Nonfiction / Brandon Hansen

:: An Acre of Woods ::

        I remem­ber flick­ing bass­wood seeds as far as we could off our fin­gers, and blood pool­ing in per­fect moons beneath our nails. I remem­ber the deep blue eighty-gal­lon plas­tic bar­rel my dad usu­al­ly used to flush cus­tomers’ boat motors, and how on week­ends it became home to the min­nows he would trap for bait. Dad would hose fresh water into their home, and the suck­ers and shin­ers would rise with the swell, then over­flow from the bar­rel. The lit­tle fish would squirm down the impromp­tu riv­er in the dri­ve­way, and Nicky and I would tod­dle amidst its flow, scoop them back up with clum­sy fin­gers. Mom, sun-drunk and slouched in her plas­tic chair, would watch us lift our cupped hands high to the bar­rel and drop them back into the depths, and wave them good­bye. I always won­dered what that felt like, to go from one world to anoth­er like that. 

        Savanah, the neigh­bor girl, would watch me and Nicky sword­fight with the slashed limbs of fire­wood, watch us pick burst­ing-ripe crab apples and boot them into her Grand­ma Bonnie’s yard with dol­lar-store plas­tic bats. One day, Savanah sprang through the field between our homes, emerged into our yard with the petals and cal­ices of iris and wood vio­let glued by the morn­ing dew to her knees. She opened her cupped hands and dumped a dozen, fra­grant, crushed crab apples into my out­stretched palms, and said some­thing like, I think these are yours. 

        We spent the rest of that after­noon and hun­dreds of after­noons after that mar­veling at garter snakes beneath the old tires in the back, or leop­ard frogs that would bathe in the pool of rain­wa­ter col­lect­ed in the footholds of an old customer’s aban­doned jet-ski, entwined in thorny rasp­ber­ry bush­es behind the barn, bleached basi­cal­ly white from years in the sun. I can see the boat motors and their flak­ing paint and rust­ing pro­pellers leaned against the barn; I can see Dad out there in the sun, knees in the grav­el of the dri­ve­way, tend­ing someone’s speed boat or four-wheel­er, so bright amidst the sun fad­ed back­drop of every­thing we owned. We orbit­ed around him, turn­ing dusty and fad­ed our­selves, lift­ing old tires and gasp­ing at garter snakes, throw­ing crab apples at black­flies that gath­ered in dozens on the win­dow screens, and duck­ing reflex­ive­ly to the deaf­en­ing hum of their retreat.  

        Dad was a fix­ture in that dri­ve­way. He cranked away at the bro­ken machines of vaca­tion­ers and snow­birds, the peo­ple who lived in the north while it was warm and left at the first fall of a leaf. They towed their glis­ten­ing boats on shin­ing trucks up High­way 32 every spring, blazed them down our trails and across our lakes until a gas­ket gave, or the oil cur­dled, or an engine seized. That’s when they’d roll into our dri­ve­way, where on warm, beau­ti­ful sum­mer days dad spent hours fix­ing them. 

        But some­times, my ears would perk at the sound of the brass bells tied to our back door. There was some­thing dif­fer­ent about how Dad would open it some days. I knew he was going fish­ing, and I knew because his eyes would change col­or. They opened up, wide and won­drous, and they soaked up sun in a way I rarely saw. They changed from the dark of old engine oil to a light green, like lit­tle lakes them­selves. Still, I’d call out to him, and Mom would slur for her kiss good­bye, but the only answer was the clos­ing of his car door. To my dad, to fish was to rest. The lake was his cra­dle. 

        When he would leave with­out me, it was like a lit­tle hook in my heart. But there would be Savanah, tug­ging at my sleeve, Savanah who would point to a chrysalis in the leaves, who remind­ed me that I had every­thing I could ever want, right there.  

* 

        For years, Savanah and I didn’t know the world out­side our yards. We didn’t know the lakes dad went to or the roads that led there; we knew no infra­struc­ture beyond our homes and the pow­er lines between us, and even when we went to school it was more a mat­ter of tele­port­ing from a place we need­ed to be to a place we want­ed to be. What we did know was how to wear a desire path into the wild­flower field, where we dashed back and forth to each other’s homes in the sil­very light of post-school days and week­ends. Togeth­er we’d fol­low spring-melt rivers down the crack­led asphalt road, or catch sum­mer frogs in the lit­tle cages of our hands. We’d crunch fall’s leaves into a sort of con­fet­ti and throw it about us, or build snow­men togeth­er, lit­tle stat­ues in our yards, tes­ta­ments of what we could build togeth­er. Savanah was my best friend.  

        We did these things and talked; we talked about school and home with what words we could man­age, young as we were, but what I loved most was how we always talked about what was in front of us. How the water was warm, or the fish were lit­tle, or the snow was packy. We built vil­lages in the sand­box, hous­es con­struct­ed with four twigs poked into a canopy of a sin­gle bass­wood leaf, and our faces became warm with con­cen­tra­tion, the logis­tics of our lit­tle world where crab apples were the denizens. Where would they eat? Do these two love each oth­er? We’ve dug them a lit­tle lake in the cen­ter, but how will they get there?  

        These were the prob­lems of the moment, and for what felt like some bliss­ful eter­ni­ty, when I was with Savanah, it felt like the only prob­lems there were.  

        But that changed as we changed. Small bod­ies grew, our yards shrank, the bass­wood leaves I once craned to gaze at began to slap my face when I ran through the yard. This is when Savanah began to dis­ap­pear. It’s a con­glom­er­a­tion of mem­o­ries, an orb of feel­ings float­ing in my mind, like a rot­ting, round fruit. In its reflec­tion there is mot­tled shade over the sand­box, dirt pressed into our knees, Savanah’s eyes dark like syrup when she’d look at our cre­ation and say, 

        “I’m going by my dad soon.”  

        My stom­ach would gur­gle with a strange heat. I’d trace my fin­ger around in the sand.  

        “For a long time? 

        She’d flick an apple down a lit­tle hill of sand we’d made.  

        “Maybe.” And she would scoot around to my side of the sand­box, and sit close. 

        That’s how it went for a long time. Savanah and I spent every day togeth­er when she was liv­ing with her Grand­ma Bon­nie, just across the field, whether we were ambling off the bus togeth­er or cross­ing the field on the qui­et days of a school break. But for rea­sons she didn’t explain, she’d some­times live with her dad, Zane. He lived the next town over, in Tipler, ten min­utes away, and so she’d still be on the same bus to the same school at basi­cal­ly the same time. But it just wasn’t as close.  

        Not long after Savanah’s warn­ing, Zane’s black truck, fish­ing lures swing­ing from the rearview, would inevitably be there at the bus stop after a school day, a por­tent of our part­ing. Like Savanah, he was short and thin, his hair dark in the exact shade of hers, though unlike her, and like most log­gers, he wore a beard always home to a dash of saw­dust. His frame was crooked from a life of labor, and he donned a tank­top from which his stri­at­ed arms hung, tan and shred of all excess save for the mus­cles he need­ed to push the chain­saw. His eyes were dark, and with them he would stare right through me as Savanah clam­bered into his truck, and she’d reach across him to wave good­bye as they rum­bled away. 

        Bon­nie, though, saw me. She would let out a grandma’s hap­py “Ohh!” on the few occa­sions Savanah and I would rush into the house, red-faced and pant­i­ng, down­ing spot­less glass after glass of water at the gleam­ing steel sink. She scooped us Moose Tracks from an ever-full ice cream car­ton, and gave us cold, clean rags to press on our necks. There I would stand, the water slid­ing down my back, and stare around her house.  

        In Bonnie’s liv­ing room was the first time I saw a flat screen tele­vi­sion. In her breeze­way was the first time I was told to take my shoes off before step­ping inside, and in the dark gran­ite of her kitchen island was where I saw myself, in a way, for the first time. I saw the storm on my head, my ever-tou­sled hair. And I knew if I were to smile, there would be my crooked teeth. Clothes soaked in the smoke of Mom’s Marl­boros and our wood­stove hung off my body, all hand-me downs, down to the socks. I liked when we’d stop in to rest at Bonnie’s, but in that air-con­di­tioned par­adise, I felt more than ever like an amor­phous shape, grow­ing taller so fast it hurt, uncon­tained, and yet with my gut sucked to my back with a hunger that left me always in a daze. It felt bet­ter to be out­side in this state; to feel as floaty as the whirligig maple seeds that flut­tered about us, to feel my body so warm it was like I was the air itself.  

        I think Savanah felt the same way but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, because we didn’t stop in at Bonnie’s often. Maybe once a month until we were pre-teens. Savanah only talked to Bon­nie when Bon­nie asked her a ques­tion, and her answers always formed odd cir­cles of qui­et in the con­ver­sa­tion. When she was asked where she was going, it was always “Not far,” and when she’d come home, “When­ev­er you make din­ner,” and what we’d be up to, silence.  

        I didn’t under­stand it – Savanah was the sweet­est per­son I knew, and Bon­nie the most gen­er­ous. Yet I could feel tur­bu­lence; some­thing pained Savanah. There was more to Bon­nie than there seemed. The com­plex­i­ty of it made me odd­ly grate­ful for the sim­plic­i­ty of my home: things looked ter­ri­ble, and they pret­ty much were. Savanah seemed to love it though; the scratched wood floors beneath the garbage, the cob­bled sand­wich­es of bread ends and yel­lowed sliv­ers of but­ter and loose sug­ar shak­en from the bag. I think she felt free. She spun about the house and top­pled cob­webs with arms wide open. For the longest time I accept­ed this for the mir­a­cle it seemed to be; but the old­er we got, I real­ized not all things were as sim­ple as they seemed. 

* 

        When I was about 12, I entered the work­ing world. Few Long Lak­ers were as well off as Grand­ma Bon­nie, and almost nobody as bad­ly off as my fam­i­ly, and so while peo­ple couldn’t afford land­scape work, they could afford me. I was Long Lake’s lone and unof­fi­cial mow­er of sprawl­ing lake­side lawns, slash­er of dan­de­lions, burn­er of pinecones. I accu­mu­lat­ed clients all along the lake. 

