Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 54, October 2022

REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

“rapture” and “ecstasy.” (Thesaurus.com, you disappoint me. “Festivity,”
“amusement,” and “merriment” are not alternative words for joy.)

But I don’t think that’s it. In reality, I am rarely bored. The world is
vivid and ever-changing. Entropy alone ensures no moment will ever
be exactly like any moment that came before, and according to the
theory of relativity there are an infinitude of universes with unidentical
moments all occurring simultaneously, though you and I must slog
through only one at a time.

The puniness of it all does get to me, sometimes, but a good joke can
usually cheer me up.

Speaking of which, what do you think of this one?
A rabbi and a priest are eating breakfast at a diner. (It’s a greasy spoon,
the kind that serves margarine and calls it butter, where the waitress has
a beehive hairdo as if she’s living in the fifties, and wears coral-colored
lipstick and calls you “Hun.”)
The priest orders six slices of bacon, a couple of fried eggs, and a whole
lot of coffee. (And because the current Pope is an environmentalist and
egalitarian, we’ll say it’s shade-grown, fair trade coffee—yes?)
The rabbi orders oatmeal with raisins. (Like many men of the cloth, he’s
constantly being fed, and he’s put on a few more pounds than is good
for him, so he’s on a diet. As I picture the scene, the oatmeal is instant,
which he hates, and he pushes it away after a few desultory bites.)
The priest (we’ll call him Mark), says to the rabbi (we’ll call him Simon),
“Do you ever resent the strictures of your religious life?”
Simon purses his lips, thinking about whether to confess his true feelings,
but finally decides why not, they’re old friends, if you can’t be honest with
your friends what’s the point of friendship? “Yes,” he says. “How about you?”
“Oh yes,” Mark says. (He stabs at his eggs viciously, as if to take revenge
on all the sacrifices he’s made), “And while we’re on the subject, did you
ever cheat on your vows, even a little?”

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(I don’t know why cheating a little would be less sinful, and anyway, if
you’re going to transgress for the sake of pleasure, why not do it properly,
go whole hog, so to speak? Pun intended, as you’ll see momentarily.)

“Ah, yes,” Simon says. “When I was a teenager, I was visiting some of my
friends who aren’t Jewish. They were having bacon for breakfast, and good
lord it smelled delicious. I decided maybe we’d been mistaken all that time
about pork. I had one bite, and then another, and I think by the time I was
done I’d eaten a half dozen slices. I felt sick to my stomach and guilt-ridden,
but it was worth it.” He sighs, reminiscing, and then he turns back to his
friend. “How about you?” he says.

“Ah yes,” Mark says. “When I was a younger man, a lovely parishioner
came to me and said she had naughty dreams all the time, and she couldn’t
rid herself of them.” (She was of age, of course, and unmarried. We’re not
talking pedophile here, or marriage-wrecker. I read the news, even if I am
a pineapple.) “I wrestled with myself for a while, and then told her perhaps
if she played out the dreams, they would go away. She seemed quite willing
to give it a try, and we made love right there in the confessional.”

“And how was it?” the rabbi says, curious.
“Well,” Mark says (and here I’d pause for dramatic effect), “it beat the
hell out of bacon.”
Which leads me to another grievance: I’ve never had bacon. I can live
without avocado, chocolate mousse, Chablis. I’m not sure I want to live
another day without bacon.
And so we come to it.
Thank you for listening, for sharing this moment with me. But now
it’s time to go.
I have a final favor to ask: would you kindly give me a little shove? I’m
roundish, as I’m sure you can see. If you’ll just push me over onto my
side, I’m fairly certain I’ll roll off the counter and onto the floor, where
I will shatter into a thousand pieces, and that will be that. I don’t know
if it will hurt. Pain might be a welcome sensation, come to think of it.

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Or perhaps in pineapple heaven there are sensations for which you and
I don’t even have words.

Just a little push is all it will take. Oomph. That’s it. Merci. Grazie
mille. Danke.

Well.
Here I am.
On my side.
Not rolling.
This is a bit of a pickle.
I can still see the garden through the kitchen window. From this angle,
the petunias look a little—a very little, mind you—like sophronitis. A
pornographic flower if ever there was one.
Hey baby, want to get it on? You, me, and a tub of margarine?
A pineapple can dream.

Shari Lane has degrees in comparative literature and classics, as well as a
juris doctor. Until recently, she was a lawyer by day, and a writer of fiction
the rest of the time. Her writing has been published, or received honorable
mention/shortlisting or awards from: Amplify Magazine, Flash Fiction
Magazine, The Phare, Fish Publishing, Glimmer Train, and Oregon
Writers Colony. She is also a guest fiction editor and social media coordinator
for SHARK REEF Literary Magazine (sharkreef.org).

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ALTERNATIVE CHOICES

by J. L. Higgs

During our lifetimes, we each encounter countless numbers of people.
Most are soon forgotten. But then, there are those like Lindsay.

Three years running, my relationship with Jules was beyond the
excitement stage. We’d grown “comfortable” with each other. So,
quitting my job with the local newspaper in Michigan seemed logical
when she received a job offer from an accounting firm in New York City.

The Monday after our arrival, she attended her new employee
orientation while I went food shopping. I was juggling the grocery
bags on the stoop of our new apartment building when I heard someone
say, “You look like you could use some help.”

That’s when I met Lindsay. She was a few inches shorter than me, with
stunning hazel eyes, and her honey blonde hair was in a French Braid.
In the sleeveless V-neck top and pleated white skort she was wearing, she
looked like that female tennis player, Anna something or other. Jules
was attractive in a collegiate way, studious-looking glasses, long brown
hair, shapely, yet slightly wider at the hips, but this girl was way out of
my league. She was stunning.

“You’re the new neighbor,” she said, stepping forward and unlocking
the building’s outer door. “I saw you and your wife move in yesterday.”

“Jim,” I said, edging past her.
“Lindsay, top floor.” She smiled, her eyes brightening.

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“Girlfriend. Jules and I aren’t married,” I blurted out,
never knowing what reaction our interracial relationship would receive.

“Cool,” she said. Parting her lips, she titled her head, “Jules and Jim,
just like the film.” Then she grabbed two of my bags and bounced up
the stairs.

On the third-floor landing, I dug out my key and unlocked our
apartment door. She headed toward our kitchen. Passing our bedroom,
a mattress on the scratched wood floor and clothes overflowing open
suitcases, she said, “You guys could use a decorator.”

“We’re striving for a chic La Boheme look,” I said, imagining her
reaction to our front room’s wobbly floor lamp, TV tray tables, and two
tarnished metal folding chairs.

After setting the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, Lindsay said she
was having a party that evening, and extended an invitation.

“On a Monday night?”

“You’ve got to seize the day, mister,” she said, departing with a wave.

When Jules arrived home that evening, she went straight to our
bedroom. “God, I hate that ice breaker shit… introduce yourself… tell
us one interesting fact about you,” she said in a high-pitched, mocking
tone.

“How about a nice relaxing bath?”

“Sounds wonderful.”

As the tub filled, I lit some scented candles I’d bought and placed
them on the shelf at its foot. When Jules saw the candles, she smiled
and kissed me.

“Ever think about cutting your hair and dyeing it blonde?” I asked,
slipping into the tub behind her and wrapping her in my arms.

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“Ugh. My mother used to give me pixie cuts when I was little. I hated
them. I think she did it to torture me.”

Over dinner, I told Jules I’d met our upstairs neighbor, and that she’d
invited us to her party that evening. Jules pleaded exhaustion but
suggested I go. Wanting her to meet Lindsay, I rattled off several reasons
we both should go. Finally, she agreed to make a brief appearance.
As we left our apartment, a throbbing bass guitar line and heavy pot
smoke greeted us. The stairwell was packed with an incredibly diverse
mix of people - nationalities, colors, and genders. Business suits to
t-shirts with ripped jeans appeared to be in vogue. Some partiers were
swaying to the music, others, clutching drinks, attempted to mingle.
As we made our way up the stairs, I caught snippets of conversations
about films, on and off-Broadway theater productions, books, poetry,
etc…

On the 4th-floor landing, I searched the faces for Lindsay and found
her on the far side of the floor. She had purple streaks in her hair, a
flower tucked behind her right ear, and was wearing a sleeveless dress
covered with blue and white mountains. Overlaying the mountains was
a silhouette of palm trees against an orange sunset. She looked like a
goddess in a South Sea Islands movie.

