
glossy photos of you praying as a child 
torn down the left third, what else 
isn’t covered by insurance, everyone’s turning up 
in the emergency room where you 
don’t look too closely at the walls, 
another type of plasma screen. 
you know a lot about Medicaid 
you leak out in little pieces — 
glasses are free but they make you choose from a selection 
in an ugly little briefcase
doctors brandish like a favor 
the sky bright enough to see without them 
and strangers kept your eyes for a minute instead of shoving—
remember the view

• • •

Breadcrumb #584

MAGGIE DAMKEN

Before we even get out of the car, the first thing I see are the empty vases cemented to either side of her headstone. Her neighbors are bright with pansies and peonies, sunflowers and calla lilies, and their dressings emphasize the barrenness of her marker. For a few moments Joe and I stand there in the heavy silence that always comes when we visit his mother, and then he says what I know isn’t my place to suggest: “We have to go get flowers.” 

    Mary Ellen, I’m asking you to forgive us for arriving without flowers. 

     At Aldi’s we almost give up, but we find two purple-yellow-blue bouquets waiting at the register, just as we’re about to call it quits. Back at the cemetery Joe breaks the wet, too-long stems with his bare hands to make them fit into the shallow vases. “You’re like He-Man,” I laugh, and then he laughs, wiping leaves on his jeans. He puts the bouquets into the vases; I fluff out the flowers, loosen them from the rubberband-tightness, then stand back and behold the brighter beflowered grave. I stand next to him, like I always do. I ask him if he wants to be alone, like I always do. Then I go back to the car, like I always do, and watch him miss her. 

“Back at the cemetery Joe breaks the wet, too-long stems with his bare hands to make them fit into the shallow vases.”

     “When you suffer a loss that early,” says Joe, “you don’t have painful memories but you do have painful questions.” At ten miles an hour, we wind through the cemetery toward its exit. “Because there’s a hole. And that’s mostly what I think of. Like I’m sorry we didn’t get to know each other. Sorry you aren’t here to see what’s going on. Sorry you got such a raw deal.” 

    My parents are both alive. I have always had them. I don’t have a mom-shaped hole. I put my hand on his knee as he pulls onto the road. 

    “And then I wonder if I’m talking to her or a patch of grass,” he says.

    “Well she isn’t there,” I say. The contradiction doesn’t sit right, now that we’ve dipped our toes into the realm of the solemn ephemeral, where personal belief reigns. “That’s the physical spot where you visit her, but she isn’t there.”

     “No,” he says, and struggles to articulate, “But I like to think ghosts keep tabs on their graves. Maybe. I don’t know.” 

    We ask so much of the dead. We give them so many apologies, so many explanations, even though they, like God, should be omniscient. Still we have to say our piece for ourselves; we’re alive, which means we can’t ascend into simply knowing. We have to work for it. Mary Ellen, I’m asking you, even though I don’t have to ask—I’m asking you so I know I’ve asked, I’m asking so I know I did what I am supposed to do—I’m asking you to do what is only natural for a ghost, a memory, a mother: be everywhere he needs you to be, exactly when he needs you to be, amen.

• • •