        Har­ry was an ancient man who lived across the street and had a voice like a cement-mix­er, though I nev­er actu­al­ly spoke to him. Dad arranged our trans­ac­tions and his own; it felt like every month of the sum­mer, Dad could be found car­ry­ing Harry’s small boat motor across the street, and accept­ing some cash from the old man, who would some­times hold his hand there in my dad’s, and grum­ble some­thing I could bare­ly hear: “the boy,” “the lawn.” Dad would come back and tell me that Har­ry want­ed the yard cut again, though it’d only been a cou­ple days. 

        “He for­gets, you know,” Dad would say. And he’d look at his oil-stained hands, as if regret­ful for yet again unflood­ing the motor Har­ry had long for­got­ten how to prop­er­ly choke.    

        Many morn­ings passed on the bru­tal hill of Harry’s back­yard. After­noons and evenings passed in wood­ed lawns of two dif­fer­ent Johns on oppo­site ends of Long Lake, and I babysat for Lar­ry and Linda’s grand­son, who was some­how named Blade, and did the same for Dave’s grand­son Con­nor, who vis­it­ed them two hous­es down from Harry’s, one from Larry’s. Mom would dri­ve me a few miles down the road to cut her friend Doreen’s grass, and they would drink lit­tle green grenades of Jäger­meis­ter while they watched me go back and forth over the sweep­ing yard. Some­times Grand­pa threw me ten bucks to do his whole yard, though I’d have shoved it and more right back at him if he would spare me the hour-long lec­ture that fol­lowed – how the lines were not straight, or a tree root was nicked, and how if I’m going to do some­thing, I ough­ta do it right.  

        I didn’t know that this was only the begin­ning, that one day I’d get my driver’s license and my reach would extend to the whole coun­ty. But in the ear­li­est years of my work­ing, I felt like a painter on the can­vas of Long Lake – beau­ti­fi­er of neat parcels all along the shore. Or at least that con­cep­tion smoothed the real­i­ty of the work, so much of which was tedious, and made no sense to me; my blis­ter-pocked hands were tes­ta­ment to how many dan­de­lions I’d dug, though I thought they were pret­ty. I found myself weed whack­ing wild mus­tard tucked behind trees peo­ple would nev­er see, and drag­ging a vac­u­um out­side to suck dust off porch-lin­ing rocks. It felt waste­ful and long, and for every inch clos­er to per­fec­tion these people’s yard became, the worse I felt about my own – for every sec­ond I spent sweat­ing by the lake, the more I wished to dive in. But most of all, when I’d find myself on my knees, elbow-deep in the under­car­riage of a tick­ing mow­er, pulling sod­den grass from the hot blades while the day burned away, I just wished I was with Savanah.  

        But Savanah seemed to like that I was a work­ing man now, and Bon­nie seemed to love it. 

        Those days were some of the strangest of my life, and they added up slow­ly. At first Savanah would insist we go to Bonnie’s once a week, then both days of the week­end, then soon it felt like I was at Bonnie’s more than I was home. Those days, I’d go from one world to anoth­er, from the hot air, the qui­et of only my foot­steps and bird song and my own hard breath, fin­gers crust­ed in dirt and smashed grass, hands fat with bug bites, my feet inflamed and socks and shirt soaked through with sweat, feel­ing so worn and moist and in a loop with the earth around me that I may as well have been one of the long fall­en logs I was tasked with cut­ting – and then into the blast­ing air con­di­tion­ing, the shined gran­ite and tile, a glass of water in my hand so cold it stung to hold, and then Savanah there in the bright liv­ing room, her hair long and glossy as every­thing else, smile straight­ened by the vice of braces now that she was old enough, don­ning new clothes what seemed like every sin­gle day. Then there would be Bon­nie, burst­ing through the sun­room door into the kitchen, her ener­gy zap­ping around, offer­ing me what felt like every­thing. 

        “Should we make a piz­za? Two?” 

        “Let’s see what’s in the fridge – we have Sprite, Pep­si, Diet Pep­si, blue Gatorade, red, oh hon­ey we even have pur­ple Gatorade, when did they start mak­ing this? Maybe it turns this col­or after a while? No?” 

        “Okay – water? Ice? How much ice? Hon­ey, you have to drink some­thing! Beer? No, you don’t drink beer yet, right? You bet­ter not! But it’s there!”  

        Savanah and Bon­nie would float around me while my head swam, dot­ing on the cuts and stings that siz­zled beneath the per­ox­ide-soaked cot­ton balls they pressed into me. Slow­ly, as I ate piz­za and sal­ad and milk-dunked cook­ies, sipped Gatorade and water rip­pling in their sep­a­rate glass­es before me, I felt the ener­gy return to me from my feet upward, like a pot­ted plant fill­ing to the dew leaves of my brain. When final­ly my exhaus­tion waned, and my brain felt like mine again, I would get to think­ing, to remem­ber­ing. 

        I remem­bered Bonnie’s hus­band, grand­pa Jim. I’d only seen him once in the house, if I didn’t count the pic­tures of him stuck into cor­ners that would be dusty, if this were not the house of Bon­nie. In those pic­tures, Jim would be stand­ing, a long-haul truck­er and log­ger, his square-jaw­line near­ly as sharp as the bow­saw dan­gling from a nail in the wall of his work bench behind him, where, if the pic­tures were any indi­ca­tion, he almost always was. I knew though from years lap­ping Bonnie’s acre of woods that there were stashed old canoes and pad­dles here and there, draped now with fall­en branch­es. I could tell by the water­line on the bel­lies of those boats that they knew lakes – that Jim knew lakes. 

        That’s the Jim I tried to pic­ture when Bon­nie would men­tion him, the one I think she want­ed every­one to remem­ber. But I couldn’t for­get Jim as I knew him – a shape on the couch, drained by lym­phoma, swal­lowed by a flan­nel he once filled to burst­ing. His face was blast­ed by sun on one half from the decades dri­ving that log truck; that half of him was wrin­kled and gnarled and punc­tu­at­ed with the bright blue dot of his eye, like drift­wood embossed by beach glass. He tried to speak to me just once, and I tried to answer, but Savanah held my arm, and whis­pered,  

        “It’s okay. He won’t hear you, any­way.”  

        And so I nev­er spoke to him. I saw him once more, in his cof­fin at St. Norbert’s, the lit­tle church with the semi­cir­cle dri­ve­way off the high­way. Bon­nie and Savanah had beck­oned me to the front row, the fam­i­ly row. Sor­row hov­ered amongst the pews, thick as gas. When the town was only fifty strong, we all felt this loss. We all fit in that church. 

        Jim was gone, and there I sat at his and Bonnie’s kitchen island. I didn’t know much about the world, but I knew Bon­nie loved the Catholic church and its val­ues, and I vague­ly knew churchy peo­ple loved hard-work­ing men and dot­ing women. Because of that, some part of me won­dered if that’s why Bon­nie tend­ed to me so. 

        When Bon­nie would fin­ish feed­ing me though, she returned to her usu­al self, and it was hard to believe she was just built to dote. How Bon­nie act­ed and how she felt had lit­tle to do with con­struct and much to do with real­i­ty. This seemed true for every­one in town – we didn’t live near many peo­ple nor any­where near any­where that had many peo­ple, and rare was the per­son who watched much news or late-night talk shows over a good old movie. Cul­ture was not a pat­tern set by an unde­ni­able mass of oth­ers – there were no four-lane com­mutes of leased sedans bust­ing through rows of stop­lights to tell you that you were going the right way. Instead work dragged us down state high­ways and side roads in pick­up trucks bit­ten by rust, cut­ting through the mist and swerv­ing deer, spin­ning ever for­ward on tires trad­ed to each oth­er, though we all went sep­a­rate ways. We pow­ered small busi­ness­es or branch­es of large ones; we drove a hun­dred miles a day lis­ten­ing, if we were lucky, to the oldies, but most­ly to the wind. Most­ly to our thoughts.  

        This was as true for Bon­nie as any­one else. So I don’t think she dot­ed because she was a woman or a church­go­er or a grand­moth­er. I think, to her, it was a cel­e­bra­tion of my work­ing, but even more so, it was work itself. And Bon­nie worked as much as she breathed.  

        Bon­nie worked the desk at a lum­ber mill in Newald, 20 min­utes away. She man­aged all the paper­work imag­in­able, the lone woman in a crowd of a dozen log­gers who milled about beneath swing­ing cranes car­ry­ing de-limbed trees, hum­ming saws as wide trac­tor tires, an ever-present rain of saw­dust so per­va­sive even Bon­nie, safe in her office, had to shake it off her coat when she got home. She sold lum­ber, bought machines, man­aged pay­checks, tin­kered with sched­ules. She clapped her hands and got peo­ple mov­ing; she nev­er stopped mov­ing her­self.  She was that lum­ber mill.  

        So it made sense when I was 15 and Bon­nie called me, and some­thing was dif­fer­ent. Her voice was not the one I always knew, one that would say she rent­ed a DVD for us to all watch, one that quipped at a movie as we sank into the clouds of her couch cush­ions until me, her, and Savanah we were all heavy-eyed, and near­ly dream­ing. This was her voice from her oth­er world, ask­ing me to come over, that she had some work for me to do.  

        Savanah was off with her dad, so this was a rare moment between just Bon­nie and I. 

        “Hi hon­ey!” she said when I walked in. “You can leave your shoes on!” 

        She led me out­side, back through the hall­way where her fax machine sat suf­fo­cat­ed beneath its own paper on her wood­en desk, the only clut­tered place in her house. We stepped through the sun­room, a screened-in oasis of a space as large as two rooms in my house, where she had ver­ti­cal propane heaters with hoods like mush­rooms, wrought-iron tables and chairs and mini fridges full of col­or­ful drinks plugged in on the back wall. I loved that room; as far as I remem­bered, it was where I first saw Savanah, on her third birth­day. It was back when my fam­i­ly used to do things like go to birth­day par­ties. I remem­bered flow­ers and bal­loons and lit­tle Savanah near­ly glow­ing in the sun in her white dress. Years lat­er that room became the one place she and I could escape twi­light mos­qui­toes but still feel the air; the smell of pine and sweet laven­der would waft through the screen and as the years ticked on, we’d scoot those heavy chairs inch­es clos­er togeth­er.  

