Nonfiction / Melissa Fite Johnson

 

:: Unhook Myself from Old Definitions ::

1. Uncon­di­tion­al love

For­mer­ly: the ide­al, the dream, Don­na Sum­mer song, Tupac Shakur song, what I owe my mother

I was 22 and still liv­ing in my child­hood bed­room. My father had been dead six years. My boyfriend Marc and I were play­ing Nin­ten­do when my moth­er and her boyfriend (off-again when he got a girl my age preg­nant, on-again when that girl mis­car­ried) came home. My moth­er walked to my door and knocked, asked if Marc and I would look at her boyfriend’s pho­tographs. He wasn’t a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, but he took senior pic­tures of his daughter’s female class­mates for free. I said no. She slammed the door and walked away. Marc start­ed to say “Maybe we should—” when my moth­er returned and threw open the door. I knew what her con­tort­ed expres­sion usu­al­ly pre­ced­ed, but since I had com­pa­ny, I was sur­prised when it hap­pened. When she mor­phed. Her voice low and drawn out, she called me a piece of shit, the mid­dle fin­ger of each hand raised and shaking.

Marc and I went to a bar after that. In our booth, I con­fessed my fear that what he’d seen must have scared him. That he would leave. He looked down at his drink, then direct­ly at me. He said he didn’t think he was ever going to leave. We were eight months in. That was twen­ty years ago.

The next day, my moth­er act­ed like noth­ing hap­pened, like she always did after one of her episodes. She told me she loved me, then prompt­ed me to say it back.

 

2. Guilt trip

For­mer­ly: minor annoy­ance, road trip com­e­dy star­ring Seth Rogen and Bar­bara Streisand, accept­able means of achiev­ing a desired result

After Marc and I had been togeth­er a few years, we decid­ed not to have kids. He sug­gest­ed it, and once I got past my Mid­west confusion—“What would we do instead?” I asked; “What­ev­er we want,” he replied—I real­ized it wasn’t dis­ap­point­ment I felt, but relief. I’d nev­er been able to pic­ture myself as a moth­er. Maybe because I was try­ing to pic­ture myself as my mother.

I told my moth­er about this deci­sion in the car. I don’t remem­ber where we were going, only that I was dri­ving and I’d picked this moment so I could watch the road instead of her. She said I was killing my father a sec­ond time. I was the only one who could pass on his genes.

 

3. Daugh­ter

For­mer­ly: best friend, Lore­lai and Rory Gilmore, sole sup­port sys­tem, my most defin­ing title

My ther­a­pist says to write a let­ter to my younger self. “Which one?” I ask her. “Any of them,” she replies. “All of them.”

To myself the day I was born: There’s noth­ing wrong with your face, even though your moth­er is con­sid­er­ing plas­tic surgery already, her first instinct not to mar­vel but to pin your ears back so you match the girl in the mag­a­zine clipping.

To myself at sev­en: There’s noth­ing wrong with your voice, deep­er than oth­er girls’. When your moth­er forces you up an octave, calls the house to make sure you don’t slip into your nat­ur­al voice, please don’t feel guilty about for­get­ting to be some­one oth­er than yourself.

To myself at six­teen: You’re allowed to mourn your father how­ev­er you need. When you ask her to stop leav­ing his let­ters on your bed because it’s too much, her response shouldn’t be, “Fine, bitch.”

To myself at nine­teen: It’s OK you told your moth­er about your boyfriend, about the rape. You should be able to trust a moth­er. Her instinct should’ve been to hold you, to help you. Not to say “At least my boyfriend nev­er raped me.”

To myself at 30: You are not a bad daugh­ter, even if she tells her friends she nev­er sees you— despite Thurs­day din­ners, despite Sun­day mati­nees, despite dai­ly emails. You are not a bad daugh­ter, even if noth­ing is ever enough. Mar­ry Marc. Find your dogs at the shel­ter. Make the most peace­ful life you can imagine.

To myself now: I know hard­ly any­one will under­stand. Peo­ple still tell you she’s the kind­est per­son they’ve ever met. But they don’t know her. You’ve spent your whole life keep­ing peo­ple from know­ing her. You don’t have to be silent any­more, to pro­tect her any­more. You nev­er did. This is your sto­ry to share, your life. And you are allowed to leave.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

Ear­li­er this year my ther­a­pist said my moth­er was the stereo­type of an emo­tion­al abuser—manipulation, cru­el­ty, denial, grand ges­tures and love bomb­ing. It felt like relief, hear­ing that. Feel­ing val­i­dat­ed and seen. I’ve been feel­ing a lot of relief (and grief, to be fair) this year—breaking free of my moth­er, final­ly talk­ing and writ­ing about these for­mer­ly hid­den aspects of my rela­tion­ship with her. My moth­er has nev­er owned or even acknowl­edged her behav­ior, so it would’ve been impos­si­ble for her to tell me to keep it a secret, but some­how I always knew my job was to pre­tend it away, even to myself. So I ratio­nal­ized, I called our rela­tion­ship “com­pli­cat­ed,” I focused on the good. There was a lot of good. When she was her best self, she was one of my favorite peo­ple to hang out with. As I’ve got­ten old­er and more secure, though, as I’ve under­stood what love should look like, I’ve stopped being able to pre­tend. I’ve stopped want­i­ng to. I used to be afraid that if I told peo­ple about this side of my moth­er, they wouldn’t believe me, or they’d think I was exag­ger­at­ing. I was even more afraid that if I end­ed my rela­tion­ship with her, peo­ple would think I was a ter­ri­ble per­son. But I’ve start­ed con­fid­ing in more peo­ple about my moth­er, and I’ve been star­tled to learn how many peo­ple I admire and respect are estranged from fam­i­ly mem­bers. And even though it ter­ri­fies me to be this hon­est about my mother—on some lev­el I still believe I’m break­ing our unspo­ken vow of silence—I actu­al­ly think it’s real­ly impor­tant that peo­ple try to be more open about emo­tion­al abuse, which can feel so ambigu­ous. It’s too easy for peo­ple to doubt their own mem­o­ries or feel like they deserve to be treat­ed this way. For years, that’s what I did, and that’s how I felt.

Melis­sa Fite John­son is the author of three full-length col­lec­tions, most recent­ly Midlife Abecedar­i­an (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and else­where. Melis­sa teach­es high school Eng­lish in Lawrence, KS, where she and her hus­band live with their dogs.

Nonfiction / Brendan Walsh

:: Florida’s Mockingbirds Like to Perch on Street Signs: Some Birds I know In South Florida ::

1. Street Roost­er

The neigh­bors across the street bought a roost­er last month, and it’ll be the cause of my death or incar­cer­a­tion. It’s a pre-pre-dawn roost­er. Up at four, crow­ing towards what’s still night for most of us. 

When the roost­er screams, I go out to my lit­tle bal­cony and scream back “SHUT UP,” and then he does for a moment. He actu­al­ly shuts up. I think, did it work, is he gone? Did he run back to his farm, or prefer­ably, to the impos­si­bly vast swamp where he was eat­en by a gator? Two min­utes lat­er, he cawww-caws and I sit up and make a pot of coffee. 

We’ve cul­ti­vat­ed a cul­ture that thrives on space away from oth­ers, on a pro­found lack of com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty, where a per­son in the mid­dle of a city can pur­chase a roost­er that wakes the entire neigh­bor­hood at four, and face no account­abil­i­ty. Who­ev­er bought the roost­er obvi­ous­ly thought that it might serve some pur­pose to alle­vi­ate their lone­li­ness. They assumed that if they had a stu­pid roost­er peck­ing and yelling out­side their house there’d be some extractable mean­ing. Why else would you buy a roost­er? What’s worse, I believe, is that we aren’t doing any­thing to con­front this. No one feels a right to defend pub­lic space. There’s too much on the line, espe­cial­ly in Flori­da, where any­one can be legal­ly shot with lit­tle provo­ca­tion or explanation.

Still, goad­ed by the encour­age­ment of my abo­li­tion­ist friend who affirmed that “anti-carcer­al­i­ty doesn’t extend to roost­ers,” I called Broward Coun­ty Ani­mal Con­trol, who told me they would send some­one to check on the situation. 

The roost­er has risen ear­li­er since, cer­tain­ly to spite me, though I don’t blame him. In anoth­er con­text, I’d love him. I’ve spent won­der­ful days on farms with roost­ers scratch­ing along the grounds. On a farm, a roost­er serves a pur­pose. They defend and pos­ture and impreg­nate. They aren’t sym­bols of any­thing but them­selves. Here, in the mid­dle of Hol­ly­wood, Flori­da, a city of approx­i­mate­ly 158,000 peo­ple, the roost­er is a sym­bol of loss and the absur­di­ty of a soci­ety drained of its life force yet is still called to wor­ship the gods of com­merce and cap­i­tal­ism. If I were more of a Chris­t­ian, the roost­er might even rep­re­sent a fun­da­men­tal­ist bea­con of the com­ing rapture. 

The roost­er is as native to South Flori­da as I am: not at all. Archae­ol­o­gists believe that the first chick­ens were domes­ti­cat­ed in South­east Asia and Chi­na. Through the migra­tions so com­mon to our species, roost­ers end­ed up in Hol­ly­wood and every oth­er back­yard and farm of the hab­it­able globe. When I lived in Laos, dozens of roost­ers woke me up every morn­ing, but since I looked out at a dirt road where monks col­lect­ed alms from devout Bud­dhist women, it didn’t seem like such a dis­rup­tion. It felt as though every­thing were per­fect­ly in place. 

What most upsets me about the roost­er, oth­er than the sleep­less­ness to which I’ve grown accus­tomed and out­raged, is how he drowns out the birdsong. 

2. The Flori­da Mockingbird

The Flori­da Mock­ing­bird likes to perch on street signs. It posts up on STOP signs and NO PARKING signs, sings casu­al­ly its life-chang­ing tune, then bursts away to the next sign or branch or streetlight. 

It is offi­cial­ly known as the com­mon mock­ing­bird, but down here, since they seem to be every­where and are the state bird (many oth­er states claim the mock­ing­bird as well), I call it the Flori­da Mock­ing­bird. I don’t real­ly think it makes sense to be proud of one’s coun­try or place of birth, because those are ran­dom occur­rences and abstrac­tions, but it makes per­fect sense to be proud of the birds you live amongst. Of all the things on this human-con­struct­ed earth, bird-prox­im­i­ty seems purest. 