Spotting us, she waved and began gliding over. The crowd parted
before her like subjects, making way for a queen. When she reached us,
she took my face between her hands and kissed me on the mouth. The
kiss and the overwhelming smell of alcohol momentarily staggered me.

“You must be Jules,” said Lindsay, shifting side-to-side as she released
me and extended a hand toward Jules.

“Julia,” said Jules, casting a disapproving look my way before shaking
Lindsay’s hand. “Jules and Jimmie. Just like the movie,” said Lindsay,
grinning and still in constant motion.

“No,” said Jules, her eyes narrowing. “In the film, the two main male
characters are best friends and in love with the same woman.”

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I looked from Jules to Lindsay. Was I the only person who’d never
heard of this film?

“You’re right,” said Lindsay, curtsying. Then, straightening up, she
yelled, “Hey everybody! These are my new best friends, Jules and
Jimmie!”

Every eye turned toward us. I gave an embarrassed wave. Jules stared
straight ahead, her lips tight. Saying I needed a drink, Lindsay grabbed
my hand and plunged into the crowd. Stopping suddenly, she turned
toward Jules and gestured, “Well, come on.”

Crossing her apartment’s threshold, we passed a tall, thin, Asian-
looking girl with curly brown hair.

“Mai, Jimmie. Jimmie, Mai,” called out Lindsay, dragging me along
without slowing. Down the hallway, we went past some closed doors to
the kitchen. Entering it, she spread her arms like a game show hostess
before an astonishing assortment of beer, wine, and liquor. “What’ll
you have?” she asked, scooping up a plastic cup from a counter and
downing its contents in a single gulp. I was about to answer when she
whipped her head to the left and began stomping her feet.

“BERRRNIEEEEE!”
In the hallway, a guy with shoulder-length reddish-brown hair and
a beard turned. Lindsay waved come here, and he began sauntering
over. Drawing abreast of us, she whispered in his ear. He reached into
his shirt pocket, palmed something to her, then strolled away. Opening
her hand, Lindsay revealed a joint. She lit it, took a couple of hits, then
held it toward Jules like a peace offering.
The next morning, with Jules again at work, I began updating my
resume. Despite the apartment windows being open, by early afternoon,
the mid-summer heat and humidity indoors felt unbearable. Deciding
to take a break, I went out onto our fire escape. Almost immediately,
I heard “plink.” “plunk,” “plonk.” Shielding my eyes, I looked up.

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There was Lindsay, dressed in a tank top t-shirt and running shorts. She
laughed, tossed a few more ice cubes, and invited me up.

As I joined her, she opened a mini cooler and removed a chilled,
uncapped bottle of beer. She took a sip, then pressed its cool, smooth
body to each side of her face. Condensation flowed like rivers down the
bottle’s neck, across its shoulders, and dripped onto her t-shirt.

Staring into my eyes with a serious expression on her face, she handed
me the bottle. As I raised it to my lips, she said, “Is what they say about
you black guys true?”

Beer almost shot from my nose as I choked and my eyes watered.
What was I to say to that? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?

I looked at her, and she was laughing.
Trying to catch her breath, she wiped at the tears streaming down her
face, and asked,
“No job?”
“Working on it. What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a model, actress… in the film industry,” she said as she moved
over to the fire escape’s handrail. “They call me when they need me.”
That sounded like an ideal job to me. No day-in and day-out drudgery.
“Anything I may have seen?”
She shook her head. “You guys enjoy the party?”
“Yeah,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. After we left, Jules
had said very little other than asking if I’d noticed the photographs in
Lindsay’s apartment.
Taking hold of the handrail, Lindsay leaned out and stared into the
distance. “If you could be anything you wanted, what would you
choose?”

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“A novelist,” I said, setting down the beer bottle on the mini cooler.
Feigning casualness, I crossed over, took her by the shoulders, and
moved both of us away from the unforgiving asphalt below. “What
about you?”

“I think I’d be willing to settle for being free of other people’s
expectations.” “Unfortunately, that’s not easy.” I knew my family back
in Michigan was disappointed in my career choices to date.

Suddenly, Lindsay kissed me on the cheek. “C’mon,” she said, “Let’s
go have some fun.”

She led me to a neighborhood playground. We walked past the Monkey
Bars and Slides, and went straight to the swings. She commanded me
to sit and as I did; she grabbed the chains and hoisted herself up into a
standing position. With a foot outside of each of my thighs, she leaned
back and pulled on the chains as she thrust her legs forward.

Feeling myself sweeping backward, I bent my legs, pumping, then
kicked them out in front of me, reversing the swing’s direction. She
rode toward me, drawing up her knees, her t-shirt billowing, revealing
her bare breasts. Then, with a thrust of her hips and legs, she forced
the swing to change direction once again. Moving in sync with a steady
rhythm, each pump and thrust took us higher and higher. Finally, when
we reached the peak, Lindsay tossed back her head and screamed.

When Jules arrived home that evening, she asked how my job hunt
had gone. I told her good and chose not to mention how I’d spent my
afternoon. The next morning, after Jules left for work, I was determined
to make some significant progress in my job search. Unfortunately,
every posting looked like a loss leader or required almost ten years of
experience.

The next day, like its predecessor, continued with no Lindsay sightings.
I struggled with my job search, my mind constantly wandering to her.
Unlike Jules, nothing involving Lindsay was predictable or routine.

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Around dinner time, Jules called and said she’d be late. When I asked
if everything was OK, she replied, why wouldn’t it be? When she arrived
home, Jules announced she was going to take a bath to relax. I started
toward the kitchen to warm up her dinner and she screamed my name.

Bursting into the bathroom, I saw her standing at the head of the tub,
water streaming down her body. She had one arm wrapped protectively
around her torso and was pointing at the foot of the tub with the other.

“Kill it, Jim! Kill it!”
On the wall tile was the most humongous cockroach I’d ever seen,
head swinging side to side, and antenna wiggling. Assessing my options,
loofahs, towels, and a wicker trash basket, I saw nothing to smash a
gargantuan insect with. Then, spying the scented candles at the foot
of the tub, I grabbed one and slammed it against the wall, producing
a loud crunch.
Slowly peeling the candle from the wall, what lie beneath it was
unidentifiable.
“Gross,” said Jules.
I wiped away the splatter with TP, tossed it into the toilet, and flushed.
Jules, still standing, whispered thank you and asked me to also dispose
of the candle.
Telling her I’d be right back, I dashed up to the fourth floor and
knocked on Lindsay’s door. When it opened, there stood Mai, the girl
from the party.
“Is Lindsay, here?”
“She’s in California for work. Come in,” she added, shooting out a
foot to block a large orange cat from escaping.
“We’ve got roaches. Do you?” I asked as she bent down and picked
up the cat.
“Mrs. Boots,” she responded, scratching the cat behind its ears.

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This being my first opportunity to truly see the inside of Lindsay’s
apartment, l looked around me. It appeared to be twice the size of
ours, taking up the entire fourth floor. Whereas our front room had a
smokey-smelling fireplace and peeling wallpaper, her exposed brick walls
were painted pure white and contrasted beautifully with the mahogany
beams traversing the ceiling. The ceiling itself contained recessed lights
aligned to spotlight the room’s ultra-modern chrome, glass, and white
leather furniture, as if they were showroom pieces.

As a final touch, there was a poster-sized headshot of Lindsay on each
wall. In one, she resembled Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, coal-rimmed
eyes, straight black bangs, and bluntly cut hair that barely reached her
shoulders. There was a three-quarter pose shot in which she had long,
flowing blonde locks and a sparkling smile that made her look like a
young Farrah Fawcett. And then there was a profile shot. And in a
profile shot, her hair was short, red, and slicked-back, reminiscent of
Tilda Swinton. She was like a chameleon, and each photo exuded a
mysterious and seductive air.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” said Mai, following the movement of my
eyes from headshot to headshot.

I nodded. It was surprising how comfortable women were saying
another woman was beautiful.

“It’s hard to put into words, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Feeling connected to her, even in photos.” Mai smiled, then headed
down the hallway, toward the kitchen, me following.
Photos of Lindsay with her hair in varying lengths, styles, and colors
ran the length of the hallway.
“Why only pictures of Lindsay?” I asked, pausing at a bedroom
containing a Persian Rug, a king-sized cherry pedestal bed covered
with an afghan, a hanging chair with pillows, and a sleek, rectangular

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modern-style dresser. The next room had only a tan gooseneck reading
lamp and a floor mattress covered by a red batik bedspread.