        Now, Bon­nie brought me through the doors, and we stood before the woods. These were the acre of woods that framed my whole life, every dri­ve to school and every lake and every sight­line as far as I could see. To the west of where we stood, these woods stretched for hun­dreds of miles, a vast spill of green with paint­brush dabs of lit­tle lakes and tiny towns and twist­ing roads of dirt built along with the for­est, and not despite it. Even­tu­al­ly these woods wrapped around the Mid­west­ern cities and pressed unfath­omably onward until the land turned to rock. To the north, they sprawled yet anoth­er hun­dred miles or so until the trees met Lake Supe­ri­or. To the east, a hun­dred miles and Lake Michi­gan. To the south, a hun­dred feet away at some undes­ig­nat­ed point, Savanah and Bonnie’s woods merged into my family’s yard. A hun­dred feet from there lay Long Lake, then anoth­er untold vast­ness of pine and maple and spruce, of wild­flow­ers and moss and sway­ing branch­es, Amer­i­can toads and spot­ted sala­man­ders tak­ing naps between fall­en leaves and bugs nest­ing in foot-thick lay­ers of inter­twined pine nee­dles pre­vi­ous­ly untouched by any­thing save the great trees that dropped them, between which birds sang. 

        The patch of woods that sat before us was an acre, a foot­ball field, a stone’s throw for some­one strong. But they felt as big as all that to me. Savanah and I had grown up beneath and between those trees, lis­ten­ing to the sway of the leaves and the slow change in our voic­es. So when Bon­nie swept an arm grand­ly over the whole expanse, and said, 

        “Most of this has to go.” 

        I felt dizzy.  

        Bon­nie went on about what she want­ed me to do: push down all the dead trees, pile them with the ones already fall­en, rake every leaf and twig between and burn it all. Then she’d call some­one to cut most of the rest of the trees, leav­ing a hand­ful of the big maples. I would scoop the slash and throw it in Grand­pa Jim’s old truck, then back it up through the new­found road through the for­est and burn all of that, too.  

        “That should leave enough room to let a trac­tor through,” she said. “And till up all the roots and every­thing. Then I can plant some grass! I want it to look like a park, you know?” 

        It sort of flashed before my eyes then, a snap­shot of a ten­nis-ball-green, man­i­cured land­scape cut odd­ly on the fringe of the semi­cir­cle of old woods where my family’s prop­er­ty tech­ni­cal­ly start­ed. My dizzi­ness redou­bled. 

        “You just let me know when you can start, and what you think is fair for pay,” Bon­nie said. “I have all the tools here in Grandpa’s shed, and you come in when­ev­er you get thirsty!” 

        Then she was inside. 

        I walked slow­ly home, through the woods. I poked at leaves, but couldn’t move them. I pressed my hands to feath­er­weight trees, stand­ing only through some con­ve­nience of grav­i­ty, but couldn’t push one down. I couldn’t do this. This was not the world I knew.  

        In my house, Mom was out-cold, crushed by vod­ka and a med­ley of pills, limbs akim­bo and basi­cal­ly dead, her bed­room door open. Dad was passed out on the couch. I closed Mom’s door sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, like Nicky and I learned to do when­ev­er Savanah vis­it­ed, a small funer­al every time. 

        I think Savanah under­stood some­thing was wrong with my mom, that some­thing was sad about dad, but she accept­ed it as part of life in the same way death or judge­ment is. These things were inevitable, and life was unfair. In that odd mix of time that was late mid­dle school and ear­ly high school, some­where in the midst of her ping­ing between Bon­nie and Zane, the con­certs and movies and things I’d nev­er seen, it seemed like Savanah had set­tled on that world­view. I guess we hadn’t touched base in a while – had just float­ed around with each oth­er late­ly.  

        But as that night wore on, I felt myself calm down. I’d text Savanah, and she’d set her phone in the win­dow to get a sliv­er of sig­nal from some north­ern float­ing satel­lite whose reach fid­get­ed through the trees, so I could get through to her, so she could get through to me. 

* 

Hey you!  

Hey!  

…. 

Gram wants me to, I guess, tear down the woods behind her house? 

Oh, what?  

I’ll show you what she meant when you come back! 

It should be this week­end. 

….. 

I’ll see you on the bus?  

You will. 

* 

        That Sat­ur­day, I scram­bled across the field and stood with Savanah in that same spot I stood with Bon­nie, near­ly breath­less.  

        “So she basi­cal­ly wants me to destroy every­thing,” I said, chuck­ling, sweep­ing my arm over the woods. “Like cut down and burn and rake every­thing green.”  

        Savanah stared out into the woods. The way she stared, in ret­ro­spect, should have rung some bell with­in me. She looked unlike her­self, and yet so famil­iar. Instead, I real­ly only thought of myself when she turned to me and said, 

        “Well, hey! That’ll be a lot of work for you.”  

        Birds chirped. A lit­tle breeze came through, and I glowed with pain. I stared at Savanah, blood pound­ing to my face; and then I looked right through her. I looked through her into the shift­ing leaves of our woods, and in all that mot­tled shade the truth came clear.  

        Savanah didn’t think she said any­thing wrong, and most peo­ple wouldn’t think she said any­thing wrong, either. It was Bonnie’s yard, after all, and mon­ey was some­thing I need­ed, and mon­ey was some­thing she had. Every­thing dis­solves beneath that rea­son­ing. Learn­ing that is a big part of grow­ing up, and just then I felt myself grow so fast I creaked and popped inside, like what might hap­pen if you press your ears to a young tree and lis­tened.  

        I sighed, then.  

        “Yeah,” I said. “It’ll be a lot of work.”  

* 

        In the months to come, new­found gaps of sky would light my way through the acre of woods. For a long time, I won­dered if Savanah was watch­ing me through the win­dow, watch­ing our trees fall to my axe, the fluffy leaves of our for­est floor be raked to dirt. Maybe she did watch, for a while. But it wasn’t long until I could say for sure that she was curled up on that couch, face awash in the blue light of her phone, while Bon­nie pol­ished the dark gran­ite. The nov­el­ty of me as a work­ing man had fad­ed. In flood­ed the expec­ta­tion. 

        Those nights, I’d kneel before a fire of dead trees. For the moment, I could only rest my head on my knee while the flames died, while the embers and the dry heat gave way to cling­ing dew and the choir of evening frogs and bugs.  

        Some­times, I’d grow tired. The walk through the tree line to my house seemed so far. So instead I knelt there awhile, breathed in the smoke, took the for­est with­in me. Through my flut­ter­ing eyes, the bath of moon­light that fell between the new­found space in the woods looked, I swore, like a lake.  

From the writer

:: Account ::

Any­one who loves the out­doors may under­stand the bound­less­ness of an acre of woods. Espe­cial­ly when you are a teenag­er, and it feels like every thought and feel­ing and wor­ry, so many of those that you have then, echo off the trees and sink into the leaf lit­ter as you shuf­fle through the mot­tled shade. It’s a life defin­ing feel­ing, to be beneath the canopy.  

This is the feel­ing I want­ed to cap­ture in this piece, along with the idea that, in gen­er­al, some­thing small can be some­thing huge, and it’s all a mat­ter of per­cep­tion. A tick­ing lawn­mow­er, a cold Gatorade, crab apples, bluegill in the shal­lows – these are the small­est and the biggest things in life. Like dark mat­ter, their tiny mass con­tains infi­nite ener­gy – or so some think. Because, also like dark mat­ter, the pow­er of these things are most­ly con­cep­tu­al, built upon what we can see them doing, but not so much how they are doing it. This is why these lit­tle things, and the truths that come with them, might mean lit­tle to some, and every­thing to oth­ers.  

As I grew up, I real­ized I was much more the lat­ter, but most peo­ple around me, even the ones I thought I knew the most, were the for­mer. Which is all to say: this essay is the sto­ry of a small-town kid who goes from one who plays to one who works, one who loves the neigh­bor girl and her grand­ma, whose love and care is a com­pli­cat­ed salve for the sear­ing pover­ty of his own home. The sto­ry recounts the feel­ing of a dreamy child run­ning face first into adult­hood, and the stiff winds of expec­ta­tion that blow away the whim­sy of being young. There is med­i­ta­tion on work, and small-town cul­ture, and nature, and young love, all rolling around in the head of a kid, and then a young man, who lives between the trees. 

Bran­don Hansen is from a vil­lage in north­ern Wis­con­sin. He stud­ied writ­ing along Lake Supe­ri­or, and then trekked out to the moun­tains, where he earned his MFA as a Tru­man Capote schol­ar at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tana. His work has been Push­cart nom­i­nat­ed, and can be found in The Bal­ti­more Review, Quar­ter­ly West, Puer­to Del Sol, and else­where. 

Nonfiction / Martin Perez 

:: The Floor is Lava and Other Imagined Tragedies ::

Every­thing and every­one and every­where was safe in the eight­ies. Thrust deeply into “trick­le­down the­o­ry,” the over-reliance on bright, buzzing neon signs on store­fronts, big curly, AquaNet-sprayed hair, and short, black poofy dress­es and fish­net stock­ings, and “old peo­ple” Fri­day night tele­vi­sion melo­dra­mas like Dal­las and Fal­con Crest on CBS, peo­ple casu­al­ly chain-smoked cig­a­rettes in movies because it was cool and the Marl­boro Man was hot as fuck, and nobody got can­cer. Mis­in­formed rumors of how HIV and mon­keys con­flat­ed into exis­tence hadn’t made their way into pop­u­lar pub­lic con­scious­ness. We stayed out late nights as eight-year-olds, and rode around a big south­west city in a warm desert on an old bus sys­tem, and nobody was ever robbed or kid­napped or a vic­tim of social injus­tice. We also lived a big lie.  