This is my favorite bird in the world, and the only one whose song, so mel­liflu­ous and oth­er­world­ly, has made me cry. Oth­er bird songs have made me want to cry, or feel like cry­ing, but our Flori­da Mock­ing­bird is the only one to do it. 

It was a week­day morn­ing in Feb­ru­ary. I walked out of my unit, looked upon the pool, smooth as an ironed nap­kin, the sun burned hope­ful orange, and the mock­ing­birds whis­tled through the alley­way, echoed in the court­yard, and I near­ly fell over. I believed in God so sure­ly then. It was such an obvi­ous thing, if only for that moment. 

The Flori­da Mockingbird’s plumage isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly beau­ti­ful. It is small, gray, and unas­sum­ing, with a white bel­ly and two dis­tin­guish­ing white wing bars. When it sings, though, when it sings. It inter­ests me how we’ve even evolved, as this curi­ous­ly destruc­tive ape, to find such a song plea­sur­able. I can’t imag­ine the kind of human who hears the mockingbird’s song and doesn’t feel over­whelmed with won­der. How could you begin to under­stand this kind of per­son? What secret inhu­man­i­ty do they harbor?

It is spir­i­tu­al to exist along­side some­thing so ele­men­tal­ly per­fect. Every day, dur­ing breaks between my class­es, I walk through cam­pus with an eye out for wildlife. I see baby rac­coons and pos­sums, tur­tles, all man­ner of birds (which, don’t wor­ry, I’ll dis­cuss), igua­nas by the hun­dreds, and of course mock­ing­birds. Espe­cial­ly in late spring when cam­pus clears of under­grads, the birds sing even loud­er. On signs for cam­pus safe­ty, and in palm trees, on pic­nic tables, atop lamp­posts, they sing. I’ve tak­en to record­ing their songs and post­ing them to insta­gram. It’s infor­ma­tion that I con­sid­er vital­ly impor­tant. Look! I write. Some­thing is singing some­where! All is not lost!

Short­ly after­wards, I con­sid­er how quick­ly the streets flood from a brief storm, and how the gov­er­nor has made it near­ly impos­si­ble for felons to vote even after the pass­ing of Amend­ment 4, and the ran­dom and cru­el anti-LGBTQ bills sped through the state leg­is­la­ture, the crim­i­nal­i­ty of wom­an­hood, and the denial of a cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe that lit­er­al­ly knocks on our doors. A mock­ing­bird sings some­where and it is beautiful. 

3. Boat-tailed Grack­le

On cam­pus, the boat-tailed grack­les fight each oth­er over Dump­ster space out­side the din­ing hall. They enjoy stand­ing on moun­tains of trash. Their call is shrill then coy then goofy. Their voice is almost iri­des­cent, like the male’s feath­ers, which look black at first until the light hits them, then they’re shiny greens and blues. When a boat-tailed grack­le takes off, it seems as though its tail is too heavy for its wings. 

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, an hour after I decid­ed to write this, a boat-tailed grack­le dive-bombed my head on the Hol­ly­wood Beach Broad­walk. I took it as a sign from God. Thank you, boat-tailed grackle. 

There’s some cor­re­la­tion between grack­le enthu­si­asm and human exhaus­tion. The more human soci­ety col­laps­es on itself, the more grack­le soci­ety flour­ish­es. Every grack­le is a misanthrope.

4. Roseate Spoon­bill

Roseate spoon­bills are near­ly per­fect. They’re flamin­go-pink for the same rea­sons flamin­gos are flamin­go-pink: they eat a diet high in crus­taceans with carotenoids. They’re in the same fam­i­ly as the white ibis, a fool­ish-look­ing white or brown feath­ered bird. Bright col­ors play tricks on our sim­ple brains. 

The sec­ond time I saw roseate spoon­bills was with a for­mer part­ner I hadn’t seen in six months. She had moved away to a farm, and I was alone, aban­doned, then quar­an­tined, but we stayed in touch irre­spon­si­bly. Before she moved to the next farm, we decid­ed to do a road trip for old time’s sake, and because we were a bit lost with­out each oth­er. I picked her up at the farm, way upstate near the Geor­gia bor­der. We stayed a night at the farm, and a sum­mer storm washed in and soaked the earth. She lived in a tiny house with a cor­ru­gat­ed iron roof–the rain bounced all night and I rose to pee out­side, off the porch. Such vast qui­et between the raindrops.

Next day we drove down to Cedar Key, a lit­tle-known arch­i­pel­ago on Florida’s Gulf Coast, pret­ty much in the armpit. A poet­ry pro­fes­sor of mine used to talk about Cedar Key in whis­pers because she didn’t want any­one to find out about it. Peo­ple have found out, but not too many. It feels like the past there; some­thing that prob­a­bly-racist folks call “Old Flori­da.” It’s got that part Hem­ing­way, part Faulkn­er, part Viet­namese fish­ing vil­lage vibe. We were imme­di­ate­ly hap­py there. 

Our motel sat near a noseeum-infest­ed inlet, and a bald cypress unfurled roseate spoon­bills at dusk. Pink and green turned green. They flew out into the flat bay. We kayaked, enter­tained by teenaged dol­phin bobs and dives five feet from our ves­sel, then we fol­lowed the coast­line to a small beach, where we land­ed the kayaks to rest awhile. Pel­i­cans hung out in the tide and on the docks, hop­ing a fish­er­man would throw out his bait, or the fried clam restau­rant would chuck a few scraps. Always poach­ing, the pelicans.

Back at the motel, spoon­bills again, roseate as ever, hov­ered back and forth over­head. It can’t be real, I said to her. We rel­ished the words roseate spoon­bill. Who could say such a name and not blush? 

The final night at Cedar Key, we ate a pile of steamed clams on the hotel deck over­look­ing the tree, noseeums bit my ankles to a swollen pink pulp. She asked if I want­ed to go inside. I said no, I want to see more roseate spoon­bills. Maybe they could sense my need­i­ness or the harm they caused, keep­ing us togeth­er when we need­ed a clean break, but they didn’t return. We want­ed pink and wide-beak and honk. We want­ed to stare at what we always shared. The roseate spoon­bill is a self­ish bird in that regard, hoard­ing its bril­liance from us, but it’s also kind to grant any grace in this lit­tle life. 

5. Brown Pel­i­can

There are a cou­ple of pel­i­cans at the Dania Beach Pier that wait for fish­er­men to make a mis­take or chuck their bait. They have names; nam­ing is a fun­ny thing that humans do. We name unname­able things, dou­ble-name them some­times too. We say “pel­i­can” but we also call it “Stan­ley.” The pel­i­can doesn’t know it’s a pel­i­can, and it cer­tain­ly doesn’t know its name is Stan­ley, or Bri­an, or Karen. The Dania Beach Pier pel­i­cans have learned to linger around us. They approach with their mas­sive gul­lets and gaze into our palms. They look at our hands as the ancients looked to the sky when they des­per­ate­ly need­ed rain. 

Last Feb­ru­ary, I took my vis­it­ing friends to the pier to watch the fish­er­men, and to stand out in the ocean, look south towards Mia­mi and north to Fort Laud­erdale, east into the impos­si­ble atlantic. It was clear and bright, the kind of day you say “this is why, this is why” and peo­ple down here know what you mean. 

The first up-close encounter with a pel­i­can is always rat­tling. They’re large birds, some­times weigh­ing up to ten pounds, with a sev­en-foot wingspan. They walk like tod­dlers around the pier deck, inves­ti­gat­ing fish-stocked cool­ers and buck­ets of chum. Once in a while, they man­age to open an unlocked cool­er and steal a fish. Spec­ta­tors watch and laugh, peo­ple with fish­ing poles chase the ridicu­lous birds into the sky. 

My friends were stunned and fas­ci­nat­ed by the pel­i­cans among us. Dave, crit­ter-lover that he is, attempt­ed to touch one. I told him no, please do not pet that pel­i­can. He didn’t, thank God. We watched peo­ple, all men from the West Indies and South Amer­i­ca, speak­ing Span­ish and Cre­ole and Flori­da Eng­lish, reel in fish and baby sharks. The sea gives, but we take more than it can give. 

A thin guy in a sleeve­less shirt stamped his cig­a­rette as he approached us. A pel­i­can wad­dled near­by, and the guy addressed it by name. The guy said, “You wan­na see a pel­i­can go to sleep?” I said, “No, that’s alright.” I didn’t know what he meant, but I fig­ured it couldn’t be good. Sleep has so many con­no­ta­tions. He replied, “Let me show you.” I said, “Oh shit, what are you going to do?”

He grabbed the pel­i­can by its beak, twist­ed it down. I said, “Stop, it’s okay. You don’t need to show us.” He wasn’t lis­ten­ing. The pel­i­can bare­ly resist­ed, and as the guy brought it to its back, his oth­er hand shift­ed to its bel­ly, which he gen­tly rubbed. For a moment, the pel­i­can bucked back, then it was over­come by the forced com­pas­sion, that coer­cive soft­ness, and its eyes rolled. He loos­ened his grip on the beak, removed his hand from the bel­ly, and stood up. There the pel­i­can rest­ed for ten sec­onds before it roused itself upright and wad­dled off. 

“That’s how you put a pel­i­can to sleep,” he boast­ed, lit anoth­er smoke, and went back to his pole. 

6. Egypt­ian Goose

There’s only one bird that I don’t care for. Hate is such a strong word for a thing that isn’t capa­ble of hat­ing me back (we should be equi­table with our emo­tions), but the Egypt­ian Goose is close. In casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with strangers I have said, “I hate Egypt­ian geese.” Most peo­ple can’t dis­tin­guish between an Egypt­ian goose and a mus­covy duck. In fact, I hear peo­ple call these geese ducks pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly, and I cor­rect them. They don’t look any­thing alike. I don’t real­ize that this cor­rec­tion is annoy­ing until much lat­er, when I’m alone in bed and recount­ing my dai­ly infractions. 