“It’s her apartment,” said Mai, setting down the cat.
“Aren’t you roommates?” I asked as Mrs. Boots came over and rubbed
up against my leg.
“Lindsay’s sister, Mandy, is my best friend. We all went to school
together in Wisconsin. Lindsay was two years ahead of us.”
“Wisconsin?” I bent down and began petting Mrs. Boots.
“Yeah, Wisconsin. We only break out our cheese heads and milkmaid
outfits on special occasions.” She laughed. “I know, looking at Lindsay,
who’d think, Wisconsin. Back home she was the girl we all wanted to
be – head cheerleader, homecoming queen, prom queen. Everyone
loved her and knew that if anyone was going to make it big, it was her.
Anyway, when I got accepted to grad school here in New York, Mandy
put us in touch.”
Looking at me and the cat, Mai smiled. “She likes you.”
Late that same night, I dreamed an army of roaches had me surrounded.
With a can of Raid in one hand and Black Flag in the other, I blasted
them with spray. It had no effect. They might as well have been Gene
Kelly in “Singing In the Rain.” I then discovered the most effective way
to use the products. I began smacking the roaches with their metal spray
cans, producing one solid whack after another.
Emerging from my dream, I realized someone was actually knocking
on our front door. So, I slipped out of bed, tiptoed to the door, and
opened it a crack. Lindsay was there in a French Maid outfit with a large
canvas bag over her shoulder. Her eyes were as big and round as saucers.
“Throw on some clothes. The show starts in 20 minutes.”
“What show? What time is it?”

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“After midnight. Hurry up. Get Jules,” she said, her voice growing
louder. “We’re gonna miss the train.”

Placing a finger to my lips, I shushed her, then staggered back to the
bedroom. Jules was dead asleep.

“What took so long?” Lindsay whispered when I returned in jeans, a
t-shirt, and sneakers. “I left Jules a note in case she wakes up and
finds me gone. Where are we going?” “Rocky Horror,” she said,
grabbing my hand and taking off running.

While most white people I’d known had gone to the show at one time
or another, failing to understand its appeal, I’d never been. The audience
screamed the dialogue, cursed and yelled insults at the on-screen
characters, and used props they’d brought to the show – toast, newspapers,
water pistols, etc… at various points. The highlight of each show was
when audience members, dressed like the film’s characters, rushed the
screen to sing and dance alongside their on-screen counterparts.

Inside the packed theater, Bernie and some of Lindsay’s other friends
had saved us seats. The air was so saturated with pot smoke, everyone
was guaranteed at least a contact high. As the lights dimmed and a pair
of ruby-colored lips appeared on the movie screen, Lindsay reached in
her canvas bag and began distributing props.

When the movie ended, we said goodbye to Lindsay and Bernie’s
friends and headed for the subway. On the corner across from the
subway station, we stopped to await the crossing green.

Suddenly, Lindsay and Bernie dashed into the middle of the avenue
and began singing and dancing.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at the French Maid and guy in a
corset, with stockings, heels, and a feather boa, making a public display
of themselves.

“The Time Warp!”

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From further down the multi-lane avenue, cars raced toward them.
Sprinting into the roadway, I pulled Lindsay aside as the cars zoomed
past, horns blaring. My heart pounding and body shaking, I looked for
Bernie. He was bent over at the waist on the sidewalk, gasping for air.
“Who knew Speed Racer would be out tonight,” he eked out.

Lindsay, her face buried in my chest, was crying uncontrollably in my
arms. I kept telling her and myself that she was safe.

When I returned to the apartment, I saw that the note I’d left appeared
undisturbed. Still shaken, but relieved, I slipped back into bed.

Lindsay then disappeared for a couple of days. I continued my job
search as well as researched how to get rid of roaches. I purchased some
“extermination products” and nearly collided with a woman with short,
red hair as I returned home.

“Miss me?” asked the woman, the voice unmistakably Lindsay’s.
“What did you do to your hair?”
“Up for some fun this afternoon?” she asked, turning in a full circle,
modeling her new do.
“Job hunting.”
“Boooring,” she said, shaking her head.
How often had I heard that? That I was repressed, too serious, too
cautious. In my entire life, Jules was the only person who had always
accepted me as I was, unconditionally.
“I’ve got a pair of express tickets for the Empire State Building.”
I’d always been the epitome of practicality, but being in New York,
I had an opportunity to reinvent myself. “OK,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
When Lindsay picked me up, her canvas bag was slung over her
shoulder and she was wearing a white peasant blouse with blue trim,

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an ankle-length blue skirt, and sandals. At 34th and Herald, we exited
the subway station and walked to the Empire State Building.

As we stood on the 86th floor’s observation deck, she wrapped her
arms around mine. “Isn't it amazing?” she said. “Wouldn’t you love
to just fly away from here?”

Still clutching my arm, she pulled me away from the crowd and to
the other side of the open-air deck. She then reached into her canvas
bag, took out two paper airplanes, and handed one to me. With a plane
between her fingertips and thumb, she cocked her arm, then snapped it
forward. Her plane glided away, and I launched mine.

The planes drifted downward, their wings gently rippling. They
appeared to stall, but then their noses turned upward, and they climbed.
Soaring above the rooftops, they swept, swooped, and sliced through the
air. Darting and dipping around each other, they moved like dancers
in a pas de deux. At times, they appeared on the verge of touching,
but then they’d separate and continue on their individual journeys. We
watched until they were out of sight. Following that afternoon at the
Empire State Building, I didn’t see or hear from Lindsay for days. On
Friday, Jules invited me to go bar hopping with her and her co-workers
after work. Our last stop ended up being a karaoke bar. There, we
performed a slightly off-key duet of “I Got You, Babe.”

Saturday morning, I went out to get some bagels, coffee, and a
newspaper while Jules slept in. When I returned, there was no doubt
in my mind that the woman I saw climbing the stairs in our building
was Lindsay.

“Hey stranger,” I called out, bounding up after her.
She turned, and the vacant look in her eyes drew me up short. Then
I noticed the thick white bandages covering her forearms from wrist to
elbow.
“What happ…”
“My mother’s coming.”

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She ran up the remaining stairs. Then I heard a door slam.
Unsure what to do, I waited a couple of days before going upstairs
and knocking on her door. When it opened, Mai was there, holding
Mrs. Boots.
“Is Lindsay here?”
Mai shook her head.
“When will she be back?”
“Mrs. Winters took her back to Wisconsin,” she said, eyes on the floor,
her voice barely above a whisper.
“Who’s Mrs. Winters?” I asked, following as she led the way toward
the kitchen. “Is that her mother?”
Mai nodded, put down Mrs. Boots, and took a seat at their kitchen
table. “Lindsay tried to kill herself,” she said, tears filling her eyes.
“What? No,” I said, taking a seat and leaning forward to scratch Mrs.
Boots behind her ears. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Mandy called and told me their mother was planning a surprise visit.”
Tears began flowing down Mai’s face. “I told Lindsay. I never imagined
she’d try to kill herself.”
I was stunned.
“Her acting career, the modeling, was all a lie. Back home, things
always went perfect for Lindsay. But New York is full of beautiful girls
and aspiring actors. She met some people who said they could get her
a job in the movies in L.A. And they did, as a fluffer.”
I stared at Mai, totally speechless.
A few days later, there was a soft tap at my door. I opened it and saw
Mai and Mrs. Boots.

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“I can’t afford the 4th-floor apartment on my own, so I’m moving in
with some kids from school. No pets allowed, except tropical fish.” She
handed me Mrs. Boots. “She’ll definitely solve your roach problem.”

It’s been years since I lived in the city. Jules and I are married and live
in a suburb in Connecticut. She’s still in accounting and I started my
own marketing firm. Our lives aren’t perfect, but then, whose is?

Like anyone, I’ve had to make countless choices in the course of my
life. Some have turned out well, others not so well. But there are times
when I still think about Lindsay. The image of her heavily bandaged
arms and last words, “my mother’s coming,” continue to haunt me to
this very day.