         Of course there were abduc­tions at that time, and of course peo­ple got sick from the can­cer sticks, and of course peo­ple were hav­ing unpro­tect­ed sex and dying from Aids and of course the Night Stalk­er kid­napped, tor­tured, and raped women. The gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion just didn’t know about it for a while. Worse, it felt like the eight­ies decid­ed dan­gers would be less dan­ger­ous if peo­ple didn’t know the extent. Dur­ing a ride along with a sher­iff com­man­der decades lat­er, I was told, “If peo­ple knew how dan­ger­ous the city was, they wouldn’t live here.” It didn’t mean crime didn’t take place. So, I sup­pose a more appro­pri­ate way to put things is that every­thing was dan­ger­ous. We just didn’t care. 

         The lack of infor­ma­tion super­high­way cre­at­ed a deep milieu our ever-increas­ing pop­u­lous coun­try seem­ing­ly strug­gled to sur­face from, and it both helped and hin­dered my child­hood among a for­est of con­fus­ing inputs. We didn’t have cell­phones, but long spi­ral cords for kitchen phone head­sets. We didn’t have com­put­ers, but the five and ten o’clock news. Rather than the social net­work, we relied on mail car­ri­ers or friends down the street and across fences for trust­wor­thy infor­ma­tion. It could be either good or bad news, and it wasn’t always clear which for sev­er­al months or years. Was I safe like I thought, or was I in immi­nent dan­ger at every turn? I don’t know if igno­rance is bliss, but if the turn of phrase were a per­son, I might have been it. Most of my mem­o­ries of child­hood cen­ter around week­end base­ball games with the neigh­bor­hood kids, and play­ing foot­ball in the streets, and maybe mak­ing crafts at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter. But even I, on clos­er inspec­tion, knew that things were dark­er, some­how worse. I knew that what­ev­er har­mo­ny I came across was momen­tary. 

         Car safe­ty was no excep­tion when it came to con­fu­sion. We often rode in the cramped back jump seats of my father’s lime green, Ford Super Cap pick­up when I was a boy, my baby sis­ter nes­tled in a boost­er chair across from me. Nei­ther of us wore seat­belts because they weren’t required yet, and pos­si­bly not even installed. It was the sec­ond truck Dad owned – a dai­ly dri­ver they call them now–and as Span­ish songs played, I watched Ma Bell tele­phone poles flow by, and imag­ined a bare­ly vis­i­ble, shad­ow-like crea­ture, leap­ing from pole to pole, skip­ping from tree­top to tree­top. I don’t know why this alien-look­ing man with elon­gat­ed arms and legs hopped from thing to thing, oth­er than that’s what he did any­time we went for a car ride. I guess it’s sim­i­lar to why I played the “floor is lava” game dur­ing recess at my grade school. It is just some­thing that filled my ever-cre­ative mind. The even stranger thing, how­ev­er, was that these thoughts weren’t as unique as I expect­ed. They weren’t as sin­gu­lar, which is trou­bling. Turns out that a lot of kids across the Unit­ed States imag­ine the same thing. And the floor is lava? There was a fifties sci-fi movie where astro­nauts trav­el to a plan­et and stay in the shad­ows because, yes, the floor was lava.  

         How much of the past is my mem­o­ry, and how much have I sim­ply made up to fill the emp­ty spaces between pho­tographs and sto­ries I’ve been told? Maybe there were seat­belts in Dad’s awful green pick­up truck. Maybe net­work tele­vi­sion did run ran­dom pub­lic ser­vice adver­tise­ments that spoke to dan­gers of unpro­tect­ed lust–I do recall a teary Native Amer­i­can icon on the side of a crowd­ed, lit­ter-filled riv­er, and while entire­ly dif­fer­ent, still relat­ed. It is pos­si­ble that the floors weren’t lava, but entire gen­er­a­tions of kids grew up imag­in­ing it any­way, because even today, I can ask my twen­ty-year-old daugh­ter if she ever played “the floor is lava,” and she sparkles, as if men­tion­ing it unlocked a core memory.

         But rec­ol­lec­tion nev­er is exact­ing or pre­cise, is it? Mem­o­ry always seems to float between nowhere and every­where. It’s squishy, then flat­tens out when we grab it and frame it as a thought, becom­ing more “real.” I can visu­al­ize old­er movies as if I saw them yes­ter­day, and yet the details are com­plete­ly wrong when I pop in the DVD (in a man­ner of speak­ing). I recall the ter­ri­fy­ing scene where a young blonde girl in a red sleep­ing bag gets smashed against a tree by a mon­ster that grabs her. The scene ends as down feath­ers explode and scat­ter in the night­time wind in the 1979 movie “Prophe­cy,” but it doesn’t hap­pen that way when I rewatch the film. Instead, it’s a young boy who is not flung but smacked by the crea­ture, and the sleep­ing bag is yel­low. The explo­sion of feath­ers is still there.  

         I imag­ine a time when my father drunk­en­ly crushed my toy police car under his boots on Christ­mas Eve or there­abouts. The large, red and green Christ­mas tree lights glowed, tin­sel twin­kled, and plas­tic nee­dles were vivid. But did that real­ly hap­pen? I am not cer­tain. Maybe only some­thing sim­i­lar. My father also cut off a chunk of flesh from the tip of his index fin­ger when the door han­dle of our yel­low sev­en­ties Chrysler car caught him, so for the rest of my life, my dad had a stub­by dig­it in the mid­dle of his left hand. I remem­bered the car had a small­er, round body. But when I searched the inter­net for the car, I didn’t find any­thing of the sort. The clos­est I came to a car resem­bling the image in my mind was a mon­stros­i­ty called the Chrysler Laser, man­u­fac­tured between 1980 and 1984, with a hatch­back. The car may not have been a Chrysler at all, but that is how I remem­bered it. I ques­tioned if it was even Dad’s left hand? 

         A friend once told me there is fact and there is the truth. What a per­son choos­es to believe has no bear­ing on whether one is exclu­sive to the oth­er, and as writer Maya Angelou implies, one can even obscure the oth­er. We may only believe in our truth, which is at best a dis­tant rel­a­tive to the facts, but still as valu­able. It informs how we nav­i­gate our world. But it can also be com­plete­ly wrong. 

         Day­dreams and imag­ined things filled my life like smeared, greasy mul­ti-col­ored baubles in a vase as I got old­er, too, but it may have been pre­cise­ly because I’d rather live in wist­ful thoughts than face real­i­ty, and I won­der how tied to avoid­ance the mag­ni­tude of my imag­i­na­tion was. That is, was the more vivid the mem­o­ry of things, real or imag­ined, synced to my increas­ing avoid­ance of real-life expe­ri­ences? Uncer­tain­ty as to whether some things are true or fan­ta­sy was matched only by the verac­i­ty of the mem­o­ries. Did I sit by myself dur­ing lunch and draw in a sketch­pad or write in a jour­nal about dif­fer­ent worlds and dif­fer­ent places rather than speak to my high school class­mates, espe­cial­ly girls? Yes. Did I also wish I had the for­ti­tude to speak with girls dur­ing high school? Also, yes. But I couldn’t have both. I chose what I believed was a path of least resis­tance. I wouldn’t feel the emo­tion­al tumult of with­draw­ing from expe­ri­ences if I sim­ply cre­at­ed an alter­na­tive world in art­work and sto­ry. I don’t think I was alone in this strat­e­gy, how­ev­er. 

         The bru­tal­i­ty of world-build­ing and real­i­ty col­lid­ing was hor­rif­ic and fre­quent, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, unavoid­able. See, no mat­ter how much I felt my cre­ative mind pro­tect­ed me, it didn’t real­ly. If I were stuck in quick­sand, I would con­tin­ue sink­ing even if I felt I wasn’t. I could imag­ine lava mon­sters and that the ground was made of lava, skip­ping from rock to rock (or what­ev­er oth­er arbi­trary fea­ture was “safe” to avoid get­ting burned), but it wouldn’t pro­tect me from real life.  

         When I was in col­lege, I ran into an old friend, a beau­ti­ful young woman who grad­u­at­ed as Salu­ta­to­ri­an from my high school a cou­ple of years pri­or. She was danc­ing in a gen­tle­men’s club. As luck would have it, or not have it, that was the first time I had seen any woman in the nude with­out slick mag­a­zine paper or cel­lu­loid movies show­cas­ing them. I was with some bud­dies. 

         “Did you see her?” an acquain­tance asked.  

         “Yes, of course,” I returned, non­cha­lant.  

         “I’m gonna see if she will fuck me,” he said. “Or I’ll tell every­one about see­ing her.” 

         “That’s messed up,” I said. 

         “I don’t care. It was her choice to dance naked,” he said. 

         While I’m not sure what world the young woman had cre­at­ed where she didn’t con­sid­er run­ning into ex-class­mates from high school a pos­si­bil­i­ty, the bru­tal nature of what one detestable man pro­posed shoved real­i­ty in her face. Who knows, maybe she did think things through and was okay with it. It felt dirty to be there, then, in that place. Either way, she didn’t cave to his pres­sure. At least, not that night. It was fif­teen years before I learned that same acquain­tance was con­vict­ed of statu­to­ry rape and child endan­ger­ment of his step­daugh­ter. He was sent to a Mary­land pen­i­ten­tiary for thir­ty years.  

         And the young, naked woman? She lat­er hung her­self at the age of forty-four, leav­ing behind a hus­band and chil­dren. 

         I think about her on occa­sion, but strange­ly, as a tan­gent to the sto­ry of my hor­ri­ble male acquaintance’s words and actions. Her sto­ry is pos­si­bly more dis­tress­ing. Oth­er times, I think about some of the peo­ple that Richard Ramirez, a Mex­i­can like me, tor­tured and killed, not like me. There were four­teen vic­tims of the Night Stalk­er, who roamed dur­ing my child­hood. He took their lives by force. What was going through their minds? Were they cling­ing to a col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion that might exist, where they sought more con­nec­tion so they felt less alone on this dim, blue plan­et that wob­bles along in a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly void space? 