Egypt­ian geese are anoth­er inva­sive species to Flori­da. They’re from, obvi­ous­ly, Egypt, and wide­ly across Africa. They have sleek tawny and white feath­ers, and a dis­tinct­ly white head. It’s a fair­ly hand­some and regal species, though their eyes are red and soul­less; they look like the moment right before a human turns into a zom­bie, that tran­si­tion from liv­ing to undead, empa­thy to vacan­cy. This isn’t to assume that their emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence is devoid of com­plex­i­ty. In fact, I’m sure that they’re incred­i­bly anx­ious and lov­ing (in the bird way). This is most­ly why I’m not fond of them. It’s a clas­sic case of an inva­sive, aggres­sive species get­ting mad at anoth­er species for being inva­sive and aggressive. 

I was first attacked by an Egypt­ian goose in 2017, my first spring in Flori­da. I grew up around Cana­di­an geese, but they usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed a threat in the form of mass-shit­tings along every side­walk in the ear­ly days of New Eng­land spring. The Egypt­ian geese mat­ed and nest­ed and raised their goslings on my cam­pus, pocked with ponds and water­ways, palms and thick­ets. Like a fool, I hadn’t researched the behav­iors of local wildlife before mov­ing down. Sure, I was thrilled by gators and igua­nas, but I nev­er took the time to exam­ine the grit­ty details of aggres­sive bird species. In a way, I sup­pose, I was ask­ing for a lesson. 

After a pre-teach­ing gym ses­sion I walked out­side to sun and heat, the east­ern bronze fold­ing into pink and pur­ple. I hadn’t slept the night before. I have trou­ble sleep­ing, some­times the wak­ing is ran­dom and oth­er times it’s because I have to pee, or because a roost­er moved into the neigh­bor­hood. My fam­i­ly is noto­ri­ous­ly bad with sleep. We always wake first and intol­er­a­bly ear­ly, and some­times we stay up all night wracked with vague anx­i­ety. A goose approached me as I walked past the pond near­est my build­ing, and I took it as a sign of curi­ous friendship.

I greet­ed it with a jovial and exhaust­ed, “Hel­lo goose!” and its pace quick­ened. “Whatcha doin, goose?” I asked with some alarm.

It ele­vat­ed and began honk­ing, then flew towards my face for an aer­i­al assault. I ducked and dropped my bags, but it pur­sued me, flap­ping and strik­ing at the back of my head. I respond­ed with unin­tel­li­gi­ble fear bab­ble, sounds that Egypt­ian geese metab­o­lize as nutri­tion. I hus­tled fifty-feet before the goose relent­ed, and I checked the hori­zons to ensure that no one saw me cow­er and run from a bird much small­er and less pow­er­ful than I. In God’s good­ness, the cam­pus was emp­ty, still too ear­ly for under­grads to trudge to class. Unaware as I was of the nest­ing prac­tices of the goose, I assumed that this was a ran­dom act of dick­ish­ness. When I told my stu­dents lat­er, they laughed and wished that this could have been cap­tured on video. I did too, but only so they could wit­ness the bru­tal­i­ty firsthand.

A few days lat­er, stu­dents showed me their own videos of Egypt­ian goose attacks. While they ate lunch on the quad or on pic­nic tables out­side, a goose flew from nowhere and chased them away, forc­ing them to aban­don their food on the grass. They believed me. The geese are terrifying. 

The geese are also fierce defend­ers of their off­spring, they don’t take shit from humans, and they embody loy­al­ty at the expense of their own safe­ty. I have nev­er tried to kill some­one for step­ping too close to some­one that I loved. I’m not a goose, sure, but I envy their ded­i­ca­tion. The time I’ve spent delib­er­at­ing the most com­pas­sion­ate way to send a breakup text could be time spent fight­ing or swim­ming or fly­ing around. When I’m not sure how to say no to anoth­er oblig­a­tion, or how to tell my fam­i­ly and friends that I love them with goose-like feroc­i­ty. I want to be more of an Egypt­ian goose, lung­ing at the poten­tial dan­gers of the world. I want to forego analy­sis and take up rabid vengeance against the hint of a threat. 

This after­noon I passed a fam­i­ly of Egypt­ian geese. The par­ents flanked a dozen goslings. They hatched about the same time as the mus­covy ducks, but the duck­lings dis­ap­peared a few weeks ago and now their moth­ers and fathers roam the pond’s perime­ter as aim­less and stu­pid as a per­son with­out pas­sion. The moth­er deliv­ered warn­ing honks, and always, since that fate­ful day years ago, I kept my dis­tance. I whis­pered, “it’s okay, mama. I’m just walk­ing past.” She relented. 

I imag­ine that all these geese will grow large and vicious as their keep­ers. They’ll mate and nest. They’ll pre­serve life because it is an inher­ent good to be here, doing what­ev­er it is we do in the time we have. 

7. Great Blue Heron

I call it the GBH. The acronym is eas­i­er and less weighty. At the Morika­mi Gar­dens near Del­ray Beach, a land­scape of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese gar­dens sur­round­ing a lake, GBH’s haunt the water’s edge with calm precision. 

I once dat­ed a woman from Mex­i­co who liked to go on adven­tures. I was in a self-imposed quar­an­tine funk, but she grant­ed me com­pas­sion and kept her wan­der­lust sim­ple. We took day trips to not-too-far-off parts of Flori­da, but most­ly we played video games and ate too quick­ly. Towards autumn, which here means the harsh­est part of hur­ri­cane sea­son, we went to the Morika­mi Gardens.

Masks up, we daw­dled the lake. Small gators and soft­shell tur­tles sur­faced and skimmed the water. I tried to impress my date with a mid­dling knowl­edge of Flori­da wildlife and flo­ra. It took me four years to remem­ber what a roy­al poin­ciana looks like, but now that I know, you bet­ter believe I’m going to point that shit out. 

We sat on a con­crete bench while she tried to con­vince me that Bill Gates was a “good bil­lion­aire” and I was unable to acqui­esce, when a great blue heron, slicked-back mohawk and legs like stalks of young palm, pierced the shal­lows. Its sur­gi­cal beak hov­ered three inch­es above the water. How still is this still­ness? How encap­su­lat­ing is this moment before the inevitable strike? And it was done: in like a pin through skin, then out. A min­now flexed for a sec­ond before falling down the GBH’s curled neck. 

I said, “That’s how I want to be.”

“Like the bird?” 

“The GBH. That’s what I want to be like.” I paused, and she wait­ed in the silence, sure that I’d keep talk­ing, because I would. This is how I am with silence. “That singular…focus. I want to be still and qui­et and strike with accu­ra­cy.” I didn’t, and still don’t, know what I am strik­ing. Per­haps that’s the point.

“I think you can do that. You already do, maybe, with your poet­ry,” she encour­aged, because she was kind.

“I’m too dis­tract­ed. I’m every­where at the same time. I’d nev­er catch a min­now.” We stood and walked the grounds, but the GBH stayed exact­ly where it caught the fish. Great blue herons make a day, and a life, of the catch, kill, eat. The fish and frogs, the anoles and snakes, must feel grate­ful to slide down the throat of such a grace­ful murderer. 

Great blue herons can kill peo­ple. They’re pow­er­ful enough to punch a hole through the soft parts, and some of the hard parts, of the human body. They don’t want to, but it is pos­si­ble. GBH’s are big birds, great even, which becomes quite notice­able the clos­er you stand to them. They don’t often stand straight up because they’re busy lurk­ing, bend­ing their beaks over glassy shal­lows, or curl­ing their necks inward and flap­ping off into the sky. 

I bought an inflat­able standup pad­dle­board about a month ago. I resist­ed ever try­ing it out, because for some rea­son I resist the things peo­ple fre­quent­ly tell me I will enjoy. For years, Florid­i­ans old and new have said, “You would LOVE standup pad­dle board­ing.” I replied vague­ly with “oh I’ll have to give it a shot.” I didn’t “give it a shot” for four years, then I tried it and, of course, loved it. I rent­ed a board with some vis­it­ing friends, and we launched over the intra­coastal into the man­grove for­est around West Lake Park. 

Man­groves affect me deeply. Their root struc­tures, which sprawl out into the water like witchy fin­gers, bring me shiv­ers and tears. The fid­dler crabs that crawl and fall from their branch­es make a pleas­ant plop sound in the mud and inch-deep water. I stare into man­grove forests and imme­di­ate­ly for­get that I’m human, and that I’m some­times anx­ious or sad. Hon­est­ly, I hope I can be buried in a man­grove and grow into their city of inter­con­nect­ed roots. If you’re read­ing this, please ensure that I’m buried in a man­grove for­est. Thank you.

Pad­dle board­ing in the man­groves shot me back to the time before. I skat­ed along the sur­face, star­ing down schools of needle­fish. The man­groves rus­tled and popped with all the bizarre life they housed. I knew that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, every­one was right. I do LOVE stand up pad­dle boarding. 

So I got this cheap inflat­able one. Stor­ing a real pad­dle­board in my one-bed­room con­do wasn’t an option, so I fig­ured this would do, and it does. It real­ly does. Just today, actu­al­ly, as I was out on the water, sitting/kneeling/lying/standing on the board, a great blue heron took off down the same man­grove trail as me. It curved out, past West Lake, towards fish or some­thing else easy to eat. I gasped. Alone, out on the water with no one to impress, I near­ly choked from the grace of it. 

8. Sand­piper 

These sweet lit­tle palm-sized sweet­ies skit­ter around the beach like the wind-up toys you’d find at the bot­tom of a Hap­py Meal. Waves rush in, they sprint away, twig-legs kick­ing up infin­i­tes­i­mal streams of wet sand. Waves roll out, they move for­ward, pick at sand fleas until the water forces them five feet west. All morn­ing they do this. Up and down from Hol­ly­wood to Hal­lan­dale. Down and up from Dania to Fort Laud­erdale. They pass by nude bathers at Haulover, in the shad­ows of pen­du­lous penis­es and breasts. They thread the nee­dle of drunk tourists on South Beach, weav­ing between legs and around sunned carcasses. 