J L Higgs' short stories explore the interplay between human emotions and actions from a
black perspective. Since July 2016 he has had over 60 publications and been nominated
for a Pushcart Prize. He resides outside of Boston, Mass. Facebook: https://www.facebook.
com/JL-Higgs-ArtistWriter-1433711619998262

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NONFICTION
NÃO-FICÇÃO



REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

ACROSS TOWNS: A Meditation on Transit

by Toti O’Brien

In my mother tongue, the word city (città) is feminine. That is true
for my second language as well. Ville is also feminine. This is of little
relevance in the present day, but I belong to a heavily-gendered era.
Therefore, grammatical attribution of female or male roles to plants,
animals, objects, abstract concepts, has significantly impacted my vision
of the world.

In my mother (as well as my second) tongue, towns and houses
are feminine. Somehow, that felt “natural” to me while growing up.
After all, both are containers of people, and female individuals (until
recently) were essentially identified by their potential ability to host,
hold, temporarily shelter human life.

§
The introduction above, I admit, is unjustified—an initial, somehow
capricious detour. What I mean to explore isn’t the grammar of cities,
but their mapping. Here’s a tiny anecdote.
Thirty plus years ago, I had moved back to Rome after spending more
than a decade in Paris. A friend came to see me, and I chaperoned him
around. At some point, we talked about a Parisian garden, or shop,
and he asked me for detailed directions. As I tried to provide them, I
felt lost. “Sorry,” I apologized, “Paris’ map has vanished from my mind
since I moved. Rome’s map has replaced it. I can’t possibly access both.”
He was flabbergasted. A world wanderer, who had sojourned in various
metropoles such as New York, Tokyo, Berlin and, of course, Paris, he

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started laughing. He adamantly declared nothing similar ever happened
to him. Well, his intellectual capacities must have been much greater
than mine.

Mine were and still are limited, city/map/wise.
§

In my youth I journeyed a lot, often stopping for long stays in cities
where I lived and worked, therefore getting to know my surroundings
well. I have fond memories of many towns. Each has left an idiosyncratic
and indelible mark—an ambiance, a tone, a sensuality, a color. But only
three towns are embedded within me, map wise. Three and a ghost, to be
exact. Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, plus the small Sicilian town of Messina.

I have resided in L.A. for the last 28 years. I have stopped visiting
Paris about 15 years ago, and my annual visits to Rome are extremely
short (a few days). So the map of Los Angeles is the active one—has
been for a long time. But the other ones, in turn, have been widely
employed. If they weren’t deleted or trashed, their remains must be
found somewhere. I would like to trace them, unbury them and say a
word about these cartographies, past and present. How diverse they are
and how differently they have shaped me.

Towns and the human brain have similarities, don’t they? Both
possess a definite physicality. Both are built, and can be destroyed—let’s
say by an earthquake or a tumor, by a war or by death. Both, though,
are simultaneously made of connections from point to point. They are
made of paths, without which they lose identity and function. Towns
and brains are made of soft tissue and/or concrete as much as they are
made of invisible, immaterial, yet precious trajectories.

§
When I lived in Paris I didn’t have a car, and I never thought of
acquiring one. As everybody knows, the French capital has a great
metro system—the best possible way of transportation. Fast, cheap,
frequent, it reaches every corner of town, including the near and far
outskirts. It did when I was there, in the 1980’s, starting—I believe—at
6 in the morning, ending at midnight? Perhaps later. There were many
lines, marked with different colors, forming a thin-meshed network

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that espoused, quite closely, the actual shape of the city. Maps were
everywhere: in the street, the stations, of course on the trains. They were
easy to read. You could hardly get lost in the underground. Therefore,
you’d soon get the illusion of knowing Paris, holding it in your hand,
understanding it (which you literally did). You doubtlessly knew the
town’s underbelly—which did not mean its secret, seedy core. No.
The metro system (platforms, rails, halls, an intricate web of corridors,
sometimes going on for miles) was brightly lit by artificial lamps at all
hours. Down there, time wasn’t measured by atmospheric variations,
but by shifts in crowd size, composition, density, motion, behavior. The
conventions of time underwent a mutation in the viscera of Paris, where
a new set of parameters ruled them. Same thing occurred to space that,
being so quickly and so “blindly” crossed, somehow shrunk and became
tamer, more domestic. Space, within the stylized universe of the metro,
was purged of landscaping attributes and became mere distance—a sort
of mathematical diagram.

The town was mapped by verbal cues (the names of the stations),
sequentially organized. Its identity was a fact of nomenclature but,
please, don’t think of it as dry, neutral matter. If possible, these names in
the dark (in the bright, electrical glare soaking wagons, stairs, walkways)
were more evocative, more resonant than the corresponding monuments
or architectural features would have been, if perused.

If… because many stations would never reveal to the passenger
their actual, “superficial” looks. Not during a lifetime—or so briefly,
so incidentally, they would not leave a recognizable trace, form a solid
memory. Paris was, is, huge. Many metro stations would be, for a whole
lifetime, just stations, just transit.

Some, obviously, would not. I, for instance, became well acquainted
with a number of neighborhoods and outskirts where I lived and worked.
I traversed them on foot, absorbing what I would of any other town—
the interwoven patterns of built, natural and human/social environment
in its immensely detailed singularity. Houses, bars, roofs and gutters,
public squares, dogs on leashes, fountains, smell of bakeries and the
dubious pink of the butcher’s display, iridescent puddles, umbrellas,
market rumpus and shrieking brakes, lines at the post office, blaring
horns, rushed pedestrians, movie theaters marquees, heels ticking on

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cobblestones. All that, uniquely Parisian—vertical and gray, both ugly
and elegant, both querulous and proud, arrogant and passé. Also, so varied
for each arrondissement or banlieue, so architecturally and humanly
dappled. I essentially walked the distance between my apartment or
workplace and the nearest metro station. Sometimes, I took a bus that
would bring me to the metro. Those areas, which my body acquainted
in the open, I knew well, and of course they shaped the sentiment of
Paris within my mind/memory, heart/emotions. But because I seldom
transitioned from one to the other en plein air, their actual contiguity,
the way they juxtaposed, how this neighborhood melted/morphed/led
in/to that one, remained sort of blurred.

Somehow, the town was a kind of archipelago—and yet solid at the
bottom, underwater, where all islands connected.

The underground had its unique odor, of course—an indefinable
mixture of human and mechanical tangs, slightly sour, most dusty.
Similarly, it had its unique polyphony/or/cacophony, also a combo of
transient-organic and mighty-metallic, mineral.

The underground tightened the town in its fist, swallowed it and
digested it, spitting out bits and pieces now and then.

I said it wasn’t an abstract world. Absolutely not. I said the stations—
announced by a recorded voice every few minutes—weren’t anodyne,
just syllables. Absolutely not. At least, not for me. They were loaded with
layers of mental and emotional associations, following both what their
names evoked and, perhaps more importantly, the place they occupied
in the virtual geography of my transit. Tiny spots where no one left or
boarded the wagons, big crossroads where many lines intersected, those
that seemed to accelerate my progress towards a longed-for destination,
those that seemed to keep me back, to delay my arrival. Those who made
me want to evade, flee, explore, get lost. Those that scared me, those
that reassured me. The serious, the facetious. The glorious, the sad. The
obsolete, the pretentious. Those who seemed rich/trendy, those who felt
old/poor—although virtually, nominally, map wise.

This variety was somehow unified by a sole, unmistakable “underground
feeling”— paradoxical compound of monotony and urgency, summing
up to a pervasive aura of unyielding necessity. Rather, ineluctability.

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Paradoxically, both smothering and comforting—maybe due to the
certainty that you would arrive, yes you would, if you wanted it or not.
The train, station by station, would bring you there. Fast. No leisure.
No cruising. No detours. On the contrary, a steady rhythm and pulse—
delays, strikes, accidents notwithstanding. Still… you would arrive.

The underground could be a place for reading, brooding, even
meditating. Not for contemplating. Perhaps, inner contemplation, in
the mute stupor of the first morning run? I doubt it.

I knew the underground system by heart. I believe I could recite
stations like the rosary I was taught to spell in catholic school. Perhaps,
stations were saints, or the myriad adjectives honoring the Virgin.
Probably, they were. I believed I knew Paris well. Honestly, I did. Not
only I was immensely familiar with many neighborhoods. I could also
reach anywhere without any trouble, night or day, by metro. The map,
with its many, pretty colors, was permanently etched in my brain.

Until the day I left and I moved back to Rome, then toured with
a theater company throughout Italy, France, Germany and Brazil—a
completely different cartography that eludes the purpose of my present
musing.