         Were those daugh­ters, sis­ters, and moth­ers, hus­bands, broth­ers, and sons imag­in­ing they were some­place else, away from the hor­rors they expe­ri­enced until the very end? What do peo­ple think about when con­front­ed with that sort of trau­ma and cer­tain­ty of death? Did the Night Stalk­er prey imag­ine every­thing crum­bling around them? Were they like me, and thought that the eight­ies were gen­er­al­ly safe because they didn’t know any bet­ter and had been told oth­er­wise? Did they remem­ber the floor being made of lava when they were young, too?  

         These days, I imag­ine run­ning over peo­ple while I dri­ve my own car through peace­ful neigh­bor­hood streets. I see myself plow­ing into them like an Atari video game, their sur­prised faces aghast, and I watch as their shad­ows flail in slow motion, first upward into the air, then as they fall back down, a bag of bones, a clump of human flesh, to the asphalt. I don’t imag­ine it once, like an acci­dent, but fre­quent­ly like an obses­sion, and it vague­ly reminds me of those shad­owy crea­tures that used to run along­side Dad’s old truck all over again and I wor­ry that mere­ly think­ing about it feels like I’m con­fess­ing some­thing ter­ri­ble, and then wor­ry that wor­ry­ing about it is strange or cor­rob­o­rates guilt, and won­der if I’m the only per­son to have intru­sive thoughts like this.  

         I couldn’t be. It’s been con­firmed time after time when I talk to oth­ers, young and old. Walk on a crack, break your moth­er’s back, count tiles on the ceil­ing, and straight­en papers on a desk even if they aren’t orga­nized and just straight­en them, dammit, they must be straight, and shad­ows at night hold secrets, and it is safer not to wear a seat­belt so you don’t get stuck in a lake and drown, and while you are at it, hold your breath when you watch peo­ple in movies or tele­vi­sion do it, and nev­er go hitch­hik­ing, but do go home with a stranger for a one-night stand because what is the worst that could hap­pen, and do not under any cir­cum­stance answer when some­one calls your name in an emp­ty room because that is death call­ing. Maybe we are all weird. Maybe we are all more com­fort­able world-build­ing and not remem­ber­ing the one we are born into in favor of respite in less hor­rif­ic real­i­ties.  

         As for my father and his fin­ger, fur­ther research bore out that he lost a bit of his ring fin­ger on his right hand. I still can­not find that Chrysler car, though. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I write lyric essays because they are the best of me, the most vul­ner­a­ble of me, and the most rel­e­vant of who I am as a Mex­i­can man in today’s tur­bu­lent world. In many essays, I explore my Mex­i­can upbring­ing, a con­fused and mis­guid­ed father’s advice, and an impas­sioned search for my iden­ti­ty despite the sex­u­al, emo­tion­al, and phys­i­cal trau­mas endured. Adul­tery, rape, misog­y­ny and run­ning away from her­itage in acts of rebel­lion all take place with­in the pages I write. The bal­ance of essays shares mem­o­ries of my father’s sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion and how I sought redemp­tion through those same tales. I hope to encour­age read­ers who strug­gle to find iden­ti­ty in a world that often oppress­es and deval­ues human con­nec­tion, with rich anec­dotes that broad­en emo­tion­al hori­zons. In brisk and pow­er­ful writ­ten jour­neys, musi­cal­i­ty, poet­ics, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and humor, I evoke what it means to embrace life in the face of fail­ure and sor­row. In the end, the read­er is equipped with a new life through sto­ries of fear, beau­ty, dis­cov­ery, and accep­tance. 

 Mar­tin Perez is a Mex­i­can MFA stu­dent at Ver­mont Col­lege of Fine Arts and a pre­vi­ous Writ­ing Fel­low at St. Mary’s Col­lege of Cal­i­for­nia’s MFA pro­gram, focused on cre­ative non­fic­tion. He has a BA in cre­ative writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and grad­u­at­ed sum­ma cum laude. He cur­rent­ly lives in Tuc­son, Ari­zona, where he also teach­es Eng­lish at a pri­vate high school.

Nonfiction / Kristin Schaaf 

:: Rescue Cats ::

       She bur­rows her­self, unas­sum­ing, unaware. Coil­ing her body like a spi­ral. Her chin points toward the ceil­ing as though revers­ing a prayer heav­en­ward as her eyes close. Her weight is a com­fort, a heavy blan­ket of fur, absorb­ing the weight of my feel­ings and mois­ture of my tears. It’s as though she knows my deep­est thoughts and guides me through releas­ing them, like a tele­path­ic ther­a­pist. Except I don’t have to awk­ward­ly leave after my time is up. 

       Her purring isn’t as easy to come by, though she comes to me to find her com­fort and gives it away just as read­i­ly. Her pres­ence is calm­ing, pulling me into the present when my mind runs around. Which is more often than not. She is every­thing I didn’t know I need­ed. 

*** 

       I was nev­er a cat per­son. In fact, I kind of hat­ed them. I grew up with a dog, so nat­u­ral­ly, I was a dog per­son, wired to dis­like cats from a young age. 

       My only expe­ri­ence with a cat was in sev­enth grade. My friend Amy had a beady-eyed, yel­low-orange cat that would hiss from the back of his throat if I gave him a side­ways glance. I’m pret­ty sure he knew I didn’t like him, and his vengeance was a mis­sion from the day we met. He would lurk in cor­ners, jump­ing out when you’d least expect. His tail stood on end, fat like a flame. I don’t remem­ber his name, but I’ll call him Lucifer since he act­ed like he came from hell. 

       One night when I spent the night at my friend’s house, Lucifer wad­dled his fat, fur­ry self on top of me as I was wak­ing up on the couch pull­out bed, the feline bur­row­ing itself under lay­ers of blan­kets and claw­ing into me with gus­to. I screeched and heaved Lucifer across the room.   

       “What are you doing?!” Amy cried, wak­ing up next to me as Lucifer soared through the air and land­ed on his feet sev­er­al yards away. Her eyes widened in hor­ror as she pushed her red­dish-brown hair off her freck­led cheeks. 

       “He crawled in the bed and scratched me all over.” I turned beet red and tried to explain myself. 

       Need­less to say, I was not invit­ed for anoth­er sleep­over. 

       In an iron­ic turn of events, I am now the own­er of two cats. The process of intro­duc­ing cats is not unlike what I imag­ine cre­at­ing peace agree­ments between ene­my ter­ri­to­ry looks like. Or per­haps blend­ing two fam­i­lies under the same roof. 

*** 

       Dave hat­ed cats. There was no doubt how much he dis­liked them. He didn’t pre­tend to like them, and he was vocal about his dis­plea­sure and being aller­gic to them. But when we went any­where some­one had cats, he had a hard time say­ing any­thing about it. He felt as though he was an incon­ve­nience despite his severe aller­gy. 

       The night we showed up at Christie’s house, Dave’s eyes imme­di­ate­ly began to water. 

       “Do you have a cat?” he asked, rub­bing his nose and squeez­ing his eyes shut to avoid sneez­ing. 

       “Oh, are you aller­gic?” she asked. “I can put her upstairs where she won’t both­er you.” 

       Christie shuf­fled down the hall­way to grab the small gray cat, whose demeanor seemed slight­ly more pleas­ant than the orange one I’d encoun­tered over a decade ago. I shud­dered at the thought. Christie dis­ap­peared for a few moments with the cat. 

       “Are you OK?” I asked, look­ing at Dave as his pale face turned the shade of a toma­to, creep­ing from the col­lar of his shirt all the way to his dark brown scalp. 

       “Yeah,” he croaked, though it sound­ed like his throat was clos­ing in on itself. I real­ized Christie’s house must have been cov­ered in cat hair for him to react like this. I knew he was aller­gic but had no idea how bad it was. 

       “Do you feel bet­ter?” Christie walked back into the room, pulling her mousy brown hair up into a pony­tail. Christie had been a good friend of ours since col­lege. 

       Dave nod­ded, though I knew our game night would be very long or very short depend­ing on how this sit­u­a­tion would go. We were dis­tract­ed once game night began, but I could tell Dave was still mis­er­able. I kept ask­ing if he want­ed to leave. 

       “I’m FINE.” 

       I sighed, know­ing I wouldn’t get any­where. 

       A cou­ple hours lat­er we went home, and Dave was a sneezy, snot­ty mess. 

       “Do we have any aller­gy med­i­cine?” he asked as we walked in the door, as though I would know the answer. I had zero aller­gies to any­thing so how would I know? 

       I looked in cup­boards and draw­ers but came up emp­ty. “We don’t have any I can find,” I replied, hand­ing him a box of tis­sues I’d uncov­ered. 

       “I guess I’ll go to the store now then.” He walked back toward the garage, but I heard him mut­ter under his breath, “Stu­pid cats. Why do they have to leave so much hair every­where?” 

       As much as he hat­ed cats, Dave hat­ed being an incon­ve­nience to oth­ers more, so he nev­er would have said this to any­one but him­self. As much as it drove me crazy how much he wouldn’t admit when he need­ed help, I appre­ci­at­ed more than he knew that he wasn’t a chron­ic com­plain­er. His pos­i­tive atti­tude was inspir­ing to those around him, and his sharp-wit­ted, sar­cas­tic humor always made peo­ple laugh. 

       Dave wasn’t much of an ani­mal per­son at all; the only pet he grew up with was a her­mit crab. I was OK with nev­er hav­ing a pet when we mar­ried; it gave us free­dom that as pet own­ers would be hard­er to come by. Then, when our kids came along, they were our pri­or­i­ty, and we didn’t have the need to fill that void. 

       But then every­thing changed. In late 2019, we dis­cov­ered symp­toms Dave had been expe­ri­enc­ing for six months (headaches, nau­sea and dizzi­ness) were caused by a malig­nant tumor from melanoma. We knew what we were up against, with melanoma being as aggres­sive as it was. Dave’s faith kept our fam­i­ly going. He nev­er com­plained and was always full of peace despite every­thing he was going through. 