Sand­pipers live for ten years. Ten long, adren­a­line-soaked years of flee­ing from water and big­ger birds, from infec­tions and threats of star­va­tion and habi­tat destruc­tion. I only see them when they’re in front of me at the beach, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, cute as any­thing in this world. I’ve nev­er seen their tiny feet dan­gling from a gull’s mouth. There’s so much life we don’t see: move­ment between the jubi­la­tion, the jour­ney from suf­fer­ing to joy to con­tent­ment or wor­ry. Ten years of this, or eighty, or forty-six, or five. 

9. Amer­i­can White Ibis

I can’t deny this: I have anti-ibis bias. 

10. Harpy Eagle

The harpy eagle looks like it wants to fuck­ing kill you. It does. It could. Obvi­ous­ly, harpy eagles do not live in Florida’s wild, though I wish they did. I wish we had more sto­ries and videos of harpy eagles snatch­ing ado­les­cent alli­ga­tors from the swamp and fly­ing off into the hor­ri­fy­ing distance. 

Harpy eagles are native to Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. They eat sloths and mon­keys, they’re pre­pos­ter­ous­ly large and pow­er­ful. Their talon grip has more strength than a rottweiler’s jaw. 

Zoo Mia­mi hous­es sev­er­al harpy eagles as part of its Harpy Eagle Project, in con­junc­tion with the Pana­man­ian Gov­ern­ment: the harpy is Panama’s nation­al bird. I don’t think birds should be pit­ted against each oth­er in a bat­tle royale to decide the king of all birds, but I will put my mon­ey on the harpy to van­quish the bald eagle of The Unit­ed States, a less­er eagle by near­ly every met­ric except for recognizability. 

Although I have mixed feel­ings about zoos, espe­cial­ly those that house our great ape cousins, it’s dif­fi­cult to ignore the Siren song (yes, a bril­liant allu­sion to harpies) of see­ing my favorite ani­mals over the course of one walk­a­ble dis­tance. Two years ago, I took a for­mer lover (does that sound pre­ten­tious!?) to Zoo Mia­mi on a harpy eagle mis­sion. I had recent­ly become obsessed with them and their night­mar­ish design. Some things in nature high­light God’s love (see: mock­ing­bird), while oth­ers illus­trate God’s infi­nite vio­lence. Both are crit­i­cal to bal­ance, as vio­lence begets beau­ty (see: the Big Bang), and the harpy eagle is the last stop on the vio­lence-to-beau­ty high­way. I want a harpy eagle tat­too. I watch videos of their scythe beaks pick­ing mon­key flesh to bone. 

We passed by old favorites: the two kind-eyed sil­ver­back low­land goril­las, the howler mon­keys, Cuban croc­o­dile, the giraffes who eat let­tuce from your hands, the orang­utan named Man­go who cov­ers him­self with card­board to block the sun. The harpy eagle enclo­sure is an immer­sive, mas­sive fenced-in cage. Vis­i­tors walk through it, and the harpies are free to fly or walk above and around us gawk­ing, clothed apes. 

Two harpies, one male and one female, stood direct­ly over the walk­way, talons wrapped around the chain, so close I could have test­ed their sharp­ness. They smelled how I wished they would smell: rot­ten meat, nitroge­nous fer­til­iz­er, sharp and fetid and dis­tinct. We paused there, beneath them, as they are our mas­ters, if not in this life then the next. We repeat­ed “oh my God” as the oth­er vis­i­tors glanced up, almost bored, and walked on. The male harpy shit through the fence.

We don’t deserve to look at harpy eagles with­out fear of death. Rev­er­ence is joy­ous and terrifying. 

11. Anhin­ga 

Anhin­gas flex on every­body, all day, every day. They stand in the sun, push their wings out like gold­en era body­builders, and pose. If you aren’t famil­iar with anhin­gas, your imme­di­ate reac­tion might be, “What the fuck is wrong with that bird?” It’s rea­son­able to think that. They hold the pose for hours. They look stuck, as if their wings locked into place and they’re strug­gling to be free of a mys­te­ri­ous rig­or mor­tis. If a human flex­es their bicep for more than fif­teen sec­onds, there’s a prob­lem. We apply that same log­ic to anhingas.

Of course, anhin­gas aren’t flex­ing, since they are (most like­ly) inca­pable of com­pre­hend­ing the desire to flex, and they don’t have biceps. Anhin­gas hold a bent-wing tableau to dry their feath­ers after div­ing for food. Unlike oth­er water­birds, anhin­gas don’t pos­sess the gland respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing oil to water­proof feath­ers, so they must air dry in this curi­ous and ridicu­lous fash­ion. Anhin­gas dive and swim like aquat­ic nat­u­rals; from a dis­tance, their heads resem­ble snakes or slith­er­ing riv­er mon­sters ris­ing from the sur­face. After min­nows sate their imme­di­ate caloric needs (God, bless the min­now for feed­ing every­thing), anhin­gas find the sun, spread, and hold, some­times mak­ing eye con­tact with pass­ing humans. Such an unabashed­ly proud bird, the anhinga.

I’ve hat­ed, or feared, my body since I can remem­ber. There wasn’t a par­tic­u­lar incit­ing inci­dent. There were real­iza­tions, com­par­isons, con­ver­sa­tions, but hon­est­ly, for a thing that occu­pies so much brain space, I can’t pin­point a moment. It has fol­lowed me for decades, this lin­ger­ing dis­con­tent, some­times bor­der­ing on pan­ic. I was a chub­by kid from ten to about fif­teen, when I shed twen­ty-five pounds for wrestling sea­son and devel­oped a social­ly accept­able pat­tern of dis­or­dered eat­ing and body dys­mor­phia. The thing is, as a fat­ter kid, I was out­ward­ly jovial. I leaned into the role of comedic big guy, and there were won­der­ful exam­ples: Far­ley, Belushi, Jack Black, John Can­dy. There was some­thing about trans­form­ing chub into charm. I learned tim­ing and sight gags, like putting on too-small clothes and show­ing the right amount of bel­ly. I also learned that it was fun­ny when I over-ate or drank twelve sodas and got sick, because there I was, act­ing how I was gonna act.

I learned how to secret­ly hate my body, to com­pare it to oth­er kids’. Often I’d stand in front of the mir­ror, shirt­less, and visu­al­ize a hot knife cut­ting away all the excess parts of myself. This brought plea­sure, an imag­ined min­i­miz­ing of all that too-much­ness I lugged around. At the same time, I want­ed to look like the heav­i­ly-mus­cled dudes I saw on Mon­day Night Raw: Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Kane. They flexed and fought, lift­ed weights, bul­lied or stood up to bul­lies.  To tear my shirt off and flex in front of crowds of peo­ple was a deca­dence I thought impos­si­ble. So much of it I couldn’t under­stand, specif­i­cal­ly how could some­one love their skin enough to do that? 

All of my friends on the wrestling team devel­oped dis­or­dered eat­ing pat­terns and body image issues, though we wouldn’t ever describe our rela­tion­ships to flesh and food that way, and I remain one of the only peo­ple who will. It wasn’t the fault of any­one. Yes, there were adults who praised our grit and those who dis­cour­aged it, but ulti­mate­ly we were par­tic­i­pat­ing in a cycle of mas­culin­i­ty that asks boys to leave parts of them­selves behind. In my case, for a long time, I left behind what­ev­er joy I once extract­ed from sim­ple meals and look­ing in the mir­ror. I left behind the anhin­ga-plea­sure of flex­ing like The Ulti­mate War­rior after step­ping out of the town pool, slick with chlo­rine and lotion. 

12. Mus­covy ducks

For a few months, I dat­ed a woman who lived in Flori­da most of her life. She was a social­ist, and she had recent­ly giv­en up on fish­ing because she want­ed to avoid con­sum­ing flesh of any kind. One night, after we’d eat­en Indi­an food and talked about Flori­da pol­i­tics, we stopped by a pond near her apart­ment where she used to fish. All around us, the red wart-faced mus­covy ducks wad­dled and shat and car­ried about their business.

“They’re not even ducks,” she said. “They’re water­fowl. I hate them.” 

I hadn’t heard such vit­ri­ol from her, and I was fas­ci­nat­ed at its root cause: this dumb lit­tle duck that camps out at every pud­dle and pond in South Flori­da. They’re all over cam­pus. They don’t give me trou­ble; they part ways when I walk past. They live in Wal­mart park­ing lots where their adorable duck­lings sit beneath truck tires and die in vast num­bers. Peo­ple buy loaves of bread just to feed them. 

She didn’t quite explain why she hat­ed them, oth­er than that they’re inva­sive and they make a mess of things. Fair enough, I assumed, though I found it a bit harsh. It’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal for a human to call any species inva­sive, as we are the cause of so much inva­sive species migra­tion, and we are, of course, inva­sive to many places. Mus­covy ducks are native to Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, but they’ve spread north across the US. They’re a stur­dy duck, hulk­ing com­pared to the gracile mal­lards I grew up with, who only stayed for sum­mer and left before the freeze. 

She went on to detail the snake­head fish, an inva­sive species capa­ble of liv­ing out of water for sev­er­al hours. They’re poi­so­nous and can even kill humans if they grow large enough, which they some­times do.

I thought of the igua­nas, per­haps the most promi­nent of the inva­sive non-human ani­mals in Flori­da, and how much I love them. Every one of my breaks over the past school year was spent peep­ing the igua­nas, some­times chas­ing them into the water, but most­ly observ­ing. As a kid, I obsessed over rep­tiles and amphib­ians. The only pets my par­ents let me have were fire-bel­lied toads and a skink that I, bor­ing­ly, named Spike. I col­lect­ed rub­ber snakes, lizards, and frogs. Late spring and sum­mer days were con­sumed by frog and sala­man­der catch­es in the creeks and ponds of my neigh­bor­hood. I begged my mom to stop the car when­ev­er we passed a pond. If you had told me that I would one day live in a place with anoles crawl­ing the sides of build­ings and giant igua­nas sprint­ing through lawns, I would have called you a god­damn dream­er and a liar. That place would be too much like heav­en, and I called myself an athe­ist before I turned twelve.

