Crush

There were six children total, if you didn’t count Lil’Critter, who had died at the tender age of two of some mysterious virus that had gone untreated. Later the boy learned that all of his siblings had real names, like George, and Annabelle, and Eugene. But no one ever called them by their names, only their nicknames. He was called Monster, and his brother was called Fisher. They lived in a dilapidated house in rural Wisconsin, a shack really, that was heated by a woodstove, which was also used for cooking. There was a kettle on the stove and a big cast iron skillet, which Mama used to fry up potatoes for dinner, or bacon or ham and eggs for breakfast.

There were two bedrooms, one where Mama and Papa slept on a double bed, whenever Papa was home, and one where the kids all slept, on mattresses on the floor. Mama Judy was at work at Red Owl, where she worked the cash register and got all the gossip from the townies. Sometimes, Mama Judy would bring home bags of food that had been on the shelves long past their expiration dates, or cans that were damaged or looked as if they’d been kicked in by a miner wearing steel-toed boots. Yesterday had been a banner day. “Look what I brought y’all!” Mama had shouted, her face animated and proud. “A whole case of pop! Good as new except for the dents!”

There was a small porch at the entrance of the house, but it wasn’t screened in, at least not anymore. There were four steps, mostly rotted that led up to the door. Monster and Fisher were sitting on the top step, their gangly, mosquito-bitten legs hanging over, drinking cans of Orange Crush. It was sweet and delicious, just like this summer day. The older boys had gone to the woods with their beebee guns to hunt for squirrels and Mama had taken his sisters to town with her when she left for work. The girls, Puddin’ Pie and Cupcake, were twins, ten years old, but old enough to babysit the Anderson children.

“Think we’ll get in trouble?” Fisher asked. He was talking about the sodapop.

“Nah,” Monster said. “Mama said we could help ourselves. Get a taste of how the rich folk live.” Monster was thirsty, and he wanted to swig his pop, as he imagined the “rich folks” would do, but he didn’t. He took a tiny sip, and swished it around his little teeth, savoring it before he swallowed.

“Ima gonna save half mine,” Fisher said. Fisher was six, one year younger than Monster. “Put it in the icebox for later when it get real hot.”

“I guess that’s your prerogative,” Monster said, and he smiled a bit. “Perogative” was a fancy word he had learned in school from his second grade teacher last month at the end of school. It wasn’t on the spelling list or anything. He had overheard Ms. Sweeny use it with another teacher while they were absently watching the children play at recess. Monster asked her what it meant, and she told him, kindly. She explained it in three different ways and then asked Monster to use it in a sentence, which he did.

“Such a smart boy,” Ms. Sweeny had said, smiling. “You could become President one day.” Ms. Sweeny was pretty and always nice to him, not like the other kids at school who sometimes called him “dirty boy” even though his mother washed his face every morning before school. Since then, Monster had been using the word as much as possible so he wouldn’t forget it.

Their shack was pretty deep in the forest. The dirt road that led to their house was about a mile long. They walked it every day except summer to catch the bus on the county road that led to town. Red pines and thick foliage lined the sides, keeping safe the chirping noises of the birds and the branch-cracking noises from the deer and foxes. You couldn’t hear much of the county road from their place, an occasional semi-truck hauling beef or cheese or sometimes horses. Mama said it was too quiet. Warned her four boys and two girls to be safe on the trails, because if they got into trouble, there’s be no one but the animals to hear their cries.

Monster and Fisher heard a distant rumble. It wasn’t a semi. “Uh, oh,” Fisher said. He looked scared. Monster was scared, too, but as the older brother he tried not to show it.

“Sounds like the mighty storm is coming.” The sky was blue, hardly a cloud sprinkled across it, so he wasn’t talking about the weather. “The Mighty Storm” is what Mama called Papa. The sound got louder, rumblier. They knew it was Papa’s truck.

“Run!” Monster said. The two boys put their soda pop cans down and ran around the house to a lean-to where the wood was stacked. Their older brother’s bike was propped up next to it. As the truck got closer and closer, the two boys pulled the blue tarp down and pulled it over them. Fisher put his hand in Monster’s hand, and Monster held it.

“Oh crap,” Fisher said. Monster looked at his brother’s face. Tears were streaming. “I didn’t mean to, I promise!”

Monster looked at his brother’s face, and then lowered his eyes to Fisher’s crotch. Fisher had peed himself, again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now they were in for it. Monster slapped his brother hard against his head, and Fisher let out a wail. “I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it!”

They heard the truck pull up to the house. The door opened and slammed shut. The footsteps of a man in heavy workboots. Papa was a logger. Sometimes he would be gone for weeks at a time. Sometimes days. It was never long enough.

“What in Sam Hill?” Their papa’s voice was loud and angry. “Boys!” he yelled. Get out here, right now!” The boys staid put. Monster wished his older brothers were here. Sometimes, when it was four against one, the older two would get into an argument with their Papa, stall him a bit. Long enough for the younger ones to run away through the trail to the Olson’s house, which was three miles away. Pepper was almost sixteen, and nearly as tall now as their father. But Pepper and Kip were long gone, far into the woods by now.

The two younger boys heard the door to the shack open and close. They heard their father yelling. Something about the house being a pig-stye. Something about how a working man ought to come home to house that didn’t look like cows lived in it. He yelled for his wife, even though he had to know she was at work, as she was every day except Saturdays and sometimes Sundays.

Monster grabbed some leaves from the bottom of the lean-to. Motioned for his brother to wipe his pants, try to clean up the pee stain.

Papa came out of the house again and yelled. “Boys,” his voice slurring from what Monster assumed was drink. If you don’t come out here right now, you are going to get a lickin’ like you never seen before!”

“Boys! Now. I ain’t playin’. I’m gonna count to ten, and if you four ain’t standing in front of me by the time I finish, you are gonna wish you ain’t never been born.”

Monster already wished he had never been born. Of course, that hadn’t been his “prerogative,” had it? “We should go,” Fisher whispered.

“Three!” his father yelled. “Four!”

Slowly, the boys emerged from the woodpile, and came around to the front of the house, where his father was standing, holding a white bottle of vodka. Mama called it “Papa water.”

“Stay behind me,” Monster said. “Don’t let him see.”

When Papa saw them, he stopped yelling. Just looked at them. Up and down. “Where your brothers at?” he asked.

“Shooting,” Monster said. “Looking for squirrels.” Fisher was hiding behind Monster, his forehead resting on Monster’s shoulder blade, his hand covering the place on his jeans where he had wet himself.

Papa put down his bottle of vodka, gingerly, on the porch. Then gently he picked up both of the cans of half drank Orange Crush. “Where’d you get this?”

“Mama brought them from the Red Owl. She said we could have them. We weren’t stealing nothing. Honest, Papa she said we could.”

Papa swore a little. Muttered something about that wife of his, wasting his good money on extravagances she knew they could not afford. As if his life wasn’t hard enough. Then he noticed that Fisher was hiding behind Monster. “Step forward, boy.”

Monster held Fisher still, but it didn’t work. Fisher was defeated and Monster knew it. Fisher stepped around his little brother and faced his father, his head bowed in shame his hands futily trying to cover the wet spot.

Papa stared at his youngest son and shook his head. It was terribly quiet for a long time. “Put your hands on top of your head, boy.”

Fisher did. He was crying loudly now. The sobby, jittery kind of crying that was full of desperation in knowing that the worst was yet to come. In between cries, he tried to say how sorry he was, that he didn’t mean it. It wouldn’t happen again.

“You said that last time,” Papa said. “And the time before that. My son, already in school and still pisses his pants like a baby girl. A baby girl! That’s what you are. Do you need a bottle, little baby? Do you need me to get some diapers?”

Fisher shook his head. “I ain’t no baby, Papa. I aint. I’m sorry.” Monster wished that Papa would just hit them both, right now. Get it over with.