       Dave died from skin can­cer when our girls were six and three. My own per­son­al faith gave me courage to put one foot in front of the oth­er. I had to—for me, and for my girls. We had been through a lot in a short time, and my heart longed for a source of com­fort, a pet for all of us to love. Our neigh­bors at the time were rais­ing bun­nies and chick­ens in their back­yard, and my old­est daugh­ter was ask­ing for one (hard no). I knew I need­ed a low main­te­nance pet. (Read: not a bun­ny or a chick­en.) 

       I need­ed a cat. 

*** 

       I moved into my town­home about a year after Dave passed away, know­ing I need­ed a space that required less main­te­nance. The girls knew that we would get a cat some­time after mov­ing, and of course they inces­sant­ly asked me when. I kept putting it off, because hon­est­ly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure how much work it would be get­ting a cat and being a pet own­er, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the respon­si­bil­i­ty. I would tell the girls that per­haps over Christ­mas break we would get one, giv­ing us time at home to adjust and be with the cat. 

       Of course, on a ran­dom Sat­ur­day morn­ing in Octo­ber I was scrolling through cat pic­tures on an adop­tion agency site, feel­ing a host of emo­tions from bored to lone­ly to sad and a twinge of excite­ment at the idea of bring­ing an adorable fur­ball home for us to love. 

       I hemmed and hawed, let­ting the ball of anx­i­ety in my gut sub­side as I knew I want­ed to get a cat. I couldn’t wait to tell the girls. 

       “Han­nah, Hai­ley!” I called upstairs to where they were play­ing Bar­bi­es in the play­room. 

       “What?!” Hai­ley respond­ed in her squeaky four-year-old voice that I wished would last for­ev­er. 

       “Come down here! I have some­thing to show you!” 

       “In a minute!” came my sev­en-year-old Hannah’s reply. “I’m get­ting my Bar­bie dressed. She’s naked!” 

       I heard a boat­load of gig­gles as the girls came bound­ing down the stairs to the kitchen. 

       “What is it, Mom­my?” Hai­ley asked, her long eye­lash­es fan­ning her big blue eyes. I swept her light blonde hair back behind her ear. 

       “Look,” I showed them my phone, click­ing on a pic­ture of a kit­ten I had been eye­ing. 

       “Are we get­ting that cat!?!?” Han­nah asked, her voice rais­ing an octave. Her dark blonde hair was swept up in a messy pony­tail. Sev­er­al ten­drils were falling out, fram­ing her big brown eyes that looked just like her dad’s. 

       “I don’t know. But how would you feel if we got a cat today?” 

       The girls shrieked and start­ed jump­ing up and down, hold­ing onto each oth­er and talk­ing a mil­lion miles an hour. 

       Before I knew it, we were zip­ping through lunch and head­ing out the door to the ani­mal adop­tion agency. We went to see kit­tens, but we couldn’t find one we liked or seemed like a good fit. The employ­ee at the res­cue cen­ter men­tioned a three-year-old cat at their oth­er loca­tion that was real­ly friend­ly. 

       We found our­selves dri­ving across town, feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed that we didn’t find the kit­ten we want­ed online but remained hope­ful we’d find anoth­er one to love. When we walked to the back of the Ani­mal Res­cue League to find the cats, we asked the employ­ee about the cat we were look­ing for. 

       “Right here,” she said, walk­ing us to a cage where a timid gray-and-black striped tiger cat sat in the cor­ner, eye­ing us war­i­ly. “Her name is Belle. She’s shy, but she’s very friend­ly.” 

       The employ­ee smiled at my girls. “Would you like to meet her?” 

       We took Belle out of her cage, each tak­ing turns hold­ing her. Belle would wrig­gle free from our arms but then would curl up against us. 

       “She’s lick­ing me!” Han­nah laughed, her eyes twin­kling. 

       “She’s so soft and fluffy.” Hai­ley rubbed Belle’s back, then leaned over to give her a squeeze. 

       When I held Belle in my lap and she nuz­zled against me, I knew she was the one. Her sweet, cud­dly demeanor had us hooked and we were in love. I was offi­cial­ly a cat own­er. 

*** 

       Belle soon became my clos­est con­fi­dante and com­fort when my world was qui­et. Every night after the girls went to bed, it was too qui­et. I knew I didn’t want to wal­low in my grief or anx­i­ety. My faith kept me going but it didn’t keep the ache from sit­ting in my chest. I was lone­ly, and I knew I want­ed more than a cat to keep me com­pa­ny. I missed hav­ing part­ner to share life adven­tures with. 

       Mak­ing the deci­sion to try dat­ing was not an easy one. It had been two years since Dave passed and about six months after adopt­ing Belle. Putting your­self out into the world of online dat­ing after the age of 40 is like what I imag­ine enter­ing a coun­try you have no desire to vis­it and can’t speak the lan­guage. 

       I had no idea what the hell I was doing. 

       Belle had become my con­stant fix­ture the past few months, curl­ing up on my lap as I’d stay up late at night read­ing or binge­ing a new show on Net­flix. She’d rub her head against me, look­ing for affec­tion. As soon as my fin­ger­nails hit behind her ears and down her back, Belle would flop over, expos­ing her bel­ly for more scratch­es. Her warm weight soothed me like a blan­ket; as she would crawl on me, I’d breathe her in and exhale every neg­a­tive emo­tion. Her purring was reserved for when my soul need­ed it most. 

       I nev­er knew how much I could love my cat. No mat­ter how much I hat­ed every time some­one on Hinge would balk or ghost me when dis­cov­er­ing I had a dead hus­band, Belle under­stood. 

       And when I would be mad at the uni­verse for putting me in the posi­tion of the B.S. that is online dat­ing, she would word­less­ly coil her­self on top of me, know­ing I’d need her com­fort­ing pres­ence. My tele­path­ic ther­a­pist. 

*** 

       The girls loved hav­ing Belle around; they would snug­gle with her as much as pos­si­ble. She was just as much their com­fort as she was mine. They’d squeeze Belle and car­ry her until they drove her crazy and she would hide under my bed. She was slight­ly trau­ma­tized when Han­nah decid­ed to put her in a sleep­ing bag and rode with her down the stair­case to show her a “fun time.” 

       Fol­low­ing many of their well-inten­tioned, mis­guid­ed affec­tions, Belle latched onto me as her com­fort from the chaos of my chil­dren. She loved, even craved, atten­tion from all of us. But to my girls’ dis­ap­point­ment, Belle didn’t like to be tor­tured by tiny humans whose love lan­guage was find­ing cre­ative ways to car­ry her or trav­el down stair­cas­es. 

       When we had Belle for about a year, near­ing her fourth birth­day in Sep­tem­ber, the girls and I went back to the res­cue shel­ter to look for cat toy present ideas. I should have known this wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. I hadn’t giv­en much thought to get­ting anoth­er cat, but from time to time I tossed around the idea, but it was more of a “some­day” far off notion. 

       When we arrived at the Ani­mal Res­cue League for Belle’s gift, we perused the toy mice, balls and cat trees for a few min­utes before the girls ran to the sec­tion where the ani­mals were. 

       “Mom, can we look at the cats?” Han­nah asked. She real­ly had been want­i­ng a sec­ond cat, that was her cat. 

       “Oh sure,” I replied, not think­ing much of it. I fol­lowed the girls to where the cats were, and they eager­ly start­ed stick­ing their hands inside the wire crates to touch them. 

       “Mom, this one looks just like Belle!” Hai­ley said, grin­ning. 

       I peered inside the cage and saw a tiny kit­ten curled up in the cor­ner, a small­er, spit­ting image of my cat at home. The very cat we were there buy­ing a present for. The kit­ten in the cage purred like a tiny motor as I reached in to touch her, as though she was already wait­ing for me to hold her in my arms. 

       “She’s my favorite,” a new voice from behind me said. “Her name is Roxie.”

       I turned around to see the man­ag­er of ani­mal adop­tions smil­ing at me and the three-month-old kit­ten. Her gray­ing hair was pulled back in a sleek pony­tail, wrin­kles form­ing around her eyes as she smiled, dis­play­ing many years of love for ani­mals. She wasn’t the same per­son who’d helped us a year ago, but I instant­ly liked her. 

       “Would you like to hold her?” 

       Hai­ley start­ed jump­ing up and down, bare­ly con­tain­ing her excite­ment. “Can we?!” 

       “Oh sure,” I said, my heart already form­ing a pud­dle on the floor. 

       We pulled Rox­ie out of her cage, and Han­nah want­ed to hold her first. There was a huge back and forth before Hai­ley won out since she asked first. “She’s purring!” 

       “Can I please have a turn now?” Han­nah asked, prac­ti­cal­ly yank­ing Rox­ie out of Hailey’s arms. 

       Hai­ley wrig­gled away. “One more minute!” She looked down at Rox­ie in awe as though she were a new­born baby. 

       Han­nah held her next; then it was my turn. I was a goner as soon as I held that lit­tle gray-brown ball of fur in my arms. I didn’t plan to adopt anoth­er kit­ten, but I knew she would be every­thing our lit­tle fam­i­ly need­ed. 

       Pret­ty soon, we were tak­ing Rox­ie home—not the birth­day present for Belle that we planned on, but a gift to us nonethe­less. Some­times, the unplanned things in life bless us more than we ever expect­ed. 

*** 

       Bring­ing cat num­ber two home felt like a big tran­si­tion for our girl fam­i­ly, and I had to ask a col­league about the tran­si­tion process. It turns out, you can’t just throw two cats togeth­er expect­ing them to get along—they get angry and ter­ri­to­r­i­al. Rox­ie first got famil­iar with our pow­der room while Belle had full domain of the house. I left Rox­ie in there for a cou­ple days, check­ing on her reg­u­lar­ly of course. 

       Once she became com­fort­able, I would open the door and sit in the door­way so Belle could see Rox­ie but not go near her. For the first time ever, Belle, the sweet­est cat ever, bared her teeth and hissed in ter­ri­to­r­i­al anger. Rox­ie didn’t seem fazed by Belle’s pres­ence as she bounced all over the bath­room and onto my lap, purring excit­ed­ly and try­ing to leap out of the bath­room. 