I can’t imag­ine what it’s like to grow up here. Mil­lions of peo­ple can, but I nev­er will. Alli­ga­tors won’t be mun­dane or a nui­sance to me, and mus­covy ducks will always be Bizarro World ver­sions of the mal­lards and wood ducks of my youth. With the excep­tion of a few things, inva­sion is the norm for South Flori­da. If you were born here, you might feel a cer­tain claim to this land, even if your par­ents or grand­par­ents were once invaders. Unless your ances­tors fought on the right side of the Semi­nole Wars, you are inva­sive. You might look at the intro­duced species and long for the ease of your child­hood, those reck­less sum­mer storms and uncrowd­ed beach­es, and feel as if you’re chok­ing in an embrace with this ecosys­tem. You are; we all are. The thing about inva­sive species is that they upset a habi­tat, change the geog­ra­phy, kill off native species, but they don’t pre­serve any­thing except the rede­fined land­scape they’ve cre­at­ed. The Bud­dhist in me is hor­ri­fied and absolute­ly sure of this.

Mus­covy ducks and snake­head fish, humans and igua­nas, fuck things up. We (because we invaders are all kin) eat up, build on, and shit over all the before-world, and that is awful. But I am calmed by what will come after us. I am con­vinced the alli­ga­tors will remain, old sur­vivors, and the mock­ing­birds, and great blue herons. The pel­i­cans will go on, too, scoop­ing fish in their buck­et throats. Per­haps the harpies will bust free from their cages and build night­mare nests atop aban­doned sky­scrap­ers. Over time, this move­ment and more migra­tions, extinc­tions and evo­lu­tions, will change our lit­tle piece of par­adise entire­ly. We wouldn’t even rec­og­nize it, so sub­merged and wild it’ll be. A flock of roseate spoon­bills will fish from my aban­doned bal­cony. The roost­er will be long dead, too, and maybe we can final­ly get some sleep. 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

I became an ama­teur bird­er after mov­ing to South Flori­da from New Eng­land in 2016. The vari­ety of birds is astound­ing here, and they always make won­der­ful fod­der for writ­ing and med­i­ta­tion. As we get old­er, some of us become cranky and fear­ful, and some of us become bird­ers. The oft-cit­ed clich­es are the best things to write about (birds, love, loss, flow­ers), and I’m com­fort­able don­ning the scar­let let­ter C for my bird obsession.

Orig­i­nal­ly com­posed in 2021, this essay lives as a con­ver­sa­tion with myself about inva­sive species’ nich­es in South Flori­da. I was anx­ious about the polit­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal state of my com­mu­ni­ty and the world at large (I am still anx­ious about these things). In the haze of quar­an­tine and rela­tion­ship woes and Florida’s spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal insan­i­ty, I retreat­ed to learn­ing more about birds for solace. Around this time, a neigh­bor brought a roost­er onto my block. For months straight, I woke at 4:30 to its hor­ri­ble crow­ing. I obsessed over the lack of sol­i­dar­i­ty my neigh­bors had to wake thou­sands of peo­ple every morn­ing for some vague notion that a roost­er might enhance their lives. I con­sid­ered my oth­er com­mon Flori­da bird friends, both inva­sive, migra­to­ry, and endem­ic to the area, and how to cat­e­go­rize my rela­tion­ship to them.

Bren­dan Walsh has lived, taught, and lift­ed weights in South Korea, Laos, New Eng­land, and South Flori­da. He is the author of sev­en col­lec­tions of poet­ry, includ­ing con­cus­sion frag­ment, win­ner of the 2022 Flori­da Book Award Gold Medal. His lat­est col­lec­tion, novem­ber ninth: poems writ­ten when i was sup­posed to be work­ing from home, was pub­lished by Dip­i­ty Press in Fall 2024. He is co-host of the Fat Guy, Jacked Guy pod­cast with Stef Rubi­no, and you can find him online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.

Nonfiction / Mary Ann McGuigan

 

:: The Stand-In ::

I don’t want to go to school today. I don’t want to see the looks on their faces when they try to pre­tend noth­ing has changed. But my mother’s all dressed, ready for work, and I can see she’s in no mood for non­sense. “Turn that off,” she says. She means the radio. “Pen­ny Lane” is on, the Bea­t­les’ lat­est, but I do as she says, and I don’t both­er ask­ing if I can stay home.

            Most­ly I like school, but I’m an out­sider. My stan­dard­ized test scores land­ed me in the high­est tier of class­es at Sny­der High School, with almost all Jew­ish kids, all mid­dle class. The school’s pop­u­la­tion is most­ly white, main­ly blue col­lar, like Jer­sey City itself, so Mama says I must be pret­ty bright to be in all their classes.

            I’m a junior, and my two clos­est friends are Jew­ish, but Jew­ish fam­i­lies set up bar­ri­ers that their kids aren’t inclined to ignore. I can’t pledge for a Jew­ish soror­i­ty, and Jew­ish boys aren’t allowed to date me. My friend Sandy says I shouldn’t take it per­son­al­ly. It’s just the way things are. But there’s already enough going on in my fam­i­ly to make me feel like an outcast—steady drink­ing, month­ly bills that leave noth­ing left for new clothes—so their bylaws don’t help.

            I pledged for a Chris­t­ian soror­i­ty last year, when I was a sopho­more, but I rarely show up for their events or hang out with those girls. I feel more com­fort­able with the girls in my class­es. They like books, the muse­ums in New York. They wear the kind of clothes I want. I love going to their hous­es. Some of them live on Kennedy Boule­vard and their par­ents are doc­tors and lawyers. One girl, Sydne, has a grand piano in her liv­ing room. It’s like enter­ing anoth­er world, where want­i­ng things doesn’t have to be a nasty reminder of what you can’t afford.

            Sydne and some of her friends have a dance troop that makes appear­ances at syn­a­gogues and old-age homes across the city. One of the dancers, Helen, had to drop out—she hurt her ankle—but they have quite a few appear­ances com­ing up. Dorothy, the head of the group, asked if I’d take Helen’s place. They know I can dance, because we’ve been at school dances togeth­er, and I’ve joked that in my fam­i­ly kids dance before they can walk. The group per­forms Jew­ish folk dances, so I told them they’d have to teach me.

            They did. I’m a quick study. And the dances are easy to do, cer­tain­ly a lot less exhaust­ing than jigs. They wear jeans and long blue but­ton-down shirts, so cost isn’t an issue. We prac­tice in Dorothy’s base­ment. They have a big fam­i­ly room down there and lots of space. Her mom serves us soda and pret­zels, and she treats me like I’m no dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­er girls, tells me I’m a great dancer. I was start­ing to feel like one of the gang.

            When I told Sandy I had a crush on Joel Feld­man, she remind­ed me that the odds are not in my favor. But Joel jokes with me a lot and I was start­ing to won­der if maybe I had a bet­ter chance with him than Sandy thinks, until last night.

            As prac­tice was end­ing it start­ed rain­ing pret­ty hard and Dorothy’s dad insist­ed on giv­ing me a ride home. Dorothy and Sydne came along. We live on Rut­gers Ave., in the Greenville sec­tion, and I hadn’t thought of it as an espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous part of town. Dorothy’s dad wound up dri­ving down Jack­son Ave., a part of Greenville that has almost all Black fam­i­lies. We passed some beat-up cars, shut­tered stores, win­dows bro­ken here and there. Dorothy and Sydne took in a breath they didn’t dare exhale. I could see them stiff­en, feel the ten­sion in the car. Final­ly, Dorothy said it. “You live here?!”

            Her father scold­ed her right away. “You’re being very rude, Dorothy.”

            “I’m sor­ry. I just … ”

            The car got qui­et. I glanced into the back seat. Dorothy and Sydne had moved clos­er togeth­er. I think they were fright­ened. They had no com­pass for this for­eign place, no way to see it as anyone’s home.

            I looked out the win­dow, tried to see what they saw, the crooked, bro­ken stoops, the lit­tered curbs, the teenagers out past dark in the rain, hud­dled in door­ways. We turned onto my street, which is qui­eter, very few stores, most­ly two-fam­i­ly hous­es, but at that moment it seemed no less gloomy than Jack­son Ave., no less dingy, even though this apart­ment is a step-up from the one we had before, with an extra bed­room, a big­ger kitchen. But to Dorothy and Sydne it might as well have been a shack in Calcutta.

            Dorothy’s dad pulled the car to the curb, just a lit­tle ways from my build­ing, and said he’d walk me to the door.

            “No,” I insist­ed. “That’s okay, real­ly.” Open­ing the car door, I mum­bled some­thing about see­ing every­one in the morn­ing. I had my key ready, not want­i­ng to delay their depar­ture, because I was sure her dad would be watch­ing to make cer­tain I wasn’t mugged in the time it took to reach my front door.

            Through the win­dow, I could see our TV was on. I rushed the key into the lock, had to try again to let myself in. My mom sat in the dark­ened liv­ing room, her face aglow in the TV light.

            “How was it?” she said.

            “It was fine.”

            I sat down on the couch, so she turned toward me, curi­ous, because it wasn’t like me to sit with her that way. I want­ed to ask her ques­tions, the awful ones that plagued me, the ones I knew she couldn’t answer. Would things always be this way for us? Would we always be set apart from every­one else, strug­gling to make ends meet, liv­ing under cov­er, pre­tend­ing what we had could be enough to feel nor­mal? But the show’s back­ground music rose, sig­nal­ing dan­ger, and Mar­shal Dil­lon said some­thing to Kit­ty, some­thing scary, so Mama turned back to the screen.

            I don’t think she noticed me get up. I walked to the kitchen, in the back of the apart­ment, every­thing dim­ly lit, as if a ceil­ing light might reveal secrets no one wants to see. The room hadn’t changed since morn­ing, but I forced myself to look around, at the spaghet­ti pot still on the stove, at the dish­es still in the sink, the trash con­tain­er half-filled with beer cans.