Papa put the pop cans down, and took another swig of his Papa water. “I oughta hit you,” he said.

Here it comes, thought Monster. It will be over soon.

“But I ain’t gonna.” Monster breathed a sigh of relief. Fisher said thank you. “Tell you what I’m gonna do. You say you ain’t no baby, right?”

“That’s right. Not a baby.”

“Good. If you ain’t no baby, you don’t need no toys, right?”

Monster and Fisher looked confused. They didn’t have very many toys. Some GI Joes. Some leggos. Some big trucks that both boys still played with when Pepper and Kip weren’t around.

“Both of you. Sit right here, on the gravel. We gonna prove there ain’t no babies in this house.

As the boys sat on the gravel driveway, they watched as Papa went in and out of the house. Six, maybe seven times. He brought out all the trucks. The leggos and GI Joes. He even brought out the barbies and dolls that his sisters owned. Every last piece of junky toy his mother had brought them on clearance at the Red Owl. Finally, he went to the back, near the woodpile, and wheeled out Pepper’s bike. Pepper had bought it with his own money, earned from chopping wood for Mrs. Olson all winter long.

When all the toys were on display, Papa opened the door to his truck. “Now you’ll learn Baby Fisher. Now you’ll learn.” Papa backed up the truck. The boys stood up, wishfully thinking that maybe now he would drive away, and their punishment would be to clean up the mess.

But Papa didn’t drive away. He drove forward, almost violently.

“No!” Monster yelled. “No!”

Quickly, and then slowly, quickly and then slowly Papa rammed his truck forward and back over every toy that anyone in the house had every owned, until most everything was smashed to smithereens.

Then he drove away.

(Part of a collection of short stories of the same title: Crush)

The Storm

I have survived another dark night. The rectangular skylight in my bedroom, exposing one quarter sky and three quarters sleeping branches, is my porthole to the outside world. Before getting out of my bed, I surmise that the day is cloudy, but not raining. The overhanging limbs and leaves that tower over my roof like a protective shadow have not a hint of rustle. No wind. The water will be calm.

By 6:03 a.m. I have downed a half a cup of microwaved leftover coffee, taken two bites of an apple, and am in my car, headed for Lake Nokomis for an early morning row. As I cross the bridge, Marshall becomes Lake and St. Paul becomes Minneapolis. As usual, I am comforted by the complete and utter lack of transformation. I like when one thing can become another without the need to make a fuss. Like old love. I turn on the radio, and the whispering secrets of MPR are the only audible accompaniment to this usually bustling song of a street. I drive. Past Leviticus Tattoo parlor, the Hi-Lo diner, and Merlin’s Rest, the Irish bar where men drink whisky in kilts. I give a nod to El Norteno, the best Mexican restaurant on Lake Street, and The Himalayan, everyone’s go-to for Tibetan and Nepalese.

To my left, a family who slept under the Hiawatha Lightrail Bridge is starting to stir. A child rests on her mother’s lap. The mother lights a smoke with one hand, runs her other hand tenderly over the sleeping girl’s cheek. The father is folding dirty blankets, brushing off the sticks and brush. He packs them into the shopping cart most likely stolen from the Savers nearby. I turn left, leaving Lake Street for the lake.

“Severe thunderstorm warnings have been issued for the following counties,” the announcer on the radio says calmly. I turn up the volume, although I can hear every word just fine. I listen intently for Hennepin County, hoping not to hear it. I don’t. Storms are not predicted to hit Minneapolis until 10:30. I will be off the water, back home in St. Paul long before then.

The sky transforms from a muted grey to a slightly brighter one. I roll down my windows, and hang my left hand out the window. It is early, but the humid air is already warm and thick. I imagine I am rolling the air in between my fingers like a button or a damp cotton ball sweetly scented by lilacs in their final breath of bloom. I drive slowly, taking a few detours for summer construction. My GPS reroutes me to 28th Avenue. It is flanked by small cafes, ethnic barbershops, and mini-markets with neon signs in the windows advertising Halal meats. The restaurants are laid out like a multicultural quilt.

I continue driving south, and think about my boat and how it will feel to be in it once again. The traffic light turns yellow where Minnehaha creek crosses 28th and I gently stop. A lone, sunrise jogger, wearing hot pink, checks her fitbit as she runs in place, waits to cross. Outside the Mello-Glaze bakery, a round-faced donut-maker with a hipster beard puts out a two-sided triangular sign connected with hinges that reads: “Legalized crack balls sold here.” I smile. Gets me every time.

I turn onto Nokomis Parkway and drive down to the small beach where we will launch our boats. Liv is already here, doing lunges and stretching her long arms overhead, arching her back like a yogi. She is young, strong, bold, and in the best shape of her life. This year, with any luck, she will place at Nationals, if not win it completely. Our coach is counting on it. She is wearing a high-viz orange tank top.

Adam arrives in his SUV, pulling the trailer of twelve rowing shells. He saunters out of the vehicle, waves amicably at young Liv and middle-aged me, and says in an exaggerated cadence, “Any day on the wa-ter is a great day indeed!” We both smile at this familiar phrase. Our coach yells it at the start of every practice. Adam laughs good-naturedly. “The old battle axe can’t make it today,” he says. “His wife’s making him go to church. As if this isn’t church!” He gestures toward the lake. Adam’s body is beautiful, as if designed by Walt Whitman himself. Strong shoulders, strong legs, strong core. Everything in its place, and nothing wanting or in excess. Like Liv, he is in his prime, and he will never look more like a poem than he does now. I look at them both as an art lover looks at a cathedral. They look at me like the mother I am, which feels perfect because it is.

There are twelve boats on the trailer, some with riggers attached, carefully placed on the racks like an intricate puzzle, and tied down with straps. Most mornings all the boats are claimed, but not Sundays. Sundays, it’s just the three of us and our coach. Adam and Liv because they are training to be champions, and me, because I need the practice. Last year was my first year racing a single, and as our coach frequently reminds me, I’ve got serious catching up to do.

We unstrap our boats from the trailer and haul them to slings. “You heard?” I say, wrench in hand, as I make adjustments to my rigger. “MPR says a storm is coming.”

“Not ‘til 10:30,” Adam says. “I checked the radar.”

“Plenty of time!” Liv says enthusiastically. Impossibly and eternally chipper, every sentence Liv utters is punctuated with an exclamation point and a smiley face emoji. “I love rowing before a storm! Look at the water!”

The water is glass. It reminds me of the smooth outer surface of a snow globe. The sky, which keeps changing, has become the color of cream of mushroom soup, and it is reflected in the face of Lake Nokomis. A family of well-behaved ducks, in a perfect line, glides across the wet portrait like a steady stroke of an artist’s paintbrush. We hoist our light, twenty-six foot long boats onto our shoulders, cross the street to the lake, and roll them into the water. We gently get in our skinny, single shells. We secure our oars into the oarlocks, and push out slowly. “You two go ahead,” I say. “This is only my second time on the water this year, and well, you know what happened last year.”

Liv smiles her gargantuan smile. “No one, and I mean no one can get back into a capsized boat faster than you!” Every time she says that, I want to kill her, but it would be like assassinating a lovable kindergarten teacher. She is so genuinely, enthusiastically supportive, I end up thanking her instead. “You’ll be wonderful!” Liv says. Wonderful is in capital letters and italics. “You got this, girl!” Her smile is so big, I think for a moment that her face will explode.

“Stay close to shore,” Adam says. “We’ll catch up to you on the second lap. If it starts to rain, keep going. But first sign of lightning, head in.” The two of them align their boats side by side, so that Liv’s starboard oar is 30 inches from Adam’s port oar. Facing backward, they row past me, building to a steady state. They pull their oars close to their bodies and breathe out as their legs push the boat from beneath them. The muscles in their backs ripple in unison, and they look like two perfectly rhythmic stanzas of a sonnet.