       The hiss trig­gered my body in anx­i­ety, bring­ing me back to that pull­out bed, that angry ball of orange fur on top of me. I deeply exhaled, remind­ing myself of my non-tem­pera­men­tal cats in that moment. 

       Over a series of days repeat­ing this slow intro­duc­tion, the hiss­ing stopped. The cats became inter­est­ed in each oth­er, and I was able to open the door to let Rox­ie out. Weeks lat­er, the cats start­ed sleep­ing and play­ing togeth­er, even lick­ing each oth­er at times. Grant­ed, the sweet­ness was short-lived before they would start chas­ing each oth­er around the house. This back-and-forth dis­play felt sym­bol­ic of the ups and downs of par­ent­ing my own human chil­dren. Love and ado­ra­tion one minute, chaos the next. Nev­er a dull moment. 

*** 

        ME: Hi, my name is Kristin, I’m from Iowa. I lost my hus­band in Feb­ru­ary 2020. I’ve been lurk­ing in this Face­book group for a while. I’ve tried online dat­ing and it’s a dump­ster fire and hon­est­ly, I’m over it. I’m tired of putting myself out there and no one under­stand­ing what I’m going through. I real­ly appre­ci­ate the sup­port this young wid­ow and wid­ow­ers’ group has to offer. 

       CHRIS: Wel­come to the group; I’m so sor­ry about your hus­band. Where in Iowa are you from? 

       ME: I’m in the Des Moines area.

       CHRIS: Real­ly? I spent my sum­mers there as a kid. I’m in Geor­gia and still have fam­i­ly in Iowa. 

       ME: That’s cool. Where do they live? 

       CHRIS: Would it be OK if we took this out­side of the group and I mes­sage you through Face­book mes­sen­ger? 

       ME: Sure. 

       After a brief hel­lo in mes­sen­ger, I logged out for the night. I was pack­ing for a solo trip to see my best friend, a much-need­ed long girls’ week­end. I couldn’t wait. 

       Two days lat­er, I was sit­ting in the air­port, with noth­ing but time to kill. I scrolled the young wid­ows Face­book group and was remind­ed of Chris and our short con­ver­sa­tion from a cou­ple nights ago. I struck up a hel­lo in mes­sen­ger, not real­ly expect­ing a response. Three dots appeared before a quick reply. 

       Time flew by as we mes­saged back and forth, shar­ing our sto­ries of loss with each oth­er and nav­i­gat­ing life as sin­gle par­ents. We learned each other’s hob­bies and inter­ests, and before I knew it, it was time to board the plane. 

       A con­nec­tion was made before I even got in the air. By the time I returned home a few days lat­er, we exchanged phone num­bers. And two months lat­er we met for the first time. I didn’t expect to fall for some­one 1,000 miles away, but I couldn’t deny what I was feel­ing. I just had to make the leap. I had to trust that the unplanned and unknown would be bet­ter than I expect­ed, even if I was scared. 

*** 

       “Are you ready?” Chris looked down at me, rub­bing my back gently. 

       “I think so.” I peered over the rail­ing of the stairs from the upper floor of my emp­ty town­home into the liv­ing room, replay­ing mem­o­ries of the girls slid­ing down the stairs in their sleep­ing bags. Bring­ing not one, but two cats home. Loads of Tay­lor Swift dance par­ties. Fam­i­ly snug­gles in my bed. 

       I walked from room to room, remem­ber­ing the ache I’d felt when I moved in three years ago, that feel­ing replaced with ner­vous­ness, excite­ment and antic­i­pa­tion. I twist­ed the new dia­mond on my left index fin­ger. Chris pro­posed the last time he came to vis­it, get­ting down on one knee in the mid­dle of a minia­ture golf course. Our rela­tion­ship is a mix of humor and seri­ous­ness, embrac­ing the hard and the joy that is this sea­son of life. We find fun in the mun­dane every­day moments—Chris makes gro­cery shop­ping a hilar­i­ous excur­sion as he takes my kids for rides up and down the aisles. Chris is every­thing my heart needs in anoth­er per­son. 

       “You are the best thing that’s hap­pened to me in a long time,” he’d said when he pro­posed. “You make me and my boys so hap­py. And I pray I can be a great father fig­ure for your girls; they have stolen my heart.” 

       Chris made my heart melt with his words. He does every sin­gle day. Our com­mu­ni­ca­tion was the crux of our long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship; I am grate­ful for the ways he sup­port­ed me dur­ing the hard­est sea­son of my life. 

       “I love you,” I whis­pered, lean­ing up on my tip­toes to give him a peck on the cheek, his beard tick­ling my lips. 

       “Mom­my, can I take Rox­ie?” Hai­ley cried from behind me, mak­ing a bee­line down the stairs. 

       The cats were in their car­ri­ers, ready to be loaded up. Hai­ley took Rox­ie while Han­nah grabbed Belle, who was mew­ing inces­sant­ly inside her car­ri­er. They were both med­icat­ed for the long road trip to Geor­gia. The movers left not long ago with all my fur­ni­ture. 

       I climbed into the pas­sen­ger seat of the Jeep, turn­ing around to see the girls buck­le them­selves in, Rox­ie placed between the two of them. Chris loaded Belle in the back, between suit­cas­es, and I could hear her cries from the front. Luck­i­ly, she qui­et­ed down short­ly after we ven­tured on our long jour­ney. Six hours to St. Louis the first day; ten hours to Geor­gia the next. A house full of girls mov­ing into a house full of boys. We were as ready as we were going to be. 

       Chris opened his door and sat next to me for a moment as we took it all in. After more than a year of fly­ing back and forth, we were mak­ing our final trip togeth­er. 

       We pulled out of the dri­ve­way and said good­bye to Iowa, but we knew we would be back. 

*** 

       When you’ve only par­ent­ed girls, mov­ing in with teenage boys feels like you’ve entered a whole new world, kind of like learn­ing how to par­ent a new pet. You try to get all the right tools in your arse­nal, but there’s noth­ing you real­ly can do to pre­pare. 

       You learn by expe­ri­ence: learn­ing what aggra­vates us or makes one anoth­er hap­py, or nav­i­gat­ing meal­times where every­one is try­ing to get a word in edge­wise or no one wants to speak at all. There have been melt­downs by every­one in the house since we’ve moved in—adults includ­ed. None of us is immune to nav­i­gat­ing major changes with­out dif­fi­cul­ty, but we learn to adapt and humbly real­ize where we may need to shift expec­ta­tions. Even if it means giv­ing up the liv­ing room remote or find­ing some­thing we can all agree on to do togeth­er. 

       Intro­duc­ing our­selves to each oth­er has not been an easy process, but we have had moments where we all find joy togeth­er. Where we choose to pray and find peace. Where we find hope and love despite every­thing we’ve been through up to this point. I find myself sit­ting in the door­way, ready to intro­duce two cats to each oth­er, but this time it’s two fam­i­lies. Two sto­ries. Two ver­sions of myself. 

       The old me is like Belle: She has prop­er domain of the house and is learn­ing to let go of a life that no longer exists. The new me is con­fined like Rox­ie, excit­ed and anx­ious to leap when I am ready to let my guard down and ful­ly open the door. 

       All six of us are a bit like my cats, hold­ing onto a ver­sion of life that we know is no longer meant for us, slow­ly learn­ing to come togeth­er. I know it will take a while for the walls to come down, for us to ful­ly embrace life togeth­er, and that’s OK. 

       The beau­ti­ful thing I am real­iz­ing is that each room in my house is part of a whole. But I am not meant to con­fine myself to a sin­gle room. I can bring the old and new togeth­er and make some­thing from it, a tapes­try woven togeth­er. 

       Chris is aller­gic to cats. Mild­ly aller­gic, but aller­gic enough to war­rant reg­u­lar dos­es of aller­gy meds. But he doesn’t hate them; in fact, I am pret­ty sure he not-so-secret­ly loves my cats. Belle some­times sleeps on his lap, and Chris seeks out Rox­ie for snug­gles and affec­tion. Both of his boys like my cats, too. 

       The longer we nav­i­gate this life togeth­er as a blend­ed house­hold, we real­ize that we are not all that dif­fer­ent. We rec­og­nize our need for affec­tion and under­stand­ing. For kind­ness and grace. To be seen and loved, just like my cats. 

*** 

       “Are you ready?” Chris asks me, look­ing into my eyes with admi­ra­tion and love. His trimmed beard tick­les me soft­ly as he kiss­es my cheek. 

       “Absolute­ly,” I say, breath­ing out every nerve that led up to this moment. I touch his suit and lean my fore­head against his, feel­ing his heart­beat against my hand. 

       He looks more hand­some than I’ve ever seen him; his cus­tom-fit­ted tux accen­tu­at­ing his strong arms and shoul­ders; the blue tie mak­ing his eyes match the col­or of the sky. His red­dish-brown hair looks per­fect despite the rain that end­ed just moments ago. The sun sparkles the rain­drops like dia­monds on the leaves as we take a moment to our­selves before our water­fall wed­ding. 

       “You look beau­ti­ful,” he says, as the pho­tog­ra­ph­er snaps pho­tos of our first look togeth­er. We’re less than 20 min­utes away from say­ing “I do,” and my heart is leap­ing out of my chest in antic­i­pa­tion. 

       I can’t stop smil­ing. We stand there sev­er­al moments, let­ting the peace of each other’s pres­ence calm any nerves. 

       “It’s time,” the pho­tog­ra­ph­er says. 

        Yep, it’s time. And I’m ready. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

This essay was a labor of love, craft­ed dur­ing my MFA pro­gram at Lin­den­wood Uni­ver­si­ty. Writ­ing around my expe­ri­ences of grief and growth has been espe­cial­ly heal­ing over the years, and I find using my voice to share just a shred of hope is what helps me find courage even on the hard­est of days.