            In the six years since my par­ents sep­a­rat­ed, my mom has rarely worked less than two jobs. Her tasks pile up before dawn, then lie in wait for her return. I’ve watched her slump into a kitchen chair, her coat still on, a let­ter from a land­lord in her hand, or a final notice from the tele­phone com­pa­ny, her eye­lids near­ly closed, lines deep­en­ing around her mouth, lip­stick worn off. On those nights she needs Gun­smoke or Per­ry Mason, a beer. Yet some­times, on a Sun­day or late at night, before bed­time, she finds an unex­pect­ed energy—maybe the kind she relied on when she was young, danc­ing in parish shows, singing in small, smoky clubs—and tells me I should audi­tion for the senior play, encour­ages my sis­ter to ask for a raise, insist­ing her Gregg short­hand is flaw­less. She must believe there’s a way out for us, and I want to believe that too, but it’s hard.

            I sat down at the kitchen table, not both­er­ing to turn on the light, adjust­ed to the dark­ness and the qui­et, won­der­ing what those girls saw that I can’t see, what they know about my future that I haven’t yet faced. Sandy is right about the odds with Joel. I under­stand that much now at least. But she’s only part­ly right about the rea­sons. It isn’t real­ly about reli­gion. If I con­vert­ed tomor­row, I would still be a pari­ah. There are things about me I can’t change, no mat­ter how many good grades I earn or dance steps I learn.

            I gave my word, so I’ll con­tin­ue with the group until Helen comes back, but I’ll nev­er go to prac­tice again with­out an umbrel­la, no mat­ter what the forecast.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

            I grew up in a sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­ly, liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. I spent my teen-age years know­ing how poor we were yet des­per­ate­ly pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise. Every teenag­er wants things their fam­i­ly can’t afford to give them. That’s not the kind of angst this piece is about. Days came when noth­ing was cer­tain, not even the next meal. In “The Stand-In,” I try to cap­ture the pain of know­ing you’re an out­sider, that you’ve been dealt a bad hand, and the toll it takes to pre­tend there’s any hope of chang­ing that. It requires remark­able inner strength to face up to the seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able obsta­cles life can put in your way. My moth­er had that kind of strength. But as a young girl, I often found I couldn’t sum­mon it. The bur­den of want­i­ng things I couldn’t have was too heavy. I want­ed life to be fair. “The Stand-In” takes place at a time when I was only begin­ning to see that fair­ness was not an enti­tle­ment, and I’d have to keep going even if it nev­er showed up. 

            The essay is part of a man­u­script in progress called When the Worst Is Over, a mem­oir in essays.

Mary Ann McGuigan’s cre­ative non­fic­tion has appeared in Brevi­ty, Cit­ron Review, The Rum­pus, and else­where. The Sun, Mass­a­chu­setts Review, North Amer­i­can Review, and many oth­er jour­nals have pub­lished her fic­tion. Her col­lec­tion Pieces includes sto­ries named for the Push­cart Prize and Best of the Net; her new sto­ry col­lec­tion, That Very Place, reach­es book­stores in Sep­tem­ber 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Pub­lic Library rank Mary Ann’s nov­els as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a final­ist for the Nation­al Book Award. She loves vis­i­tors: www.maryannmcguigan.com. 

Nonfiction / Kourtney Johnson

Two months after my step­fa­ther shoots him­self, my orange tab­by finds a baby bird in the front yard. Fall­en fledg­lings are com­mon dur­ing the rainy Okla­homa springs and sum­mers; fresh­ly feath­ered birds drop from the nest before they can fly, hop along the grass and stretch their wings while Mama Bird keeps a watch­ful eye from above, swoop­ing down for the occa­sion­al feed­ing. With­in a week of falling, most bird fly. A res­cuer of tur­tles, dogs, cats, and rats my whole life, I know bet­ter than grab­bing the seem­ing­ly aban­doned baby bird and throw­ing it in a cage. Just leave them be; they’re prob­a­bly fine. 

            But this one is too pink, the tiny body just sprout­ing tubed feath­ers at the edges of its wings. Its small black eyes blink too slow­ly as it shiv­ers. I shoo my cat, cor­ral her inside and grab my gar­den­ing gloves. On my way back out­side, I google, when to inter­vene fall­en bird. The arti­cles stress warmth: does the bird have enough feath­ers to stay warm?

            Naked new­borns are swad­dled in nests of sticks, feath­ers, and what­ev­er insu­la­tion the moth­er can find. Pressed in tight with their sib­lings, they retain heat even through rainy spring nights. My bird is near­ly feath­er­less and grog­gy, move­ments slow. I scoop him into my gloved hands, care­ful of his tooth­pick legs and paper wings, and deposit him into the t‑shirt lined shoe­box I’ve assem­bled, the heat­ing pad set on low. He nods off to sleep almost imme­di­ate­ly, and I place the box on the cor­ner of my desk, hell­bent on sav­ing this bird’s life.

            The first goal is ren­est­ing, Google informs me. The nest will be close by, like­ly in a tall tree or porch gut­ter. Place the nestling care­ful­ly into the orig­i­nal nest. Hide near­by and wait for Mama Bird to return for a feed­ing— she will be close by. Ensure she feeds the returned nestling. If she does, you have suc­cess­ful­ly ren­est­ed the bird. 

            If you can­not find the orig­i­nal nest, or it has been destroyed, you will need to con­struct a new nest and hang it near to the orig­i­nal. Place the nestling in the new nest. Again, hide, wait for the moth­er and ensure she vis­its the new nest. 

            If she ignores the new nest or refus­es at any time to feed the fall­en bird, the moth­er has aban­doned the baby. Please call your local wildlife rehab­ber for fur­ther assistance. 

            I locate the nest eas­i­ly, the high pitch chirps from above my head betray­ing the hid­den home. They’re in my roof, a gap in the cracked porch ceil­ing large enough for what­ev­er bird to slip through. Days of heavy rain had widened the open­ing, rat­tling the nest and send­ing the shiv­er­ing bird on my desk tum­bling. I attempt to slide my hand through the crack and bare­ly get my fin­gers through, let alone a cupped palm and its passenger.

            I adapt, dump the lotions and sprays from the wick­er bas­ket on my bath­room counter and begin nest con­struc­tion. Try­ing to mim­ic a real nest, I twist branch­es from my front yard into an awk­ward oval and place it in the bas­ket. On the porch, and nail the bas­ket to a sup­port beam as close to the gap as pos­si­ble, test the dura­bil­i­ty, and move the cocooned bird into his new home. It’s ear­ly in the day, sun bright over­head, and I decide to wait in my truck parked in the dri­ve­way to stake out the nest, hope Mama Bird flies by.

            It’s feed­ing time, the nestlings’ screams for food audi­ble in the cab of my closed truck. I spot a flash of wings soar from beside the house and onto the gut­ter, the small brown bird paus­ing for a heart­beat before dis­ap­pear­ing into the cracked roof. She’s quick, flits back onto the edge of the roof. From the makeshift nest, the dis­placed bird shouts, and Mom hears, her head flip­ping quick­ly around, seek­ing the source of the squawk­ing. I hold my breath as she bounces along the roof for a few min­utes before fly­ing away. She returns twice with­in the hour, swoop­ing into the orig­i­nal nest but nev­er feed­ing the nois­i­est chirp­er wail­ing from my makeshift nest. My bird has been abandoned.

            New­born birds are rav­en­ous, eat­ing every half-hour. My bird, shiv­er­ing and lethar­gic, like­ly hadn’t eat­en since I’d found him, and I search for the best way to feed the hun­gry, screech­ing mouth. Thir­ty min­utes lat­er, I spoon sog­gy cat food into a need­less syringe. The chick wails as his head tilts back, tiny yel­low beak agape, wait­ing for the next mouth­ful. I work slow­ly, care­ful each bite is swal­lowed com­plete­ly, no food block­ing the bird’s throat. After a few plunges, the mouth clos­es, silent and con­tent, and he bur­rows into the fake nest, final­ly peaceful.

            I decide to leave him out­side, check every hour for any sign of Mama Bird vis­it­ing the nest. But he’s always scream­ing when I peak my head over the edge, mouth gap­ing, beg­ging. As night falls, the tem­per­a­ture drops twen­ty degrees, and I fear the naked newborn’s abil­i­ty to sur­vive the night. Again, I lift the baby, cup him in gloved hands and relo­cate him to the orig­i­nal box, heat­ing pad ready. The first night, he sleeps in the bath­room, away from the cat but close to help, if my Bird needs me.

            At five the next morn­ing, hun­gry cries echo through my small house. I mix water and bits of cat food, wait for the appro­pri­ate mush lev­el. In the bath­room, Bird is wide awake and impa­tient, scrawny head wig­gling as food descends. We sit in the floor for about fif­teen min­utes, the cat paw­ing curi­ous­ly against the door from out­side. Even­tu­al­ly, Bird’s mouth clos­es, his eyes hood, and he falls asleep in the warmth of the t‑shirt. I clean the bits of food and poop around him, wash­ing my hands and dou­ble check­ing his breath­ing before I head back to bed.

            At a more appro­pri­ate hour for wak­ing, we repeat the feed­ing process, and I return Bird to his faux nest out­side. Social­iza­tion is inte­gral to a bird’s devel­op­ment, for prac­ti­cal things like learn­ing to eat and fly to devel­op­ing a healthy fear of humans. With­in the first few weeks of life, birds imprint on their pri­ma­ry care­tak­ers, baby ducks falling in line behind their moth­er or pen­guins learn­ing to slide along the ice. If dis­rupt­ed, a new­born may claim a human as par­ent, alien­at­ing them from oth­er birds and eras­ing the need to avoid peo­ple. These birds often die when released, unable to fend for them­selves in the wild. I hope by leav­ing Bird out­side, near his sib­lings, he may retain his avian affluence.

            I call a local wildlife rehab­ber who directs me back to the inter­net: I need to iden­ti­fy Bird. I peak into the nest, snap a pic­ture before scrolling through hun­dreds of Birds from Okla­homa life cycle images. With­out feath­ers, many birds look the same, pink, fleshy bod­ies with over­sized beaks. I hold Bird and the birds side by side, remem­ber the size and col­or of his moth­er, nar­row down the options before con­firm­ing: Bird is a House Sparrow.