§
At the end of 1994 I permanently moved to Los Angeles, the town
where I presently live and that, after almost three decades, I viscerally
and unconditionally love. I believe I know it well, if such thing is
possible with regard to an urban extension so scattered, wide, diverse
and apparently dispersed.
It is not dispersed for me, because my brain holds it within the grid
of a quite readable, neatly designed map.
L.A. is a virtual city, like Paris, as far as its materiality is abstracted
and summarized by the freeway network that crosses it, unifying areas
so distant, they would otherwise be entirely unrelated. Going places
on surface streets is, of course, possible—only as a kind of vacation, or
cruise, only if time is out of the equation and one can afford spending
more of it on the journey than at destination.

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Public transportation, though it has significantly improved in recent
decades, is a kind of joke—again, fit for sightseeing and leisurely
exploring, but eminently unpractical as it comes to real life. Therefore,
Los Angeles means getting into the car and taking the freeway, then
getting into the car and taking the freeway, then doing the same, and
the same, with stationary pauses in between.

Freeways are punctuated by exits—with green signage spelling their
names—that function as metro stations do in other cities, Paris among
them. Like in Paris, several of these exits lead to areas of town where one
will never go. Like in Paris, they will remain symbols loaded with diverse
echoes, based on their specific role in the unraveling of the journey, as
well as on their names (often Spanish, therefore sounding mysterious
to the Anglophone portion of travelers).

Like for Paris, the internal picture of the town will necessarily be a
collage of high-res, well defined, well detailed islands linked by strings
of markers, indicators that provide overall cohesion.

With the enormous difference that, in L.A.’s case, the city-as-a-table-
of-contents occurs outside. Not in the artificial glare of the underground,
but under implacable sunlight filtered by tinted spectacles, which are
not—as distant observers could think—a matter or style or a fashion
statement, but an indispensable tool for enduring brightness. In L.A.,
unlike in Paris, we see the transitions, how this melt into that, West-
side to Mid-city to Downtown—although, we apprehend the shifts in
a stylized and simplified manner, abridged by velocity.

As it happens when traveling by metro underneath Parisian boulevards,
driving on L.A. freeways also tampers with our perception of the space-
time continuum. Somehow, differently. In L.A., it is harder to lose track
of spatial proportions, as the city is under our eyes. Somehow, it runs
along, following or preceding us. The huge expanse of the town is in full
view and yet, because the highways cross it at street level or even above
it—sometimes, up above—a distortion occurs that makes it smaller.
Tamer, more domesticated.

From the highway, the urban landscape has the same visual impact that
mountains, sky, tree line, coastline have—the mighty natural features
on which buildings graft themselves, after all, like smaller addenda or

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footnotes. The bluish, serene range of the Saint Gabriel mountains
dwarfs Downtown’s tallest skyscrapers. So the town appears hugged,
embraced, framed, certainly contained by nature, and that makes it
somehow less fierce, less ferocious.

There is a sweetness one can only—or especially—perceive while
driving on the freeway, no matter if gloriously navigating an early
Sunday morning or if stuck in rush hour. I should call it a meekness, or
innocence, in the way neighborhoods single-file like first-graders going
out to recess, rows of houses mimicking long lines of diligent palm
trees that concertedly point here or there, giving directions, bent by
the desert wind. Streets, hills, canyons or beaches scroll like old movie
reels, which isn’t surprising.

§
I was born and spent my childhood, until teenage, in Rome.
Though the Seine, in Paris, is strikingly prominent—so are the quais,
bridges, islands, the boats and barges, such a distinctive part of the
town’s core—I never considered the river as the arteries-and-veins, the
circulatory system of the city, either because I never lived near it, or
because the blood of Paris, for me, was the metro (its tunnels, its rails,
its corridors). Doubtlessly, Los Angeles’ vessels are its freeways. While in
Rome, the Tiber is where I felt the pulse throb. What anachronism. No,
it’s not Venice. No, people don’t take the boat, but the bus and the (still
underdeveloped) metro. People drive, in spite of the parking nightmare
in a downtown that is a protected site, not allowed expanding beyond
cart/horse size. People walk, and walking is both feasible (distance wise)
and great—as, for instance, in the monumental/historical/protected
sanctum that is the “center,” every footstep reveals an exquisite scrap of
architectural marvel. But in other areas pedestrians are graced, still, by
pervasive beauty. Of color—bricks, walls, roof tiles bathed in reddish
ocher, complementing the slate gray of cobblestones, the dark green of
pines, the soft green of sycamores. Of shapes—the interplay of closely
juxtaposed, rounded hills, echoing rounded domes, with the horizontal
caesuras of balconies, porches, terraces hosting miniature gardens.
As the town is pleasantly and efficiently walk-able for a wide extent,
including popular neighborhoods (not just monumental enclaves) it is
possible to gain full-body awareness of a large enough portion of Rome,

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to the edges of which one can add the rest, firmly locked, fitting in like
the pieces of a puzzle once the general picture is formed.

At the center of the center, the Tiber draws its slow and elegant
curve. It’s a magnet, allowing to never get lost as long as one keeps a
sense, even vague, or where is the water. Following its course provides
with direction. Bridges are the markers parsing the journey, metering
the progress.

The stream also functions like a break. A pause. Like an afterthought,
maybe a meditation of sorts. Even through traffic chaos, pollution, loud
noise, tourist crowds, stifling heat, crossing one of the many bridges is
a rest, a suspension. A ritual.

I loved Rome’s many peripheries, the horror developments of the
seventies through which, though, nature filters in. The campagna
romana, the rural soul of Latium, the simplicity and poverty of the
region infiltrate the papal pomp of the capital, which frays at its borders,
reclaiming its peasant identity. I loved Rome’s harbors, Fiumicino and
Ostia, unpretentious and drab—overcrowded beaches, foamy, soiled
waters—yet like oases, the vacation working classes could spare, the
only one.

§
I loved Rome, and still do, but almost against my will. It’s a love out
of habit and closeness, not of choice. As a child, I didn’t want to live
there but in the town of Messina, Sicily, where my grandparents were
and I spent many months, each year. Quite incongruously, the allegedly
ugly, tiny city of Messina for me established a canon of beauty, and I
doubtlessly deemed it superior to the world-renowned capital of my
birth.
The causes of my preference, sure, didn’t belong to the urban and
architectural domain. But emotions weave themselves so tightly within—
literally—the concrete, the mesh cannot be unraveled. Therefore,
Messina’s physical features grew so dear to me, I ended up unconsciously
measuring city landscapes, all over the world, always, against its model.
A long stretch of low buildings (after the catastrophic earthquake
of 1908, nothing higher than two stories was allowed), relatively new

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(the monumental core of the town was never rebuilt), dull in color,
messy, devoid of style (the town wildly, almost spontaneously, grew back
without an ordering vision). Terraces prevail over roofs, as it is normal in
the south, resulting in chromatic monotony (no shift from walls to tiles).
Moreover, creating an open, meek, defenseless feeling. Also, welcoming.

The town stretches in length before the Strait of the same name,
dwarfed, muted by the glory of the Mediterranean insinuating itself
between the Italian peninsula and the Sicilian island. The sea is very
deep in the Strait, traversed by powerful currents (which originated the
myth of Scylla and Charybdis). Mighty winds constantly change the
tide, providing spectacular shifts of color. The sea claims this corner
of the planet, only sharing it, in case, with the proud profiles of the
mountains on both sides. The sea permeates the town at a molecular
level. Messina doesn’t have a harbor, as Rome or Los Angeles have. The
city is the harbor, nothing more—soaked in its smell, its salt, echoing
its many voices.

Squeezed between the shore and the mountain range—so close
that it seems to push forward, seeking the cool, watery embrace—the
town can only expand longitudinally, un-graining itself like a rosary,
perpendicularly indenting the slopes with protrusions like the prongs
of a comb, clustered within narrow canyons (dry river beds going from
mountain to shore at regular intervals).

Those intersecting canyons (torrenti) are the posts, the milestones
allowing orientation, signaling one’s relative stance. Otherwise, the whole
town resembles, almost repeats itself, though the sparse landmarks—the
cathedral, municipal gardens, main square, cemetery, train station; a bit
further, the salt water lakes where mussels are bred, this or that beach,
the pole signaling the narrowest point of the channel, the lighthouse—
to the child that I was mapped a fascinating geography, and a magical
journey.

Quite a simple map, taking little room in my brain—lots in my heart.
§

Still, as I had to admit once, my brain seems to erase—to archive, at
best—city maps except for the current one, which it sort of embeds in

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its circumvolutions, making orientation a natural, unreflective activity.
As if the city where I live and I, somehow, melted, becoming one female
body—a contiguous container.