I paddle out slowly and awkwardly. I am determined not to tip today, and I know that if I go at my own pace, I won’t. I take a few slow, baptismal strokes. Wobbly. I take a few more until I find my balance and a semblance of rhythm. I notice the water, the feel of my blades across it. I notice, with the precision of a cook who can tell the sauce is done by stirring alone, when the water changes. I watch the wind, slight as it is, whisper across the water as if it were telling me a secret, but I tell myself not to rush. I have learned not to lean toward secrets.

A few years ago, when I was still married, and had my neat little family of four fastened in place like an oarlock, I competed in a racing quad on the Mississippi River, with a different crew of rowers. I rowed in the two-seat position, and I was not responsible for setting the pace, like the stroke in the four-seat, or for steering, like the bow in the seat behind me. My only responsibility was to blend my body, to be strong, but not too strong. My job was to go entirely unnoticed, so that an observer on the shore would not see four individuals, but rather, one boat. I was good at being invisible.

I feel my body, my sleepy middle-aged bones moving inside the confines of my skin. I feel the humidity in the air grow heavier, like a pregnant woman not ready to deliver. A storm is definitely coming, but not yet. With each slow stroke, I gain confidence. As my boat skims across the watery landscape, I feel part fish, part bird. Rowers. We look backwards as we move forward. We know where we want to go, but we are only certain of where we have been.

I switched to single skull rowing not long after I first found out about my husband’s other life, the family he had in New York: Sarah, who was my age and Evangeline, his third daughter, just two years younger than our Simone. I had been filled with an emotion that had no name: a dangerous mixture of uncontrollable rage and bottomless humiliation. It was as if an alien lived in my skin, swimming around, making me lose my center of gravity. I lost my balance. And I lost my spot in the racing quad.

My husband wasn’t there with me, in the kitchen, when I broke the news to our daughters. “Your father loves you very much,” I remember saying, in a smooth, calculated rhythm. As if I were rowing the middle section of a 5k headrace.

But then an image intruded. Rowers might say I caught a crab. “Catching a crab” is the accidental result of a faulty stroke, in which the oar either misses water or it gets jammed under the water for too long. This split-second mistake can flatten the rower, leaving them flailing on their back with an oar handle jammed into their stomach, or it can eject the rower completely. The mistake of one rower impedes the forward motion of everyone in the boat.

“Your father loves you very much,” I had said, “but…” I pictured myself as an old wooden chair, the kind you’d see in a homey cabin with a wood-burning stove and a little table with a puzzle on it. And the unspoken thought, but he didn’t love me, was like a strong kick to one of the legs. I don’t remember what I said next, but I do remember lying on the kitchen floor, like a pile of splinters, with my horrified daughters towering above me with looks that reminded me of pictures taken of children in Hiroshima.

I hear a splash to my right, and look over, expecting to see a fish. Like Liv, the carp love the calm before the storm. But it is not a fish. I see cupped hands rising and falling in the water. One hand, two. Three, four. There are swimmers crossing from the big beach to the little beach. I won’t hit them. Not even close. I turn my head back to position, raise my chest. Every thirty strokes or so, I turn my head back to the future to spot Liv and Adam, their boats still gliding side by side, their bodies swinging in perfect unison. Aware of everything and nothing at the same time, I increase my speed, and imagine myself evaporating as I listen to the gentle plopping sound of my oars catching the water. I love rowing.

My former husband had one office not far from here, and another one in Lower Manhatten. He did something important. He made a lot of money. You can fill in the rest of the blanks however you see fit. For months after I discovered his secret (his twelve year old daughter, Evangeline, contacted me on Facebook of all things), I tried to get him to fill in the blanks for me, like he was taking a test in my English class. And on what date did Odysseus’ ship set sail to expand his horizons? And what year did he encounter the Sirens? And did he miss his patient wife? The children he left behind? He filled in some of the blanks. But I could not grade the test, as I had no master key.

When I am about one third of the way around the lake, I feel a raindrop. Rowers are not afraid of rain, but something tells me that I should get closer to Adam and Liv, who have rounded the bend, rowed under the bridge and out, and are headed back toward the small beach on the opposite shore. I turn my boat, and row back along the same shore I just traveled. If my calculations are correct, I will reach the small beach before Adam and Liv. Then I will turn around, and we can do the last lap, in the gentle rain, together. They are rowing toward me, their backs facing north. My back is facing south. As we intersect, Adam calmly calls to me, “Lightening. Turn your boat around and head in.”

“Just one little flash!” Liv adds, enthusiastically. “We got this!” Because I was faced the other way, I had not seen it. The three of us row back to the beach. The raindrops are still intermittent. A drop here. A drop there. We have time, but still we do not waste it. We are unstrapped, oars out, with boats on our shoulders, crossing the road when the sky turns color. Not black. Not grey. Green. A sickly, yellow green that reminds me of the face of the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz.

“Holy fuck,” Adam says, as we lower our boats on the slings. He looks up. “Have you EVER seen anything like this?” He is giddy, like a young boy viewing the freak show at the State Fair. “I got to take a picture.” He grabs his cell phone out of the trailer. As Liv and I quickly load and strap the first boat on the rack, I notice that a few runners, walkers, and random passerbys have gathered on the beach, watching the sky. “Crazy,” Adam says when he returns, jogging slightly. “What a sight!” I ask him to send me the picture of the sky. We load the other two boats and begin securing the straps when a thundercap unleashes its barbaric yawp, and lightning explodes across the sky like—you guessed it—fireworks. The angry clouds have had enough, and they release a torrent of hard rain. I can barely see. I mean, really. It feels like it is raining shards of pencil lead.

The wind barrels across the lake, and the trailer full of precious cargo begins to sway. “Hold the boats!” Liv yells. Adam’s boat, a brand new Fluid Design, is not strapped. My boat, an ancient Hudson, is only partially strapped. Adam is on the left side, Liv in the middle, and I on the right. The wind howls, and the rain turns to hail. We are holding the boats, anchoring our feet to the ground, trying to keep the trailer of ten foot high boats from tipping over on top of us, when a man runs around from across the road to my side. He is screaming, his arms flailing about, but the storm is so loud, I cannot hear a word. “Life Jacket? Do you have a life jacket?” I read his lips. “Someone’s drowning!”

We have no life jackets in the trailer, but I have one in my car. I let go of the boats, leaving Liv and Adam to bear the weight. I dash through the penetrating hail, the frantic wannabe hero at my heels. “Was there one swimmer or two?” He screams this into my ear.

I hold up two fingers. I open the hatchback of my car, reach in and thrust the life preserver in his hands. “Definitely two!” He runs to the beach. A fire truck pulls up, the ambulance. Amid the sirens and wind, I hear Adam screaming for help, his voice traveling eerily and tinnily through the headwind. I run toward him and Liv. When I get back to the trailer, Adam and Liv are trying to turn their bodies into trees, planting their bare feet like roots, their limbs extended, trying to save 80,000 dollars worth of boats. “HELP!” Adam yells. “Did you get help?” His lips form the words, but all I hear is howling. He hadn’t seen the man seeking the lifejacket. He had no idea someone was drowning. I reposition myself on my side of the trailer just as the wind picks up again from the lake. I have one hand up high, and the other down low, on Adam’s unsecured boat. A painfully strong gust lifts the wheels of the trailer, and the boats are so very heavy. The three of us push back with all of our strength. “Help us! Someone help us!” The trailer topples, and the boats crash to the ground.