            Orig­i­nal­ly native to Europe, house spar­rows were intro­duced pur­pose­ful­ly to the Unit­ed States in the 19^th cen­tu­ry as a form of pest con­trol. The birds repro­duced rapid­ly and aggres­sive­ly, knock­ing eggs from for­eign nests to lay their own or killing the orig­i­nal moth­ers all togeth­er, and earned Inva­sive sta­tus. They remain one of the most plen­ti­ful species of avian on the plan­et. If able, those with a house spar­row infes­ta­tion should euth­a­nize humane­ly by seal­ing off the loca­tion of the nest, induc­ing star­va­tion and inhibit­ing the moth­er from return­ing, or call their local wildlife rehabber.

            The rehab­ber con­firms when I call: yes, Bird is like­ly an inva­sive species and will be euth­a­nized upon arrival. When will I be drop­ping him off?

            I feed Bird again (remem­ber, every thir­ty min­utes), and he leaps up slight­ly at the sight of my hand, thin legs grow­ing strong enough to lift his tiny body. For the first time, I run a gloved fin­ger along his head, offer the miss­ing touch of fel­low nesters, and real­ize my inabil­i­ty to send Bird to cer­tain death. We repeat the pre­vi­ous day’s rou­tine, and I again secure him in the bath­room, dou­ble check his heat­ing pad before shut­ting off the lights.

            As I car­ry Bird to the nest the next morn­ing, a line of black ants guides my eyes to the dead bird rot­ting just off the porch. It’s anoth­er fall­en nestling, its wings slight­ly more feath­ered than my bird, but still most­ly pink. Half of the body’s already skele­tal, ants and mag­gots strip­ping the flesh from the tiny bones. Car­ry­ing the decom­pos­ing bird to the gar­den for bur­ial, I cry, apol­o­gize for the rick­ety roof, the hard fall onto the pave­ment, my inabil­i­ty to save them too. From his nest, Bird squawks, reminds me of his hunger, and I head inside to mush more cat food.

            For a week, my days revolve around Bird, the con­stant feed­ings, check­ing his weight gain and feath­er growth. He’s pro­gress­ing nor­mal­ly, accord­ing to the bird res­cue forums I’ve joined, and I’ve moved him from small box to free roam­ing the bath­tub as his wings flap exper­i­men­tal­ly. He hops along, flap­ping and wig­gling, and I know soon he’ll begin to fly. His feath­ers fill in, no more pink vis­i­ble between the flecks of brown and black.

            For feed­ings, Bird starts perch­ing on my fin­ger, grip strength­en­ing every time. I keep plac­ing him in the nest out­side dur­ing the day, but I warm to the idea of keep­ing him, won­der­ing if he’s poten­tial­ly imprint­ed on me as his moth­er. I start talk­ing to him, call him, “Pret­ty Bird,” and offer him food from my hand instead of the syringe. I research cages. I say, “It just feels like the right thing to do,” nev­er men­tion the poten­tial hav­oc Bird may bring to less aggres­sive birds or my self­ish­ness in rais­ing an inva­sive species for release. In my world, I just need some­thing to survive.

            One after­noon, I car­ry my mushy cat food bowl up to the nest, say, “Hey, Pret­ty Bird,” and find the makeshift nest emp­ty. I pan­ic, assum­ing anoth­er leap and check the ground for my Bird. No ants, no pink, just grass, and I real­ize he’s gone. I talk to him from the porch, wait for my princess moment, but no Bird arrives to land on my fin­ger or perch in my hair. My cat meows beside me, she too notic­ing the lack of chirps we’ve grown to expect. I dump the food and begin to tear down my nest. My mom calls, asks how Bird’s doing before I inform her of the aban­doned nest. “That’s great. You did a good thing, baby,” and I des­per­ate­ly hope she is right. I leave the nest nailed to the beam, in case Bird comes back, in case anoth­er bird falls.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

I took a large step away from writ­ing after fin­ish­ing my master’s pro­gram. Still in the weeds of quar­an­tine, I’d grown to dread the act of cre­ation and trans­for­ma­tion, too stuck in my own head for any type of self-reflection.

After my stepfather’s sui­cide last spring, life became very bina­ry: alive and dead, right and wrong. The human world felt too clean, too scrubbed of the heav­i­ness of loss. The ani­mal king­dom is often rec­og­nized as the ulti­mate exam­ple of death and its bru­tal­i­ty, and I found nature to be a great com­fort in the uncer­tain­ty of this grief. Birds I clung to specif­i­cal­ly, with their loy­al­ty, resilience, and gor­geous brutality.

This essay com­bines the truth of my bird reha­bil­i­ta­tion hob­by with the truth of know­ing we can’t save them all; but still des­per­ate­ly trying.

Kourt­ney John­son holds an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty. She now lives in Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, where she writes about shel­ter ani­mals. Her essays have pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in Wac­ca­maw, Switch­back, and LEVITATE.

Nonfiction / Marcy Rae Henry 

 

      I could nev­er tell Ran­di and Sandy apart when they were com­ing down the hall until one of them spoke to me.  Ran­di and I were cool, but she most­ly just said, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ Her twin on the oth­er hand hat­ed me in the way only one teenage girl can hate anoth­er.  I’d nev­er had class­es or even a con­ver­sa­tion with Sandy, but she’d walk behind me in the halls, snip­ping, ‘Look at that out­fit.  Lati­nas can’t be New Wave.  ¡Qué ridículo!’ 

      Ignor­ing her seemed to piss her off, so that’s what I did—until she start­ed mak­ing com­ments about my body.  Then I turned around and said, ‘You want a piece of this, mami­ta?   Sure are focused on it.’  And I shook my ass down the hall.

      Lat­er, my friends were gath­ered at my lock­er and Sandy strolled by. ‘Check it out.  It’s the bitch-bunch!’ 

      Corey asked her to repeat her­self and, being Sandy, she did. ‘Per­ras, todas.’ She dra­mat­i­cal­ly point­ed at us one by one and jabbed her fin­ger into Corey’s chest.

      Turn­ing to me, Corey said, ‘Hold these, please,’ and hand­ed me her books. Then she punched Sandy in the face.  Fists flew, hair was yanked and I burst into tears. Maybe it was the sur­prise of the whole thing. A crowd gath­ered and the Span­ish teacher ran out of her class­room unsuc­cess­ful­ly scream­ing for them to stop. She didn’t dare get between them, that’s what the secu­ri­ty guard was for, and when Big Mike strolled over, he sep­a­rat­ed them like rag dolls. In those days peo­ple in charge could pad­dle stu­dents, man­han­dle, yell at and threat­en them.  And yet, Big Mike nev­er raised his voice and rarely had to get more phys­i­cal than he did with Corey and Sandy.

      After the fight, the Span­ish teacher called Corey La Bruis­er. ‘Let’s ask La Bruis­er how to say, ‘I would have gone to the movies with La Llorona if I’d had the mon­ey… Be care­ful with the verbs.”  Some­thing that prob­a­bly wouldn’t fly today.  Corey sat in deten­tion for a week, a cou­ple of desks away from Sandy, and from there she snuck me a note. ‘I’ll always have your back.  Love, C.’

***

      Corey and I went to col­lege in neigh­bor­ing states, so we were able to vis­it each oth­er dur­ing breaks and once or twice dur­ing the semes­ter.  After­wards, she stayed in Col­orado, and I moved to Spain.  While I was trav­el­ing around, I’d drop her post­cards and write at length about love affairs, celiba­cy; bac­cha­na­lia, sobri­ety; the vicis­si­tudes of the earth and the stun­ning struc­tures built upon it.  Corey would write via Poste Restante. Same stuff: sex part­ners, poten­tial life part­ners, dream hous­es.  In Dam­as­cus I got a note say­ing, ‘Will you look for a Monop­oly board in Ara­bic?  I’ll love you for­ev­er, C.’ Incred­i­bly, I  found one and sent it to her around the hol­i­days.  When the let­ter I picked up at the post office in Cairo said, ‘Will you come back to be my maid of hon­or?’ I was sur­prised. We were still so young.  Or maybe just I felt that way.   But I sent a let­ter back say­ing, Dear Corey, of course.

***

      Back in Grana­da I planned to take my leave, head back to the States for the wed­ding and work until I’d saved up enough mon­ey to go to India.  Before that, I want­ed to get Corey some­thing spe­cial, some­thing adult.  So, I decid­ed to head to Por­tu­gal to check out the beau­ti­ful blue stoneware. 

      The first stop was Gali­cia, where I couldn’t under­stand a word of Gal­lego and where, pre-inter­net, I met peo­ple who didn’t know where the U.S. was in rela­tion to Europe.  –I assured them lots of peo­ple in the States couldn’t point out Gali­cia on a map.  In San­ti­a­go de Com­postela a cathe­dral hous­es the apos­tle Saint James’ remains, sup­pos­ed­ly con­se­crat­ed in 1211.  I stepped into a tav­er­na with­in the medieval walls and had an espres­so so delight­ful I decid­ed to order anoth­er.  By the time I wad­ed through pil­grims, wait­ed in line to enter the Romanesque church and found an uncom­fort­able pew on the right side of the transept, the caf­feine kicked in.  My heart began pound­ing. Every­thing in the chan­cel was gold­en and glow­ing.  My hands shook and my head hurt, so I put it between my knees. When I looked up, the High Altar was over­whelm­ing. I could taste stone, wood, met­al. Though I’d nev­er done so, I felt as if I might faint.  I won­dered if I should ask favor of the seat­ed fig­ure of Saint James dressed as a pil­grim or the four angels float­ing above.  When I stood up and clutched my chest, a cou­ple of peo­ple close by smiled and nod­ded at me.  They thought I was hav­ing a reli­gious experience.

      Walk­ing across the bor­der into Por­tu­gal, I thought of the only oth­er such bound­ary I’d tra­versed on foot and how my great-great-grand­moth­er wit­nessed this bor­der between Méx­i­co and the U.S. migrate south.  She crossed back and forth, saw peo­ple fight to get their land back and decid­ed to stay north of the new line. One day my great-grand­moth­er also crossed north for the last time. My grand­moth­er crossed back for short vis­its. Through­out col­lege, walk­ing across to par­ty in Juárez was as easy as stat­ing our cit­i­zen­ship on the way in, and slur­ring ‘Mer­can when stum­bling back into El Paso.  No i.d. need­ed, no papers looked at, no oth­er ques­tions asked.  Who knows how many have died in and because of the cre­ation of this border.