Sometimes though, deceptively, shards of L.A. remind me of Messina.
Fragments of various cities adjoining the ocean do. Briefly. Sometimes,
city maps—after all they are abstractions, neural paths, synapses at
work… as dreams are—momentarily overlap, converse, mix and mingle.

Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. Born in Rome, living
in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician and dancer. She is the author of Other Maidens
(BlazeVOX, 2020), An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise Press, 2020), In Her Terms (Cholla
Needles Press, 2021), Pages of a Broken Diary (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Alter Alter
(Elyssar Press, 2022).

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MEMORIES OF THE DEATH INSIDE
ME: An Ectopic Pregnancy Story

by Katie Ness

“Katie, I'm 8 weeks pregnant, I held off from telling you as long as I
could because I know this news could upset you, but I consider you
a close friend and I want to tell you and others first before I make it
public” she tells me in a voice note on instagram.

A very close friend is pregnant. I listen to the words on repeat, I hear
myself whisper those words.

I can’t breathe. Those words are splinters puncturing my heart. Envy
lodges in my throat. I feel nothing and everything all at once.

This is an announcement that is meant to exude joy, but an avalanche of
despair, jealousy and rage crashes through me. An emotional maelstrom
whirls around me, and I crumble into a heap. A wailing banshee on the
living room floor. Thank god my partner was at work.

It is a rarity for me to exhibit such fevered emotions, I’m often stoic
with a quiet demeanour, astrologers would report it is the placement
of Virgo in my moon sign that’s the reason for my placid and down to
earth nature, I tend to try and analyse my emotions, never quite feeling
into them. I’ve also never really known jealousy because I liken our lives
to wildflowers, each of us experience and grow in varied ways, a daisy
is not envious of a buttercup and a bluebell is not jealous of a poppy.
Considering my little analogy I’m often happy for others, even during
dark times in my life, I know those moments won’t last forever. All of us

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witness the ebb and flow of life at varying stages. We’re all wildflowers
just doing our best, trying to thrive in this meadow of life.

But this was different. This was something I attained and it was brutally
taken away from me. This is something I still desire and it is out of my
reach. It feels as unattainable as the moon. Dark memories of blood and
death bubbled, every tremor of grief erupted from my glacial stoicism,
cracked deep along my emotional faultline.

I want to be happy for my friend. She is beautiful, kind and sweet. I
want to reach out and hug her, to be excited and supportive. But instead
she is the mirror. The wishing well, reflecting back at me what I lost and
what she accidentally acquired with no effort. A cruel irony.

I’m screaming, with hot tears streaming down my face, a hard
subtropical storm. “It’s not fair! It’s not fucking fair!!!” Possessed by a
frenzied fury deep in my bones. Tempestuous. Tidal.

Her news to me was delicate and aching, just terrible timing. I wasn’t
angry at Sara, I was heartbroken. This was a sick joke played on me by
the gods. Looking out the window and reflecting on the news of her
pregnancy, the trees tell me It is mid November right now and the air
is crisp, leaves are falling and homes are cosy. Yet behind the cosiness is
the haunting anniversary of my near death creeping closer to my door
like frost.

November 2020 I found out I was pregnant, but instead of celebrating
new life, I was rushed into surgery to save mine. I am an ectopic
pregnancy survivor. A one in eighty chance of such a torture. I’m a
bereft of an 8 week old pregnancy and my left fallopian tube. The dead
foetus severed and whipped out of my belly button like an alien birth.

Ruptured... Butchered….Damaged womb.
The simplest things trigger me, trigger a meltdown. Flashbacks and
nightmares invade my thoughts and dreams. Showering and moisturising
my skin was once a great pleasure, a beauty ritual that made me feel
like queen Cleopatra, now riddled with torment at having to look at
my body. I avoid touching my scars. I neglect placing my hands on
my stomach. I can not bring myself to love that part of my body, even

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though it needs it the most. my body was punctured like Frankenstein's
creature. I felt like a creature, a barren broken animal.

It’s been over 12 months now. I know my pain is old news and people
tell me to move on, get over it, it’s just a scar, it was a quick operation,
at least you’re alive. Comparing my trauma to the removal of a vestigial
appendage.

But it’s all still so raw for me. I shudder at the flashbacks whilst
washing the dishes and taking a shower. The recurring nightmares of
nurses pinning me down as I struggle like a caged leopard backed into
a corner-hissing and scratching, terrified and mumbling with shock,
blood oozing out of my vagina like lava and doctors rushing around me
like moths poking a lightbulb. I remember waking up on the recovery
ward to see tubes sprouting from my body like vines, draining out the
blood from my stomach, canullas pumping medication in my arms and
a catheter inserted in my urethra. Barely moving. I’d lost a lot of blood,
I wasn’t eating. I was weak, disorientated and enveloped by grief.

I remember being frightened and bleeding heavily in the early
pregnancy unit, waiting in a silence that cuts like knives and then… “I’m
sorry, your pregnancy is ectopic, you are bleeding into your stomach,
we need to prep you for surgery.”

I’m staring with sorrow at the bloodied hysteroscope and a poster of
a happy couple holding a baby in the background.

I was supposed to have the operation in the afternoon to give me
time to adjust to the news. Within minutes over ten medical staff began
fluttering around me like panicked butterflies. The nurse couldn’t place
the two cannulas in my arms and I screamed in pain at the 3rd, 4th, 5th
attempts. I had lost so much blood my veins were failing.

Going into shock, body cold and shuddering, I begin to mumble
incoherently as a doctor tells my partner “If we don’t operate now, you’ll
lose her within the hour.”

The so-called ‘simple’ one hour procedure became two and half hours,
to quote the surgeon “It took longer than expected— it was a bloody
mess”.

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My partner had no idea if I had made it, he was left waiting, wondering.
No medical staff updated him. Three incisions were made, two for tubes
to drain the blood and a third for the laparoscopic operation through
the belly button to cut away my ruptured fallopian tube and foetus.

My first day on the recovery ward, I was informed that my body will
still think it is pregnant for many weeks and will continue to produce
pregnancy hormones. That this would cause great emotional distress and
I was advised to be gentle with myself. To feel both full and empty at
the same time broke my heart. To feel full and blossoming with life but
knowing it’s a mirage, that my womb is vacant destroyed me.

I often think of that tiny being, it got stuck and accidentally almost
killed me. It had the beginnings of a heart beat, a consciousness and
was potentially frightened as it was dying alone. Although I can’t say
for sure, it’s a passing thought, I suppose from some short lived residue
motherly instinct wishing I could have saved my pregnancy. There are
days I find myself whispering to the aether “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect
you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Please forgive me.”

This heartbreaking experience pulled me deep inside myself, I lost the
joy in the small things, working on my passions or socialising became
painful. I kept blaming myself for the loss of my baby and I’m still
scared for the future- Can I conceive again with only one fallopian tube?
Will an ectopic happen again? Making love will no longer feel 100%
safe, there will always be fear for my life during an act of love meant
to create life.

There are still days I feel like I am drowning, and over the past 12
months I let myself. I let myself feel it all. I surrendered to all my sorrow
and anger. I allowed my anger to erupt like a volcano. I am angry for
every woman who has been silenced in liminal agony. I am angry at
society’s failure at protecting and supporting women. I am angry at
the unease of which it feels to be a woman knowing my body is an
invitation for constant judgement. I am deeply saddened by perpetuating
mistreatment, dismissive and impudent commentaries of tragic birthing
and pregnancy loss stories. I am angered by lack of social and medical
care towards pregnancy health, especially in the first trimester.

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But slowly as I saw through the fog, I noticed for the first time, in a
long time, the profound beauty that had always been in front of me. I
see now that this near death was a rebirth. I am here to speak up and be
an advocate for change. I see now how precious life really is, when you
look death in the eye, you face your sweet mortality and you realise that
time is short. I want to fill my time with reverence and awe at the world,
I’m not going to waste it on things that really don’t matter.

Self growth takes sacrifice, the phoenix doesn’t just rise from the ashes,
she must first set fire to herself. She rises not from simply destruction
and devastation around her, she destroys every bit of what defines her
in order to become the next rendition of herself.

On my healing journey I took steps to burn away all that defines
me and all that was holding me back. My ectopic pregnancy made me
redefine so many aspects of myself.