The beau­ti­ful thing about writ­ing a weaved essay such as “Res­cue Cats”is find­ing a con­nec­tion to myself, a sense of peace and com­fort. And in doing so I find myself want­i­ng to encour­age and inspire oth­ers in the same way. As I write around grief and heal­ing and find­ing my way through the chaos, I dis­cov­er a lit­tle more about myself through the process.

Kristin Schaaf is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing her MFA in cre­ative writ­ing at Lin­den­wood Uni­ver­si­ty. While she has pub­lished a range of online con­tent, she is proud and hon­ored to have The Account pub­lish her first lit­er­ary jour­nal pub­li­ca­tion. Her writ­ing ranges from lyri­cal prose to cre­ative non­fic­tion to poet­ry, and she is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a mem­oir. By day, and by night, she hones her craft and wran­gles her new­ly blend­ed step­fam­i­ly, while still fig­ur­ing out what she wants to be when she grows up.

Nonfiction / Angela Sucich

:: Private Veneration ::

I’m eight or nine when I enter the tiny hall­way bath­room in my child­hood home and try to ignore her—the silent, unashamed watch­er inside. I pre­tend not to notice her life­like por­trait pat­terned on the door, a daguerreo­type of wood­grain. There, hood­ed with veil, a Vir­gin of Guadalupe, a ghost­ly Mary, appear­ing in the pressed wood as rea­son­ably here as on a piece of toast. As I get on with my busi­ness, one part of my mind tells anoth­er part that it must be that most gen­tle Moth­er, and no sin­is­ter shape. A spir­i­tu­al world view, for all the good it may have offered me, also tend­ed to raise spir­its, and a child must learn what to do with them.

Decades lat­er, it comes to me what the priests would repeat on Sun­days, that holy day of guilt and guilt removed, how Mary was lift­ed full-bod­ied into heav­en. Did I ever wor­ry what the angels, most renowned of wings, haloed func­tionar­ies, and God, the mighty unseen, must think about bod­ies, if only Mary’s immac­u­late one was saved? I can’t recall if it had crossed my young mind dur­ing the dai­ly vis­i­ta­tions when my blad­der would twinge its insis­tence, to won­der whether a full-bod­ied Mary must relieve her­self in heav­en. But by then I’d already learned not to ask such ques­tions, at least not in cat­e­chism class, that incu­ba­tor of analy­sis and ortho­doxy. My own moth­er, mis­tress of the prac­ti­cal, grudge­less cit­i­zen, had once laughed as she told me no, Adam and Eve weren’t apes, which I had pro­posed as a solu­tion to that whole cre­ation-evo­lu­tion divide. I recall her telling me not to men­tion that at church, and it sunk in how some things must be left unsaid, pos­si­bly also unthought. But per­haps not every­thing. I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber the moment my broth­er showed me the pat­tern on the bath­room door, a boy’s hand trac­ing the man­tled head, the shad­owed face, and my con­clu­sion arriv­ing in a flash of halo­gen that she must be Mary, her appear­ance a sign.

“Sign” is a Mid­dle Eng­lish word derived from Old French signe and Latin signum. Some of its ear­li­est clas­si­cal mean­ings, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, include “omen, por­tent, vis­i­ble sign or trace, ges­ture,” and in post-clas­si­cal Latin “mirac­u­lous sign, mir­a­cle.” Mir­a­cles of the kind that Mary and the saints, with their inter­ces­so­ry pow­ers, were believed to per­form, such as spon­ta­neous heal­ing of the sick. The word’s ref­er­ence to the sign of the cross is also record­ed quite ear­ly: 4^th cen­tu­ry. The signum cru­cis. A ges­ture my hand still instinc­tive­ly knows how to make, decades after I ceased mak­ing it. Not unlike the way my fin­gers type on my com­put­er or mod­u­late the brakes on my moun­tain bike, as if inde­pen­dent of me. Or how my hus­band, with­out look­ing, always finds the right frets on his gui­tar. Mus­cle mem­o­ry. The brain find­ing max­i­mum effi­cien­cy, body per­form­ing with­out direc­tion or the full­ness of con­scious atten­tion. Not quite as auto­mat­ic as breath­ing, but almost. What a mar­vel, hav­ing bod­ies that know how to do things with­out effort. At least, until all that’s left is effort.

Of the two bath­room doors in my child­hood home, of course the Vir­gin Mary would appear on the one in the hall bath­room. Always immac­u­late and guest-ready, it had bright white cab­i­netry and seashell pic­tures hang­ing on the walls. A pris­tine space. The oth­er bath­room, accessed through my par­ents’ bed­room, was the last room cleaned, and even then, its cave-green tile always seemed in need of grout­ing. Years of my dad’s after­shave were bond­ed to the walls. It was a clois­tered, for­got­ten grot­to, wait­ing for a saint to come puri­fy it. Eight years ago, I walked into that clan­des­tine bath­room car­ry­ing a half-liter bot­tle filled with flu­id that my moth­er had drawn from the ports in my father’s sides with a syringe. It was a del­i­cate busi­ness: if she pulled too fast with the plunger, his yip would car­ry through the house. She’d joked that she had him at her mer­cy, and he’d pursed his lips, feign­ing, teas­ing: See what I have to put up with? But I recall think­ing at the time how he could final­ly breathe again. And that she knew how to care for him, for his own liv­ing walls. The bot­tle I bore to the far bath­room was dis­col­ored but most­ly clear. Filled with his can­cer, it still radi­at­ed the warmth of his body. I held it care­ful­ly like a pre­cious thing, a rel­ic on a holy day pro­ces­sion, life and death in my hands. It shouldn’t have mat­tered which bath­room I used to dis­pose of it, but my moth­er was clear about where to pour it down. As I passed by the hall bath­room with Mary’s like­ness on the door and con­tin­ued into my par­ents’ bath­room, I became a mys­tic hold­ing the abject part hal­lowed, ask­ing angels for help in bear­ing up the walls.

Parei­do­lia is a visu­al form of apophe­nia, which refers to the ten­den­cy to make mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions out of ran­dom infor­ma­tion, beyond the brain’s nor­mal cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing of pat­tern recog­ni­tion. My octo­ge­nar­i­an moth­er, who still lives in my child­hood home, prob­a­bly nev­er notices the image on the bath­room door, much less thinks of it as a Mar­i­an appari­tion. Last time I vis­it­ed, I not­ed the grain­i­ness of the face, decid­ed the fig­ure looked more crone-like. An aged Mary, not the demure yet glo­ri­ous Annun­ci­a­tion fig­ure I grew up look­ing at in church, unstained in stained glass, her soft blue clothes draped about her, head bowed before a descend­ing Gabriel, lis­ten­ing to words let­tered in gold­en shards: Be it done unto me. A moment of assent, of faith, with­out know­ing all of what that life would hold for her. Per­haps it’s just anoth­er type of apophe­nia, but those words now seem more uni­ver­sal than reli­gious to me, point­ing to what feels like truth and sal­va­tion in the here and now. The idea of us assent­ing to our lives, inhab­it­ing their won­drous order and messi­ness, even to our deaths. Of being awed by our bod­ies’ silent know­ing. Of look­ing intent­ly at it all, our gaze as unbro­ken as a star­ing apparition’s, reflect­ing our own see­ing. A sign read­ing itself.

From the writer

:: Account ::

The inspi­ra­tion for my cre­ative non­fic­tion piece came from a poet­ry work­shop I took sev­er­al years ago. Taught by Mark Doty, the class began with ref­er­ence to Gas­ton Bachelard’s book, The Poet­ics of Space, specif­i­cal­ly its focus on inti­mate spaces of the child­hood home as a way to recov­er mem­o­ry and expe­ri­ence child­hood inte­ri­or­i­ty. In our work­shop, we did a “first house” exer­cise in which we drew a floor plan of our home and tried to recall objects or images that bore emo­tion­al res­o­nance for us. Mark encour­aged us to let our writ­ing about those spaces and objects unfold in a kind of “grop­ing way” rather than know­ing where we were going. Doing so let us thread back through time, our trig­gered mem­o­ries fur­ther inform­ing us about our cur­rent emo­tion­al state.  

“Pri­vate Ven­er­a­tion” start­ed as a short poem in Mark’s class. Focused on the mem­o­ry of a wood­grain pat­tern on the bath­room door, the image remind­ed me of the Vir­gin Mary in a haunt­ing way. Look­ing back, it clear­ly rep­re­sent­ed the influ­ence of my Catholic upbring­ing, per­haps also the fear of being seen or watched, and judged. But as I con­tin­ued to write in that “grop­ing way,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing the piece from poet­ry into prose, that rep­re­sen­ta­tion moved deep­er into oth­er mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences, par­tic­u­lar­ly the time I spent with my sick father. Writ­ing from a per­spec­tive that piv­ot­ed between being immersed in mem­o­ries and at a dis­tance from them, I revis­it­ed ideas and emo­tions sur­round­ing pri­va­cy and inti­ma­cy, fear and shame. I observed how time allows for dif­fi­cult, hum­bling emo­tions to be reframed, which can lead to feel­ings of accep­tance and con­nect­ed­ness. In the work­shop, Mark had told us to trust our impuls­es, trust the dis­rup­tions. Fol­low­ing where the sto­ry led unveiled the beau­ty of the human expe­ri­ence in the most unex­pect­ed places. 

Angela Suci­ch’s poet­ry and prose appear in RHINO, Nim­rod, Half Mys­tic, SWWIM, Whale Road Review, and else­where. Her cre­ative non­fic­tion was short­list­ed for the Ori­son Chap­book Prize (2023) and long-list­ed for the Jeanne Lib­by Memo­r­i­al Chap­book Award (2025). She was hon­or­ably men­tioned for the Pablo Neru­da Prize in Poet­ry (2021). A poet with a PhD in Medieval Lit­er­a­ture, Suci­ch pub­lished a chap­book,  Illu­mi­nat­ed Crea­tures (Fin­ish­ing Line, 2023), which won the New Women’s Voic­es Chap­book Com­pe­ti­tion and a Cut­bank Chap­book Con­test hon­or­able men­tion. She lives in Leav­en­worth, Wash­ing­ton, with her hus­band and daugh­ter.