      Before the Euro, before Europe’s bor­ders became more porous, the first thing to do when cross­ing one was to change mon­ey.  Not long after doing so in Coim­bra, a city famous for blue and white ceram­ics, I spent most of it on a serv­ing set for Corey.  It was ele­gant, adult and heavy, and I’d hap­pi­ly hag­gled to get the price down.  I stayed in cheap hos­tels filled with oth­er peo­ple my age, peo­ple who talked about how stun­ning Lis­bon was.  Of course, I had to go, even if I knew my expe­ri­ence of it would be lim­it­ed due to lack of funds.  And yet, as soon as I stepped off the train with my back­pack and well-wrapped serv­ing set, some­thing told me to buy the weed I was offered. Con­tent to wan­der up and down the nar­row, trol­ley-filled cob­ble­stones and in and out of church­es, I scratched muse­ums, Cas­cais with the medieval Nos­sa Sen­ho­ra da Luz Fort and Citadel Palace off the list of places to vis­it.  The weed not only made long walks more enjoy­able, it helped with a long night of bed bugs in the first crap room I rented. 

    Next, I head­ed to the Algarve, famed for gold­en coast­lines rimmed with miles of cliffs and beach­es.  I hung out with a group of Alge­ri­ans who taught me about their coun­try.  At that point I hadn’t even seen Bat­tle of Algiers and hung on every word.  In a cheap but unbe­liev­ably clean and bug-free hos­tel in Lagos I met a Cana­di­an, an Amer­i­can and Brit and we all agreed to linger in Lagos where we shared food, drink, smoke and lied top­less on the sand for hours, blue in front of us and blue up above. We’d trade CDs for the day, lis­ten­ing to Deep For­est and Loreena McKen­nitt, writ­ing lists of books and music in each other’s jour­nals. Final­ly, sun-filled, lazy and only able to afford to eat ice cream, I knew it was time to head back to Grana­da.  With bus­es and trains out of reach, I decid­ed to hitchhike—something that wasn’t unusu­al for the place and time.

      A French woman in a con­vert­ible picked me up first.  She was play­ing B‑Tribe and said she always picked up women, espe­cial­ly if they were alone.  After­wards, I didn’t wait long before an Ital­ian cou­ple play­ing Eros Ramaz­zot­ti offered me a lift.  Because of their lex­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty, Span­ish and Ital­ian speak­ers can under­stand four out of every five words of the oth­er lan­guage.  So, we had 4/5 of a con­ver­sa­tion.  They told me about their medieval city; I told them about Corey.  Once I entered Spain I was picked up by a man in a small sedan who spoke non­stop in Por­tuguese which, though also a Latin descen­dent, sound­ed more sim­i­lar to French than Span­ish and I most­ly just shrugged, ‘No entien­do.’  Sud­den­ly, he pulled to the side of the road.  We were in a love­ly, forest­ed area; a place where I didn’t want to die.  He motioned for me to wait and jumped out.  I didn’t know if I should do the same, but if I had to bolt, I knew I’d have to leave the serv­ing set I’d been lug­ging around. 

      In the pas­sen­ger mir­ror I fixed my eye on the guy.  He pulled out a long knife.  It glint­ed in the sun­light.  I opened the door and as I got out to run, he shout­ed, ‘San­duiche!’ and held up a beau­ti­ful loaf of bread in one hand and the knife in the oth­er.  The bread dis­armed me.  I walked slow­ly to the trunk and watched him cut two slices of fresh bread and a thick hunk of cheese.  It was one of the best sand­wich­es I ever ate.

 

***

      My last ride into Grana­da was with a Span­ish-speak­ing truck­driv­er. I man­aged to break a plat­ter get­ting into his rig.  Corey didn’t mind.  At the wed­ding recep­tion I told the hitch­hik­ing sto­ry.  She toast­ed our friendship. 

      A few years lat­er she sent a let­ter to India to tell me of her divorce.  I sent back some Tibetan incense and a copy of Sid­dhartha.  By the time I returned from the Himalayas, she was about to mar­ry for the sec­ond time.  I’d been liv­ing off sav­ings.  She’d been build­ing a career.  When I told her about spend­ing hours in silence and med­i­ta­tion, Corey didn’t quite know what to say.  She talked about her cus­tom-made Mer­cedes and $400 bot­tles of wine, and I wasn’t sure what response she was seek­ing.  We went club­bing and she and her part­ner sand­wiched me on the dance floor. In a moment of music and mez­cal she whis­pered in my ear that I was invit­ed to the wedding/honeymoon in Hawaii.  Once again, I was broke and, as I would have been the only guest, I declined.

      After I moved to Chica­go our vis­its became increas­ing­ly spread out.  She came out a few times and I saw her in Den­ver when she was again divorc­ing.  Not long after, she almost stopped in Chica­go while on a busi­ness trip.  In freez­ing weath­er the city is known for, I took a bus and a train to meet her at O’Hare and she wasn’t there.  I called her cell from a pay­phone and wait­ed.  After a cou­ple of hours, hop­ing Corey was ok, I left.  Days lat­er I called her home.

      She answered and said, ‘I met a guy and well, you know, we end­ed up get­ting a room and I missed my flight.’

      ‘And you couldn’t take a moment to stop me from going to the airport?’

      Next time I was in Col­orado we made plans to hang out, but Corey got caught up jet ski­ing and we didn’t con­nect before I left.  We nev­er texted or emailed the way we used to write to each oth­er and didn’t always have each other’s cur­rent address and phone num­ber.  While she was very active on it, I’ve nev­er been on social media and a mutu­al friend told me in pass­ing that she’d seen a post about Corey mar­ry­ing a third time.  By that point we hadn’t seen each oth­er in years and if there was a fies­ta, I wasn’t invit­ed.  It wasn’t as if we’d bro­ken up.  She didn’t like my part­ner at the time, but I knew that wasn’t it—we’d had numer­ous part­ners dur­ing decades of know­ing each oth­er.  It was a nat­ur­al part­ing, brought on by change and distance. 

      Sev­er­al years passed and then, the pan­dem­ic.  And if not dur­ing a world­wide pan­dem­ic, when?  Corey sent an email.  We checked in a cou­ple of times.  When the skies opened up again, she came to Chica­go for a con­cert and, after­wards, came by for food and wine.  It was still that in between time when peo­ple and places had dif­fer­ent rules, dif­fer­ent bound­aries.  She found me more cau­tious about masks and trav­el than she was.  At first, I won­dered about her politics. 

      Then we talked about all the unbe­liev­able mier­da.  The tri­fec­ta of the virus, police bru­tal­i­ty and the splin­ter­ing of the coun­try.  We laughed and cried like we always had, act­ing out scenes from our lives.  There was no need to paint our­selves pret­ty.  To act like things turned out the way we planned.  I swore to always live just a short dri­ve from the moun­tains but end­ed up in Mid­west­ern flat­lands.  Corey built her dream­house, but when her third mar­riage was over, she end­ed up mov­ing around, lug­ging the Por­tuguese serv­ing set to each new place. 

      After trad­ing sto­ries about the Sandys of the world and the unavoid­able Sandys in our lives, she left.  And it was enough.  I don’t mean the mar­riages; there will be anoth­er.  We didn’t promise to stay in touch—we’d both be in Italy that sum­mer and would miss each oth­er by weeks—but we were updat­ed and we were at peace.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

While shel­ter­ing in place in Chica­go, I found myself writ­ing essays about my abueli­ta and my home­town.  There’s so much more space in my South­west­ern town—between hous­es, peo­ple, on roads, side­walks, in stores.  In Chica­go I stood at the win­dow watch­ing a float squeeze its way down a one-way street as if it had lost its parade.  Grad­u­at­ing high school stu­dents’ names were spelled out in spark­ly let­ters over every inch of the long flat-bed.  It was inno­v­a­tive and ter­ri­bly sad. 

Well before the inter­net became ubiq­ui­tous, ‘Corey’ and I watched oth­er girls cat­fish in all the ways pos­si­ble in the 80s—calling peo­ple, pre­tend­ing to be some­one else, leav­ing notes in lock­ers pre­tend­ing they were authored by some­one else, send­ing piz­zas to some­one who hadn’t ordered them…  We didn’t real­ize the extent to which women and girls were pit­ted against each other.

We didn’t have the lan­guage, among oth­er things, to explain that we’d come of age in a world that embraced gen­der essen­tial­ism and assumed het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty. Lat­er, we under­stood we could say no to all the com­pe­ti­tions we didn’t sign up for. 

As some­one who’s nev­er had social media accounts, it’s inter­est­ing to look at how rela­tion­ships change as the ways we cor­re­spond have changed. Same goes for social expec­ta­tions, for per­son­al space.  Some of my stu­dents expect me to be per­pet­u­al­ly online.  Some peo­ple my age think something’s wrong if they don’t get a lick­ety-split response. 

After we’d both returned from our respec­tive trips to Italy, Corey and I emailed a few times about buy­ing one of those 1€ stone-crum­bling Ital­ian vil­las to refur­bish.  I won­der if she’s remar­ried by now.

Mar­cy Rae Hen­ry is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Xicana artist born and raised in the Bor­der­lands.  She has lived in Europe and Asia and had motor­cy­cle acci­dents in Mex­i­can Amer­i­ca, Turkey and Nepal. She is the author of We Are Pri­ma­ry Col­ors (Dou­ble­Cross Press), the body is where it all begins (forth­com­ing from Queren­cia Press), dream life of night owls (forth­com­ing from Open Coun­try Press) and red deli­cious (forth­com­ing from danc­ing girl press) and recent­ly won the May Sar­ton NH Prize for Poet­ry.  Her work appears or will appear in Sala­man­der, Epiphany, PANK, The South­ern Review, Worces­ter Review, Best New Poets and var­i­ous oth­er jour­nals and has received a Chica­go Com­mu­ni­ty Arts Assis­tance Grant, an Illi­nois Arts Coun­cil Fel­low­ship, a Push­cart nom­i­na­tion, and first prize in Suburbia’s Nov­el Excerpt Con­test. MRae is a dig­i­tal min­i­mal­ist with no social media accounts and an asso­ciate edi­tor for RHINO Poet­ry.  marcyraehenry.com