I no longer hold the weight of the past or the static noise of others
drowning out my voice and my truth.

I have room for my stories to weave their way through the strands,
to become a way finder and I’ve been able to grow into someone I am
proud of.

Despite it all, I conquered. What was stuck will move, what was lost
will be found, and what overwhelmed me will be what allowed me to
grow and become the person I was always meant to be. So much changes
with time, and perspective is a powerful thing, it's only been over a year
but everything is different now. And while I am still on my healing
journey, I have made great waves in finding myself. And I hope to always
find the strength to burn and set fire to what I must when it's time to
begin anew and rise again from the ashes. With this death, birthed a
voice inside me that has become a protectress of my sovereignty, my
body and that of others.

Moving through my pain, my remedy is standing by my close friend
who is pregnant with her first child. I can not neglect her the way society
neglected me and many other women on this journey. I take ownership
of my own jealousy, I want to transform my hurt into love, soothe my
shadows so that I may be of the light, walking with my friend so that she

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doesn’t face the hardship of pregnancy alone. Being her guardian heals
the wound within my womb and births so much love deep in my heart.

Katie Ness is a writer and poet living in London. Her poetry is published with Hecate
magazine, Wandering Autumn, Beyond the Veil Press, Solstice Literary and more. Her
short stories, essays and articles can be read in Mulberry Literary, We for Women Stories,
Little Lion Press, Kindred Spirit, Femme Occulte and more. Her poetry chapbook
‘Aphrodite Fever Dream’ is soon to be published with Undressed Society Publishing. When
Katie is not writing, she is a yoga teacher specialising in women’s wellbeing. As an ectopic
pregnancy survivor she openly speaks out about her experience to spread awareness for
women’s reproductive health care and body autonomy. Katie has a BA Hons degree in Fine
Art and is looking to do an MFA in Creative Writing & Journalism in the near future.
She is currently working on a short story collection and travel memoir. https://www.
instagram.com/katie_wild_yogi/

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THE SHARPENING OF A KNIFE
An essay on the evolution of a kind woman

by Christy Bailey

Decay perhaps, or maybe erosion is a better word. The wearing away of
outer layers. The gristle at the center exposed. We’re not talking about
lovely river rocks, smooth and bulbous. Their trauma made them lovely.
Our trauma made us sharp. The word trauma really isn’t fair. It would be
greedy to use such a loaded word like trauma to describe just existing in
the world as a woman, but I’m bloodless now and have no manners. See,
the blood dried up. The thing that made me a woman. A young woman.

Age sneaks up on you. Or at least that’s what I’d always heard. The
sneaky part is true, but you can only see that in hindsight. In the process,
you think it’s a phase, this impregnation of intolerance growing slowly
inside you. Perhaps it’s filling the empty vessel where you once grew
babies. It causes you to start noticing the bullshit of others. The mistake
made in this early phase of awareness is overcompensation. Avoiding
your feelings. Gut instincts. She ends up giving even more of herself
at those moments so as not to suddenly frighten those around her. To
soften the blow, to ease the arrival of her selfishness. So much of your
flesh handed away so willingly. A waste, really. It just sped up the process.

Once upon a time, we had thick luscious cloaks of kindness shielding
us and protecting others. It felt natural. We walked through the world
wrapped in pleasing, soft-to-the-cheek, cashmere. Nice to see and nice to
wear, and nice to touch. But, it became wool over time. No undershirt
to protect us. The stifling racist heat of the world making it unbearable
for us in time. We tugged at the neck for relief. The world’s neglect of
the poor made it itch. We scratched when no one was looking. Watching
religion grow into something cruel made the wool chafe. Seeing women

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of the world go unheard rubbed us raw. Others around us found the
harsh wool sweater pleasing, but they were viewers of it, perceiving only
its cozy charm and appearance. It frayed and pilled over time from the
inside and left us in rags.

Or maybe it’s a metamorphosis or shedding of one’s skin like a snake.
A self-contained natural thing. Evolution. A personal journey of one.
As moms, wives, and caregivers, we have given and given, and perhaps
with each hand we offer to others, we also give a bit of ourselves, piece
by beautiful piece. We give away the meat and blood of our bodies. Is
it so surprising that we’re out of flesh? Out of blood? We’re skin and
bones and brutal beings. Used up? No. Enough of our pieces are left,
but we’re painfully aware of the depletion and hoard it for ourselves.
Selfish with our remaining treasure. Eager to be left alone to enjoy the
final feast. Greedy with our bodies and hearts and love.

Maybe our sweetness just gets depleted. Perhaps we’re only given so
much at birth, and if we give too freely, it catches up with us. Our give
a fucks run out. Eventually, we scoop into our vessels, and our porcelain
cups scrape the bottom of the barrel. We no longer have the ability
to sugarcoat. Or coddle. Or tolerate. We can no longer meet bullshit
with understanding or turn the other cheek to rudeness. We aren’t as
nice as we once were. We eventually meet rudeness with rudeness. We
ultimately meet intolerance with intolerance. We grow greedy with our
kindness. Protective.

A rebirth or a born-again feeling might describe it better. Not your
hands to Jesus rebirth or a newness that’s fresh and beautiful kind
of rebirth but a welcome thing nonetheless. A clarity. An awareness.
Seeing yourself and the world for what it truly is for the first time.
Age is a beautiful thing. Rugged and raw and breathtakingly beautiful.
For yourself. For others, it will look selfish and moody, and maybe
withdrawn. Maybe even cruel. A woman who knows herself is a powerful
thing to be handled lightly. Too many wrong words, and she will end
you. Maybe with her tongue, maybe with her fists, or maybe with the
worst fate of all. Silence.

Some in our lives will respond to this new brutal version of us by
changing or accommodating. Perhaps their once soul-draining behavior
gets tamped down, and they attempt to improve themselves by offering

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up bucket after bucket of kindness to compensate for your lack. You
will wave them away. You will resent them for taking all of you for years
and offering your bits back out of fear. And yes, they will fear you. They
will fear this new version of you. It is scary. You will be unrecognizable
to every person in your life except one. Yourself.
Christy Bailey is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, and she has been
honing her craft for many years. Essays in particular have become a way for
her to cope with our current political climate, her journey into middle age,
and her struggles as a woman in society. She longs to be a voice for other
women and their unique struggles in this world through all of her writings.

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THE NUMBERS GAME

by Will Maguire

An old friend, a bond salesman, called me in Nashville that morning
from the 68th floor of a high-rise in Lower Manhattan.

He described the second jet, low and fast. His voice shook. I told him
to get down on the street and head east up to Delancy and over whatever
bridge he could into the refuge of Brooklyn.

They had turned off the main elevators so he found the freight lift,
stumbled in his blue suit down to the street, then up through Chinatown,
over the bridge and off the island. He walked the 9 miles to Queens
and the train.

Catching his reflection in a mirror, he saw that blue suit was entirely
white, his face chalky, covered with a mist of dry wall and asbestos. He
said he looked like his own ghost.

When I lived in the City That Never Sleeps, I held up my end of it. I
didn’t count sheep. I'm Irish. I counted heartaches. For years I walked
the streets at night or drove, pretending there was somewhere I needed
to be.

Late one night, trudging up 10th Avenue, I was stopped by a working
girl, looking for a last fare. End of the month, the rent was due. I politely
declined and she walked along with me trying to see if she could put
her foot into the lonely crack most men carry and push that door open.

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We talked like strangers do that are knit together by whatever it is that
keeps people out on the street looking for something they will never
find in their peaceful beds and quiet dreams.

As I left her at some corner in Hell’s Kitchen she whispered like a
worried mother, “You watch out for yourself now. You take care.”

She began to walk away, then stopped, turned and called out to me,
“This city’s got a way of getting next to you.” Then she disappeared into
the darkness near the docks.

I knew what she meant. It gets in you. You can leave and swear you’ll
never step foot on those bricks and side streets again. But you aren’t
doing the deciding. It decides. And one day you feel it circling around
inside you. Roaring like a subway in your blood.