***

The air is still again. I feel grass on my cheek, and raindrops on my forehead. I am lying on the ground, underneath a tree. I don’t remember how I got there. The sirens have stopped, although I still hear voices coming from shore. I pick myself up. There’s a shrill ringing in my brain. For a second, I forget where I am. And then I see them—like a blurry painting coming in and out of focus—the smashed boats, red, blue and yellow, and the metal of the trailer racks contorted like a horrified face. I see Adam, who must have flung himself in the opposite direction when the boats came down. He is also rising from the ground, looking around dizzily. There is a gash on his right shoulder, and he is bleeding. Where is Liv?

Adam and I run to the capsized trailer, and we see her under the colorful, partially-mutilated carbon fiber plastic shells. Lying on her back, she is breathing. In and out, laboriously, as if she had just finished a sprint piece at a Regatta. Her head is still, but her eyes are opening and closing quickly, as if she were squinting from the sun. Adam and I maneuver our bodies between the broken boats to get close to her. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her eyes look first at me, then at Adam. “You’re bleeding,” she says, in between breaths.

Adam’s eyes move to her abdomen. His eyes start to well up. “Just a scrape,” he says. His eyes move back. Liv has been impaled by a metal rigor. It pins her to the ground like the insect in Prufrock’s poem. He kisses her forehead quickly and runs to the beach. Towards the ambulance, the firetruck. He is screaming, once again, for help. Liv’s breathing slows. “Am I…? she whispers, her eyes glancing downward, “okay?”

“You got this girl,” I say. “Just a scrape.”

Within moments, we are surrounded by the other survivors of the great June storm, and by the EMTs and firefighters who had been called to rescue the swimmer. They take one look at Liv and call for backup.

The swimmer had been saved, not by my life-preserver, and not by them, but by a runner who was training for a triathlon. That same runner was there, with a pink towel around his neck, in the mix of extras who loomed around Liv, trying to save her. Everyone was wet and colorful, like a cartoon. I remember more people arriving. The rowing community is a small, but tight subculture, and it seemed as if everyone I had ever rowed with or against appeared out of nowhere, with water-resistant, hooded rain jackets covering their Sunday clothes. I remember them moving the debris from the trailer, hauling away shards of fiberglass and oars, making room for the paramedics. I heard no sounds, but in my memory, words—real words made of letters—were floating out of people’s mouths as they argued about what to do. If we lift the trailer the rigger will slice her open I remember something like that. And We don’t want her to Bleed Out.

In the movies, there’s always someone who rises from the abyss of mediocrity and takes charge. Someone who calls the shots. Who knows, definitively, what to do to save the heroine. I don’t remember anyone like that. I remember the sound of a chainsaw starting up. I remember the piercing sound of the blade hitting the rigger, and the rowers cheering when the rigger was cut. I remember the paramedics arguing, endlessly, about how to get Liv into the ambulance. She still had a meticulously cut stake of metal in her abdomen, and I remember wondering how she would ever row with that obstruction.

I was told later that seven of the twelve boats had survived to row another day, to travel backwards into the future.

Liv bled out and died before they could move her. I don’t know how long it took. I was there, but I can’t remember her face in those last moments. I’ve tried. I keep picturing her as she was before, which makes everything worse. Just as I pictured my family before the divorce: intact. Perfect.

Was there something I could have done, that I did not do? Surely. If I hadn’t disappeared to grab the lifejacket, if I had been stronger, if I had been able to see what was at stake, Liv would still be alive. She’d race at nationals. She’d become a champion. And her mother, just a little bit older than me, would not be the broken bird that she had become. “It’s not your fault,” my coach told me later. He said this over and over again. But I didn’t believe him. “Sometimes,” he said, quietly, “beautiful things die.”

I do not remember getting in my car, leaving Minneapolis, or crossing back into sleepy St. Paul, to my life before the storm. I don’t remember removing my soaked clothes and crawling back into my bed under skylights, and sleeping for twelve hours with an undiagnosed concussion from being hit in the head by…something. Later, much later, when I looked on my phone, I had pictures of downed trees and blocked intersections that documented the route I took home. I had sent them to my coach. And there was a picture of the boats, the ones that were miraculously unscathed. The rowers who had arrived like ghosts, must have strapped the undamaged ones back on the trailer. They looked beautiful, towering above the blood-stained sidewalk.

I wish I remembered less of what came before. It would make the winds less ferocious, and the crash softer. But I remember everything. The way the blades felt on the water. The way the wind whispered in a voice that only I could hear. The beauty of shared solitude, and Liv and Adam’s perfect bodies floating across Lake Nokomis like a poem that would never end, like a sonnet missing the heroic couplet.

(First Published in Lake Street Stories, by Flexible Press)

Cold Day

Outside it is 27 degrees below zero
The air a ravenous wolf
Attacking exposed skin with piercing bite

On my walk from my car to the main entrance of the hospital
I tie my red fleece scarf high enough to cover my nose and cheeks
I breathe in the smell of “real” winter

The only kind we knew in my childhood
Spent in these heroic Minnesota north woods
So different from the asphalt winters I’ve grown accustomed to

Inside
My mother is cold
Lying on that lumpy hospital bed

In that flimsy cotton gown
Waiting to be wheeled into surgery
Where the doctors will lop off her right breast

I want to ask
“What do you plan to do with it?”
That breast that nursed seven children?

That breast I laid upon so many times 
Until I fell asleep when I was young 
Growing up here in these bitter north woods

I don’t like to think of my mother’s breast
Lying mangled in a bag
With discarded spleens and gall bladders

“What do you plan to do with it?”
That giant table of a breast
Where my mother would frequently prop her book

While lying on the couch
Exhausted
After all the kids went to bed

That breast undoubtedly 
Helped her land her first job
As a model for the Sears Roebuck catalogue in 1954

And most likely 
It played a part
In helping her land both her husbands

Don’t you think the other breast will be lonely?
Like she was
When her first husband died?

They tell me the doctors know what they are doing
They chop off body parts every day

I know they’ve seen the X-rays, the CAT scans, the MRI
They know how to read them
But they don’t know this breast

This breast 
That they will haphazardly throw away
Label “cancerous” or “waste”

This is the heavy breast that rested above my mother’s heart.
For all my life
It kept her safe and warm

I do not ask “What do you plan to do with it?”
Instead, I ask the nurse
To find a blanket for my mother

And in the meantime
I give Mom my red scarf
That still smells like childhood

When cold days were ordinary
When there was no storm too brutal
No snows too blustery to go ice skating on the lake

When I knew, with the certainty of a girl
That she, you, and everyone in my world
Would live forever

(from a Poetry collection called Blue Collar Love Poems)

Sidewalk Poetry

Burdened by beauty

Mammoth sunflowers bow their

Heads, pray for plainness.

Uprising and Resurrection: Memoir in Progress

CHAPTER ONE

some names have been changed

 September 29, 2020

It is the year of the pandemic, the year of Covid. The year of distance learning, uprisings in my beloved city of Minneapolis and everywhere, the year of lockdowns and curfews and wildfires. The year of that small man, our president, still alive, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, newly dead. The year of fake news. It is nearly impossible to write when surrounded by the incredulous.       

Why didn’t I begin this journal on the day that George Floyd was murdered by a policeman, just eight city blocks from my apartment? Why didn’t I start it before then, when the small man with the big voice was elected president and I dragged my teenage daughter onto a bus and rode 22 hours to protest? Why didn’t I start it when the Muslim ban was announced, and my students cried openly in my classroom? Why didn’t I start it when we first saw footage, carefully edited, of the caravans of migrants coming to the border, or the children separated from their parents and put in cages? It’s amazing how we can spend a lifetime looking for stories, and when they come, like a hurricane of heartbreak, the words just swirl around and cannot land. All I do is dodge and stay alive.

Yes, I should have started at the beginning, but who, being alive in the present moment, knows when the beginning begins? I cannot attempt to sum up the days and months that have preceded this day, this ordinary day, in an extraordinary year. The history books will undoubtedly fill in the details. But I wish to record something—some little piece of humanity—every day if possible, starting today.

Tonight was the debate between the small man and Biden. We wanted to watch it indoors with friends, but it’s Covid, and indoor gatherings are prohibited. My partner and I draped a sheet on his garage and set up a projector. We started the bonfire. The drone helicopters were circling overhead, swooping and rumbling, as they have been since my city started on fire a few months back. God, how I hate those helicopters. A few friends in masks stopped by, sitting six feet apart around the fire pit, bringing their own food and beverages so as not to spread the droplets of death, and we projected the debate for all to see. It was horrific. Yelling, interrupting, and posturing (mostly by me) but also by that small bully who was somehow elected president.  And then the zinger: the small man with the big voice refused to condemn white supremacists. This should have been no surprise. In 2017, when white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of protestors and killed Heather Heyer, an activist advocating for the removal of racist monuments, the small man said there were “good people on both sides.” Tonight, he was given a chance to walk back those statements. To amend them. But he didn’t. He told the neo-Nazi’s to “stand back and stand by.” Did he really say that? We paused the debate, rewound it and pressed play. Yes, he said it. On national TV. The guests all left, sullen and speechless. What else was there to hear? As my boyfriend took apart the projector, I sat paralyzed in my lawn chair, under the moonlight, until the queasiness overtook me, and I vomited quietly next to the dead lilac bush.

September 30, 2020

Today, I made soup. Potato leek. It is warm for September, but I keep the windows closed to drown out the helicopters who are still swooping overhead, taking pictures of my friends, my students, who are still vigilantly protesting police brutality in my city. The people for whom the video of George Floyd’s murder will never be a distant memory, because it is replicated on the daily. Because it has been replicated for 400 years. Darnella Frazier just brought it to the nation’s attention.  The soup is on the oven right now. It smells delicious, but I still do not have the stomach to eat.

My son Quincy started a new job today working with homeless youth. Maybe the new job will keep him off the streets, away from the protests. I am proud of him, the work he has done and continues to do to organize the people. He assembles supply backpacks full of masks, bandages, water, Neosporin, and milk of magnesia, water and Tylenol. He delivers the packs to the medics who are on the front line, treating the protesters who have been tear-gassed or beaten. I keep seventy-three dollars cash in my pocket at all times, in case I get the call and need to bail him out. My daughter Georgia moved back to Portland a week ago, where she should have been starting her sophomore year of college. She is not. She is taking a gap semester, and saving money, trying to avoid catching Covid in the dorms. Unfortunately, my eighteen-year-old niece was not so lucky. She, and all of her friends, contracted the virus during “Welcome Week” at Winona State. She is recovering now. My oldest daughter, Maddy, began her first year teaching in Chicago, remotely. One of her kindergartners asks her, every day, over Google Meet, “Miss Teacher? Why the bus no pick me up today?”

We’ve all missed the bus, I am afraid. Fascism is here.

Some protest. Some make soup they cannot swallow and worry.

Oct 1, 2020

         Today, I feel like a washrag that has been wrung too many times. I was up late last night, grading papers, returning emails from frightened and bewildered parents, and watching tutorials that made me want to cry. I have been a teacher for almost thirty years, but everything is different now. Nearpod, Flipgrid, Zoom breakout groups, Screencastify. There’s no one to help me. It’s not as if a teacher friend could lean over my shoulder and say, “Just click here, and then here, and then here.” I feel like an idiot. I am an idiot. I wake every day at 6am, put my work clothes on and shuffle to my makeshift office, which is a thirteen-step commute in my slippers. I drink coffee and make last minute preparations until the students slowly begin to appear on my screen. Some of them show their cameras, but most do not. They are each represented by a colored dot, and by the time my first class begins, it looks like my screen is covered with skittles. “Good morning, Mohamed!” I say to the yellow skittle with an M in the middle. “Good morning, Ashley! It’s a beautiful day today! Good morning, Samson. So glad you are here!” My voice is bright and cheerful. A few students type “hi” in the chat. No caps. “Who is ready to LEARN?” Some days I am grateful that I can’t see their eye rolls.

         When the schools first shut down, in March, I never imagined we would still be home now, eight months later. We teachers were asked to completely reinvent education in like, six minutes. They lauded us as “heroes” but didn’t pay us a nickel more. I work fifty to sixty hours a week now, which is significantly down from March, but I still spend more time on the computer than ever in my life. The blue lights flash before my eyes, the letters blur together, the dizziness rushes in, the fear, the fear, the fear… please not today. DO NOT HAVE A SEIZURE, I say to myself. Please, not in front of my students.

         I am an epileptic teacher in a pandemic.

Oct 2, 2020

         We do a journal on the first day of each week. It is always the same prompt: What’s going on in your world? Globally? Nationally? In your community? In your personal life? I play some chill music, and they write. “Why do we always do the same journal?” one of the kids asks.

“We are not just human beings; we are writers living in extraordinary times,” I say. “And your thoughts, your fears, your joys, are extraordinarily important. We are the ones who will document these days. The big moments. The little things.” I am on a roll.  “Like, how Gabe misses playing soccer with his friends.”

Gabe’s microphone light turns on. His sleepy voice comes out of my screen. “Did you say my name, Miss? Sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Right. It’s all-good, Gabe. I was just saying that little things, they count. Like how scared Kyjuan was when his grandfather was put on the ventilator, as he was telling us last week. Or how Eva learned to make bread with no yeast. One day, when your grandchildren ask you about life in the Covid era, you will pull out this ratty journal, and you will have before you an entire school year of insignificant things that are significant. You will tell them, ‘Look what I survived.””

No one says, “Wow, Ms. Marsnik. That’s really profound.” No one says anything. It’s just me, talking to an inanimate object. Again. My students don’t think of themselves as extraordinary. They don’t think of these times as extraordinary. This is their life, and they are mostly bored or tired. But they do their journal because they have nothing else to do.

I write with them. Every week. Today, October 2nd, my journal is short. Two sentences: After weeks of hosting unmasked super-spreader rallies, our dangerous president and his deplorable wife have tested positive for coronavirus. Word of the day: Schadenfreude.

Oct 12, 2020

                     Today is Indigenous People’s Day. When I was in school, we celebrated a different holiday. But things have changed. I’ve invited two of my Ojibwe students to teach the class today and they begin class with this beautiful poem:

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

--Hopi Elders' Prophecy, June 8, 2000

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered…

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.

Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

Oct 13, 2020

         I haven’t had a seizure in three weeks. Not even a small one. I think I’m healed.

Oct 14, 2020

In February of 2020, I travelled to Portland to attend my nephew’s wedding. It was pretty awesome. My nephew dressed up as Warf from Star Trek and his lovely bride was some other character I don’t know and they exchanged their vows in Klingon with an English interpreter. There was an incredibly large sword involved, but I don’t remember exactly why. While in Portland, I rented a two-bedroom airbnb with my sister, the mother of the groom, which should have been roomy, but a bunch of young friends of the Klingon couple had no place to stay so our place was packed with twenty-somethings who played noise music on the record player. If you don’t know what noise music is, you should google it and make a mental note not to listen to it unless you are in the mood for auditory flogging. The twenty-somethings slept on our couches and floors. They drank Hams beer, which is disgusting, but apparently very hip in their circle. I come from a monstrously large, artsy-fartsy family, so I was used to this kind of unexpected chaos, and I pretty much loved it, despite the fact that I had to share a bed with my sister and someone named Cloud.

While we were there, Corona virus, or the “Chinese virus” as the small man called it, broke out at a nursing home in Seattle. On my way back to Minneapolis, I had a two-hour layover in Seattle. No one was wearing masks, then, of course. I bought a small bottle of hand sanitizer in the airport and tried to keep to myself. On the airplane, every time a passenger coughed, I cringed. I’m going to die. I kept thinking about that movie “Contagion,” and I hoped I wouldn’t spontaneously start bleeding out of my mouth and then have a made-for-TV seizure. I started wishing I had slept with a stranger or stolen a leopard from the Portland zoo or done something regrettably deviant before meeting my untimely death on a Spirit Airlines airplane.

When I went back to work, the following Monday, I was still consumed with horror that I might have contracted the virus. What if I gave it to my students? There was no way to know for certain, as our president did not believe in testing, as that would make it seem as if more people had it. Numbers. He hated numbers. The virus was a hoax planned and perpetrated by his enemies. I arrived in my classroom at 6:30 am, put on my yellow gloves that I use to scrub floors in my apartment, and sprayed every desk with bleached water. There was no hand sanitizer left at the school, so I had to make do. The virus, we were told, spreads on surfaces. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. But don’t buy masks; they don’t work.

We talked about it in school, of course. Everyone was talking about it. “More people die of the flu than the corona virus,” one of my students said. “Young people cannot get it,” another student said. “Black people cannot get it,” someone said.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. “Are you sure that’s true?”

“Right here,” the student said. He showed me an Instagram post on his phone.

“My mom went to Costco and filled our minivan with toilet paper,” another student said.

“Toilet paper?” I asked. “Why?”

October 16, 2020

Today, as I drove home from my boyfriend’s house, it was snowing. Big, awkward flakes that were more rectangular than round. I was not expecting snow, so early. So my first thought was that my city was once again on fire. The snowflakes looked like newspaper strips turned to ash, floating from the clouds and disappearing on my windshield. It was barely dawn, but surely someone, somewhere, had reason to light some building on fire.

George Floyd was murdered on Memorial Day. There was no school that day, and I had been working all morning and afternoon putting together an end-of-the-year award ceremony for my students on something called “zoom.” I hadn’t turned on the news all day. Around 3pm, I flopped on the couch and turned to Facebook. There it was. The video. It was 8 minutes and 45 seconds long. Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck. Floyd said he couldn’t breathe. He called out for his mother. And then he was gone. Three officers watched it happen. Let it happen. One brave teenager, the same age as my students, filmed it. There were bystanders begging the officer to stop. To let that poor man go.

Murder in Minneapolis. Murder.

Today, Derek Chauvin is out on bail. And George Floyd’s children are fatherless.

In this morning’s creative writing class, I wrote about Amy Coney Barrett. The republicans are rushing her nomination to the Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett, a constitutionalist who believes in following that sacred document to the letter. Which doesn’t sound so bad, unless you consider who wrote it, and who it was meant to protect. Not women. Not one. Not people of color. Not one. Not poor people. Barrett, who has made a career of upholding racist and sexist doctrines, has spent a lifetime trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade. If she gets confirmed, we will roll the clock black a solid thirty years. Let the Handmaid’s Tale begin.

The small man is becoming increasingly unraveled as Election Day approaches. The tweets, the rants, the lies. Today, he said that the only way he will not win is if the election is stolen. Stolen? He makes no sense. Last night, my boyfriend and I watched television. We are both political junkies; news is our heroin and politicians are our Kardashians. But yesterday was tough. Biden had a boring, measured, steady town hall and the small man with the big voice held a super spreader rally in which he praised Q-anon, espoused conspiracy theories and announced that the virus is going away.

October 18, 2020

         I am old enough to remember when Wikipedia first became a thing. As an English teacher, it was a pretty standard practice for lazy students who did not want to do legitimate research to cut and paste from Wikipedia. So, I would tell them, go ahead and start with Wikipedia, but don’t end there. Go further. Use it as a jumping off point. But I just googled Q-anon and decided that Wikipedia pretty much nailed it:

QAnon is a disproven far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring conspiring against President Donald Trump. QAnon has been described as a cult. Wikipedia

The small man would call Wikipedia “fake news.”

October 19, 2021

I do not only teach creative writing. I also teach a form of philosophy called Theory of Knowledge. How do we know what we know? How is it possible that experts with the same set of facts can reach different conclusions? I was up until 2am preparing my lecture, transferring all of my notes to Google slides, trying to find ways to digitize handouts I have used for years. I have given this lecture before, many times, and I know my material. A year ago, I would have leaned against my desk, asked some anticipatory questions, and then walked to the whiteboard. I would have written some key terms on the board, terms that were difficult to spell, like Metaphysics, Epistemology, Aesthetics, Consequentialism.  And then I would speak, explain, check for comprehension. Tell a story about Kant, or Aristotle, or Simone de Beauvoir. I once gave an entire lecture on the philosophy behind Whitney Huston’s song, “How will I know?” How does Whitney know if he really loves her? How will she know if he’s thinking of her? What ways of knowing does she use in that song? Can she ever really be sure? Does she need objective proof? How reliable is sense perception?

Some days, pre-pandemic, in the gently warming spring or softly cooling fall, my students and I would go outside. We’d walk to a bucolic clearing by the lake near my school, and we would lie down on the ground. “Was Whitman right?” I’d ask my creative writers or philosophers. “Is it possible to see the entire universe in a blade of grass? In a field? What did he mean when he said, “I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.” What is God?”

Those days are over. Every word I say is scripted now. For years, I refused to show a PowerPoint, because I knew that the second a PowerPoint is put up on a screen, my students, who have underdeveloped frontal lobes and short attention spans, would be consumed with the desire to either stab forks into their faces, or to shut their eyes and dream about being a dolphin.

But here I am now, reading pedantic Google slides that took me three hours to prepare. I am reading out loud to 48 dots. Wait, now there are 47 dots. Someone’s Internet went out, or they got bored and left the meet to clip their toenails. I am reading my screen. “Metaphysics is derived from Greek,” I say. “Meta… Meta…”

I cannot say the word.

I am looking at it. I see the letters but I cannot form my words in my mouth.

The letters become disembodied and they dance across the screen like sprites in an Irish folktale. My tongue feels like heavy metal and I feel that oh-so-familiar whooshing feeling, as if I have left the skin and bones that are sitting on this chair, and I am hovering over myself, watching the shell of some unrecognizable shape morph into jello and then harden into brittle clay, waiting for it to crumple. In the old days, I used to get seizure warning signs two, sometimes three, days ahead of time. I’d get a distinct aura, a feeling of inexplicable irritability or a sense of impending doom. I’d feel light-headed and “out of it.” I would call in sick the next day and wait safely for the damn seizure to arrive and to leave. But now the seizures arrive like a rush of blinding locusts, fast and familiar, yet always somehow unexpected. I have had enough seizures since I started teaching remotely to know that things are different now. The screens are slowly killing me. I only have minutes, if not seconds, to get out of here. To make it to safely to my bed before my brain is filled with tiny explosions, one after another, until my brain is mush and my body is left so exhausted that I lack the strength to sit up or lift a glass of water to my lips, although I will be so thirsty I will feel as though I have been stranded in a desert for weeks.

I click the video icon to shut off my camera. In the chat, I type:

Klass is over. Sea you twomroe

I click the red button that says, “Leave Meet.”

October 21, 2021

Dr. Gonzales was the doctor who first diagnosed my epilepsy and I’ve been seeing him ever since. He’s a short, affable Philipino guy who loves soccer, his kids, and his wife, who cuts his hair. I always try to remember to compliment him on it. It’s nice hair. He’s one of the foremost epileptologists in the country, which is awesome, but he also has a tendency to giggle at odd times, which makes him human. He has never treated me like a lunatic or a sick person so I have always liked him, but at a routine appointment in February, I decided I loved him. Why? He suggested that I try Botox to treat my migraines, which often come before or after a seizure. “I’ve used it before,” he said. “When I worked at the VA. They let us try all kinds of things there (giggle) to treat the PTSD (serious face). It’s wildly successful with both migraines and seizures. The FDA has finally approved it for severe cases like yours. What do you think?”

What did I think? What did I think? I was a forty-nine year old mostly invisible woman well past my prime, and now this man was offering me BOTOX! I looked at him as if he were Ponce De Leon, offering me the fountain of youth. “Yes!” I said. “Yes!”

I realized I was a little too excited. I sounded like Meg Ryan in that famous scene from “When Harry met Sally.” I wanted to beat my fists on the Formica medical table and keep yelling, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” until my eyes rolled back into my head and I got all sweaty and panty. But faking an eye roll is not something you want to do in a neurology office, unless you want to end up with wires glued to your head, which is not that fun, believe me. I know.  I cleared my throat and used my best, “I’m a serious grown-up with a life-threatening disability” voice. “I mean…” I coughed.  “If you feel that it would help my condition, doctor, I would be willing to try it.” Dr. Gonzales giggled.

Of course, like giving a female an orgasm, getting insurance companies to approve Botox injections is not as easy as it might seem. Gonzales put in the order, but insurance cock-blocked it. I got the letter in the mail, and it read like a Dear John letter. “We regret to inform you that you are not approved for Botox injections because you have only tried seven million different remedies to treat your migraines and seizures, and you need to try eight million different kinds of drugs before we will pay for it.” Those weren’t the exact words. But that’s how I remember it. I called the insurance company immediately after reading it, and I sounded exactly like a jilted lover. “Please,” I said. “Just give me a chance.”

They said no, but assured me I was not out of options. I could either a). Pay $6,000 to receive the treatment out of pocket, or b.) Try one more medication—something called propranolol—and if it didn’t work, I could resubmit the request. “You do realize,” I told the faceless person on the other side of my cell phone, “that I am a single mother with three children in college.” What I wanted to say was, “Are you fucking kidding me? Six thousand dollars? Me paying for Botox would be like you working a job you sort of like.”

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am,” the voice said. “Your marital situation has absolutely no significance in regards to our decision. Every patient must exhaust all other resources before being approved for this service.”

Mother Fucker. I really didn’t want to go on another drug that made me groggy or hate sex or fart like a plumber. But I did. I tried the shitty drug, which did not work, even remotely. I gained seven pounds and contemplated joining a nunnery. And not the fun kind that Shakespeare used as a euphemism.

After the three-month trial, I was finally approved to try Botox, and I was pumped. “I am ready!” I said to Dr. Gonzales. I jumped up on the table with the white paper on it and kind of bounced around like a kid on stool at an ice cream shop, waiting for the peppermint bonbon cone to arrive.

“Sounds like someone’s excited,” Dr. Gonzales said. (Giggle).  I watched as he inserted the needle into the vial that was going to make me look like a twenty-five year old co-ed. Maybe after this I’d flash my boobs at the suburban bar across the street. “You don’t have to sit on the table,” Gonzales said. “I prefer the chair; it’s easier for me to walk around and get to the back of your head.”

He told me that it wouldn’t hurt much, but that I might bleed a little. He started on the back of my neck; one quick prick followed by another, and slowly moved up to the scalp on my head.

“Umm…excuse me,” I said.

“Did that hurt?” he stopped.

“No, but Dolphie. When are you going to get to my face?” I didn’t want the serum to run out. 

“Did you just call me Dolphie?”

“Yes. That’s your name, right? Adolpho Gonzales.”

(Giggle). “Correct. That is my name, but as I have told you many times, I prefer that you call me  “doctor.”

“Got it. But just so you know, I also prefer that you call me doctor,” I said.

“What? Wait, you have your PhD? No…” he giggled. “You’re messing with me again.”

“True, Doctor. But I just want to make sure there is enough left for between my eyes. And you know, on the sides of my mouth? There’re these little crinkles, you know. Unsightly.”

He laughed. And then casually, he told me we weren’t going to do my face. That my migraines and seizures always start in the left temporal lobe, and the back of my neck, so the best course of action was to use the serum there.

I slumped in the chair like a deflated balloon.

“Don’t worry Doctor Marsnik,” he said (giggle). You will have the youngest looking scalp of all your friends. If you shave your head, everyone will think you’re twelve.”

October 23, 2021

         In my old, pre-pandemic days, I had a desk but I never sat at it. I was always wandering around the classroom, looking over kids’ shoulders, getting “all up in their business” as they used to say. Asking them to show me stuff they were working on. Answering questions, listening to them talk about school dances or lacrosse games, or basketball recruiters or quinceaneras. Now, I sit so much I might get bedsores.

         I woke up early and turned on the news. We are two weeks away from Election Day. Four years ago, at this time, Hilary Clinton was ahead in the polls. Now Biden is. All signs point to a democratic landslide, but we have been here before and I refuse to drum up an ounce of hope. The last debate was last night, but I missed it.

         I had to take yesterday off, after “the episode,” as Dr. Gonzales likes to call them. I don’t remember much after leaving class on Monday. I had crawled into my bed, and took the “rescue cocktail.” Unfortunately, a rescue cocktail for epileptics does not remotely resemble a gin and tonic with a lime, which I really appreciate on a hot summer day, or a good Old Fashion, which gives me that happy tummy feeling after a long afternoon ski in the dark days of winter. For me, a rescue cocktail is 4 really strong pills: Depakote, Lorazapam, Ambian, and Gabapentin. Different epileptics get different cocktails, which I suppose is supposed to make us feel special. At its best, my rescue cocktail slows my abnormal brain waves (called spikes and waves on the EEG) which can ideally prevent a full blown seizure, and at worst, make me so sleepy that if I do have a seizure, it will occur while I am safely asleep and tucked under my covers.

After yesterday’s not-so-fun cocktail, I slept for 18 hours. I woke up thirsty as a racehorse and craving protein. I wondered how many seizures I had.  One? Two? Seven? Not none. I was too weak. But I had my words back. “I have my words back,” I said out loud, just to be sure, to the fruit basket on my counter.  “Good morning, lemons,” I said. They did not respond, so I figured I had most of my brain back too. I made an egg. I could see that my boyfriend had been there, but I didn’t remember. He had filled my fridge with cottage cheese, half-n-half, and some hard salami. He must have woken me up and fed me. I have a vague memory of him crawling into bed with me, holding me in his arms, and stroking my hair. But that could have been a month ago. Or last spring. Who knows?

         At some point, I had mustered the fortitude to post an emergency lesson plan for my students. This is not my first rodeo, as the cowboys say, so I had some pre-recorded lessons ready to go. In my altered state, I had uploaded them to Google classroom. There are no subs in distance learning, so it wasn’t as it I could just call in sick and be done with it.

         Because I missed yesterday, I am super behind today. I am meeting with students, one on one, via Google meets, discussing presentations they are giving next week. I am scheduled from 6:30am until 5:30 pm, with a few breaks in between. Usually, during breaks I walk, to get my brain away from the screens. The fresh air helps. But when I try to walk during my first scheduled break, I can only make it a half a block before I turn around. I feel like my bones have all been shattered, and magically, they are reforming, coming back together as if I’m the protagonist in a sci-fi film. The rest of the day I just lay flat on my stomach on my yoga mat during breaks. I close my eyes, and just breathe for a solid 5 minutes. Then I do I little cobra stretch, lay back down for a few minutes and then return to work.

         My 10:30 is with Juan. “You feeling better. Ms. M?” his voice asks kindly. His dot is green, with a J in the middle.

         “I feel wonderful,” I say. My smile is genuine though. I am always happy to be with my students. “Thanks for asking, Juan.  I was wondering, while you talk about your presentation, would you be willing to show your camera? It’s just easier for me to gauge your understanding when I can see your face. Totally your choice.”

         “Uh, sure,” he says. As Juan’s face comes into focus, he smiles too. “Sorry about this,” he says. He gestures to his background. He is surrounded by clothing on hangers. He is obviously sitting in his closet again. He has four younger siblings, and all of them are doing distance learning, so Juan attends all of his classes in the small closet that has a light. Even with the door closed, I can hear other teachers on other Google meets, teaching his siblings. I don’t know how Juan does it. But he does it beautifully. The kid is brilliant. He’s planning to do his presentation on the Muslim concentration camps in China.

         Up next is Emily. Emily was actually scheduled for last week, but she was a no-show. “Thanks for rescheduling,” she says. “I really appreciate it.” She is in her room, and her background is neat and clean. She has a brightly colored, lime green bookshelf full of books and skiing trophies. “The maid was so loud when we were supposed to meet,” she says. “That vacuum! I couldn’t concentrate at all,” she said.

         “That must have been very frustrating,” I say.

         “Distance learning is so hard,” Emily says. “You have no idea. Sometimes it’s like I can’t concentrate at all.”

         “I can only imagine,” I say. “I can only imagine.”

October 25, 2021

         One day, a few months after George Floyd was killed, I was on my daily walk through my war-fatigued neighborhood. Uptown was hit hard in the riots. Almost all of the buildings are still boarded up. Artists have painted over the boards with uplifting messages that range from “Black Lives Matter Every Day” to “Imagine Peace” to “Minneapolis Strong.” On nearly every block, someone has painted a beautiful portrait of not only Floyd, but also of Brionna Taylor, Philando Castille, Jamar Clark, Eric Garner, and many others who had been victims of race-related police brutality. Many of the business that had survived the early stages of the pandemic shut down after the riots, never to open again.

         But even then, as I do now, I walk every day that I am able. Although I miss the bustle and coolness of pre-pandemic hipster Uptown, I like seeing the pop-up graffiti art. Some good; some awful. I like knowing that the revolution is alive and ever changing, even though the inconstancy and instability of my everyday existence is terrifying.

That day, in August, I was walking to mail a letter, but when I got to the intersection where my familiar little blue box always stood to greet me, I saw, parked in front of it, a big, flatbed truck. Two workers were loading the mailbox onto a truck. I was mortified. “Stop!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

         I needed that little blue box. Three days after the murder of George Floyd, the only post office in walking distance from my house was burned to the ground. I remember thinking about all the graduation cards undelivered, the social security checks that never arrived, the cute little RBG stamps that burned and fizzled into nothingness. The smoke and smell lingered for weeks. As an epileptic who sometimes has no driving privileges, I consciously live in a neighborhood that is in walking distance to everything. In the riots, I lost my post office.

There were two men in charge of removing the mailbox. They were wearing orange vests and no masks. One of the men was older, perhaps sixty-five. He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” he said sadly. “Makes no sense to me.” I guess it wasn’t his fault. This whole year, so many people were doing horrible things because they are told to do horrible things. Reminds you of, well, history. As Mark Twain once said, History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” I sometimes think back to the civil rights movement of the 60’s. Every white person likes to think they would be on the “right” side of history. That they would support Ruby Bridges, the Little Rock 9. That they would stand up for the Freedom Riders, for those brave young people sitting at segregated lunch counters. But truth be told, most of us would just walk on by. Some of us would engage unenthusiastically, like the man removing my mailbox. Pretend he has no choice. Others, like the followers of the little man, perpetuate the lies and use violence and fear to keep the powerful in power, even if they themselves are powerless.

 That month, hundreds of blue mailboxes were removed from street corners across the United States and loaded into trucks. Why? Reports vary. Some said it was to prevent the peaceful protestors from harming them. Others said that because of the coronavirus, millions of people were expected to vote by mail instead of in person. Millions of people who believed in the corona virus, that is. The little man and his supporters thought it was a hoax. Getting rid of the mailboxes was their way of getting rid of votes for Biden.

There was no longer a blue box in walking distance from my house, and I was not driving these days due to, well you know. When I moved to this apartment in Uptown, I was psyched that absolutely everything I would ever need was in walking distance, including my place of employment and my beautiful post office. But the post office was lit on fire three days after the murder of George Floyd. I mourned for it then, as I do now. I kept thinking about all those love letters, graduation cards, prescription drugs, social security checks and packages that would never be delivered. And now, my drop box was gone.

Oct 27, 2020

         Amy Coney Barrett was sworn into the Supreme Court last night. The little man hosted a party on the south lawn. No social distancing. Almost no one was wearing a mask. The anxiety leading to the election is almost crippling. I feel like my hands and feet have been cut off and blood is gushing from the severed parts.

         When my teaching day is done, I find some stationary and write a letter to an old friend. I write by hand, because the last thing I need is more screens. This is what I write:

Dear Friend,

On Sunday, my sisters informed me that your mother passed. I am writing to say how very sorry I am for your loss. It is strange how something so communal as losing a parent can feel so singularly painful and crushingly lonely.  I cannot imagine what it must have been like to lose your mother during a pandemic.

My sisters told me that your entire family contracted the virus. Of course I know people who have tested positive, but for some reason, hearing about your family really hit me like a gut punch. This pandemic has been so strange. We see the numbers—of survivors and of those who did not—and they are just that, numbers. I read that our country has lost more people to Covid than we did in Vietnam. But your mother’s passing and your struggles have made it feel real.

So, I wanted to tell you that you are not a number to me, and although this is, in the most simplistic sense, a heartfelt condolence letter, it also a thank you. When I was a little kid, I looked up to you. I admired you because you were a writer. I told you that I wanted to become a writer one day. Granted, I told everyone that. But when I told you, you didn’t laugh and you did not look at me with condescending amusement. You just believed me. Thank you. So much has been taken away from us in these past months, but one thing this pandemic has taught us is to express our gratitude now, as none of us know what tomorrow will bring.

What we were, what we are, what we become: on the grand scheme, none of that seems to matter too much. But when we lose someone wonderful, like you did in losing your mother, we are reminded that it is precisely the little things that matter most. It hurts my heart to imagine your mother dying alone, in that hospital room surrounded by caring nurses wearing masks and shields and gloves. I hear that you were just down the hall from her in your own quarantined hospital bed, when she took her last breath. I am sorry that there was no funeral. How odd that must have been, because I know that the church would have been filled to the brim with people who loved her, and who loved you and your family.

I am wishing you and your wife a rapid recovery, and please know that I am holding you in my heart as you say goodbye to your mom on this most unkindly of years.

With Love and Gratitude,

M.

November 1, 2020

Another seizure. It’s coming. Luckily, I finished all my live meets. I Took the rescue cocktail a few minutes ago. No messing around. Please, let it be a small one. Please let

it

be  small

oneoneoneoneoneeeee.

Pl        

E         

e         

eeese.

November 3, 2020

         I had filled out my ballot weeks earlier. Filled it out at home, here, on the very table I am working on now. Two weeks before today, I called my son, and he drove me to NE Minneapolis where the city had set up a depository for ballets. You could hand your completed ballot to a volunteer who checked your identity, or you could vote in person. Although my ballot was filled out, I decided that I wanted to cast it in person, like old times. Quincy and I got in line behind hundreds of other mask-wearing voters. The atmosphere was jovial. After about an hour, we made it inside, where I grabbed the familiar black sharpie and cast my ballot for Joe Biden. Biden was actually my least favorite democratic candidate, but I had no regrets about voting for him. We had to stop the madness. We had to get that narcissist out of office before he destroyed something else. Before he destroyed everything else.

         Today is November 3rd. It is Election Day, and I am a ball of anxiety. When my classes are over, I walk to the Liquor store two blocks away, and purchase a bottle of Prosecco. Please let me open it tonight. Let me pour the bubbly liquid into a fancy glass and drink to new world. Let Nina Simone sing in the background:

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life for me

And I’m feeling good.

END OF CHAPTER ONE