And it follows forever. Forever next to you.
I left, as much as going allows of leaving, in 2000. I sold what I could,
packed a U-Haul and one Saturday dawn drove away down 7th Avenue
to the Holland Tunnel. The last thing I saw was Trinity Church framed
by those permanent steel towers on each side.
Anyone that has ever lived there knows the city has always been a
numbers game. Lives are measured by salaries and bonuses.
People gauge themselves by birthdays and weight, by their credit scores
and debts, by dress sizes or the number of shots needed to tally up
enough courage to go home alone again on a Friday night.
Success is measured in square feet. It’s either some Chinatown studio
sized life looking out on an alleyway or it’s a 3-bedroom condo with
shoe closets on Riverside Drive.
It’s a numbers game. Try to multiply the hope. Try to divide the
longing. Stare at the remainder like maybe someday it’ll be the right
answer. Being young is a numbers game, too. You can’t wait for Time
to add some years to your heart, subtract its own innocence, and finally
reach critical mass. Shed the temporary pain. Look for what’s permanent
beneath it. What lasts.

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I stared at the high-rise kind of life always counting the floors and
stories each held.

I listened to strangers, trying to hear their secrets, promising myself
that maybe someday I would knit all their ragged confessions into
something beautiful. Something permanent.

One night late I was driving, returning from Brooklyn. The Battery
Tunnel goes under the harbor so quite literally you have to submerge
yourself, then float to the surface into Manhattan. It was raining hard.
Maybe 3 a.m.

Just as I was passing the Trade Center on West Street, a back tire started
that unwelcome thump thump thump of a flat.

Alone in Manhattan at 3 a.m. in a downpour I pulled to the side
directly in front of the two gleaming towers.

It was the kind of rain that drenches you in a minute with no hope of
keeping any part of yourself dry. Like being submerged above ground.

But I had no one to call and the streets were deserted. So I pulled up
my collar, climbed out, fished a jack out of the trunk and went to work
on the lugs.

I had replaced a couple worn tires the previous year and they had used
a mechanic’s gun to tighten the bolts down.

By then West Street had become a river. I was on my knees, muttering,
cursing under my breath when a lone car started past. He saw me and,
rather than sending a wave of water at me, slowed.

I continued to tug at the lugs but noticed he turned up on Vesey and
slowly came around. He pulled up a few car lengths behind me.

“Just great,” I thought, feeling for my billfold and slipping it into my
sock.

The driver, a nondescript middle aged man in a trench coat, stepped
out and walked toward me. He had something in his hand. I steadied
myself, lug wrench gripped like a club now.

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“Car trouble?” he asked.
“Just a flat,” I answered. “The lugs are a bear, but I’ll get ‘em.”
He glanced up at the towers, pointing, “You might get some help.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll manage.”
He looked up into the storm, then back down at me, “It’s always hard
. . .’till it isn’t.”
I nodded. He gestured at the umbrella he was carrying and said, “Well
I could at least shield you while you work.”
“No thanks,” I said again. “I’m drenched. Going to be a while yet. No
sense in both of us getting soaked.”
He gazed at me for a moment, then shrugged and walked back to his
car.
I went back to work, straining and muttering under my breath, a little
relieved he had left.
He got back behind the wheel but instead of driving off just sat there,
lights shining through the rain at me on my knees, full of my temporary
trouble between those two great and immortal skyscrapers.
I finally broke the first lug’s grip and went to work on the second, just
as stubborn, when I noticed the man get out again. He walked toward
me, raising his umbrella.
When he reached me, he looked up again at the towers, then down
at me on my knees. Then without a word he extended the umbrella,
shielding me.
It was pointless of course. All great things are.
The only causes worth much of anything are lost causes. The ones you
do in spite of their pointlessness. The ones, great or small, we do, not
because of what they might achieve but because of who we are.
For the next 30 minutes he held an umbrella over a stranger . . . me
. . . in a blinding storm.

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He never said word and neither did I. Some things do not require
explanation.

And when I finally won out and tightened down the last lug on the
spare, he simply closed his umbrella and walked away. He got into his
car and swung north into the dark.

I got to my feet and watched him drive off. Then I looked up at
the towers, permanent and unmoved by this small display of human
kindness.

But I had that feeling I sometimes get, that I was being shown
something . . . something hidden . . . like seeing just a glimpse behind
a veil. Something large hidden in something small.

After the attack, a friend, a NYC detective, volunteered to be a sifter.
Perhaps the greatest crime scene in history. The ruins were dragged to
Staten Island to be sifted like flour on a conveyor belt for months.

Looking for the remains of innocence, I suppose. Going through its
1.8 million tons of asbestos and mangled steel and lives, searching in
vain for reasons.

He told me 1000 souls were never identified. Even their 24 pairs
of chromosomes were indecipherable, circling forever above the trade
screens of Wall Street.

Those buildings are gone but others rose in their place. And strangers
came from places with no alleys and subways looking to make their
fortunes, to take the place of the lost.

110 stories . . . 3000 dead . . .
2 wars and 20 years. Always a numbers game.
Great things sometimes fall. Innocence, even a city's, is known only
by its absence. And now those towers that once seemed immortal are
no more. They were carried away, every stone and steel pillar, reduced
to dust by rage, then grief.
And we who remain sift through the evidence of our memories like
detectives, trying to solve some mystery beyond our mortal ken.

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Large things like towers disappear and small things like kindness
reappear again and again on the conveyor belt of memory.

The working girl on 10th Avenue was right. This city has a way of
getting next to you.

So when I look at that small acre of Manhattan what remains for me
now is not the memory of those impermanent towers. Some small thing
has risen in their place. Something that against all odds still lasts.

An unforgotten and pointless kindness. A lost cause. Like trying to
stay dry in a downpour.

I guess he must have had a debt.
Sometimes on September 11, I look into the mirror and still see the
person that wandered the streets at night. I see the man that drove the
avenues and stood out in storms.
My hair is gray now. And though I no longer wear a blue suit, there
is a fine mist of memory that covers me.
Like my friend, we all become our own ghosts, haunted by our
memories.
And some nights I still see a stranger looking up at what was . . . still
hear him saying, “It’s just hard. . . ’til it isn’t.”
Then I remember, it's always been a numbers game. Just no longer
the way I once thought.
My eyes are not nearly as hard or certain as they were. Now they show
a debt.

Will Maguire lived in New York City until 2000. He is a writer and songwriter, now
living in Nashville, TN. His most recent stories appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.

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HEALTH CARE IN THE UNITED
STATES

by Nathan Bachand

Have you ever been unable to pay a medical bill? Or perhaps you had
to sacrifice something to get enough money to pay. Many people in
recent years have been debating the question, should the US expand
medicare and have universal health care? The United States should adopt
universal health care because countries with universal health care have
higher life spans and cheaper medicine and the American government
could achieve reform like this.

The United States should adopt universal health care because countries
with universal health care have higher life spans. The average lifespan in
America is 78 years (Ortaliza, 2020). The same source also states that
Germany and the UK have a lifespan of 81, other nations with free
healthcare like Israel and Sweden have an even higher lifespan (Our
World in Data, 2022). Japan has the highest life expectancy at 84 years
old (Ortaliza, 2020) . These nations are located on 3 continents and 2
hemispheres, ruling out the geography or cultural norms, the common
thread is a robust health care system. Canada also has a higher average
lifespan than the US (Our World in Data, 2022) and if you look at
a population map from the Canadian government (Government of
Canada, 2015) most Canadians actually live on the same latitude as
Oregon, Maine, Michigan, and other US states. Despite living in a
similar climate and area, those living in the nation with better health
care live longer.

The United States should adopt universal health care because countries
with universal health care have cheaper medicine. In 2020 the US
department of health and human services published a report on insulin

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prices around the world. What they found was that American companies
were charging much more for insulin then they were in other nations.
The same bottle of insulin that costs 98 dollars in the US costs 12 dollars
in Canada, and only 9 dollars in France (Mulcahy, 2020) .The same
department also launched investigations on other types of medicine.
They found across the board that ill Americans where spending much
more money than patients abroad. Bendamustine (a chemotherapy
drug) costs almost 7 times as much as the international average

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018).
A counterclaim to this augment could be that it would require an
increase in taxes. This would hurt the American people and it would
seem that universal health care is too expensive to attempt. However in
reality universal health care the top 1% would pay two thirds of taxes
required (Gleckman, 2020) under Senator Sanders plan. A group of
economists (led by Simon Johnson) wanted to check what a medicare for
all would really costs in the US. They sent a letter to senator Elizabeth
Warren laying out possible options to pay for medicare for all. This is
what they said:
“Taxes on the Financial Sector, Large Corporations, and the Top 1%
of Individuals: We estimate that new targeted taxes on financial firms
will generate $900 billion in revenue, new taxes on large corporations
will generate $2.9 trillion in revenue, and new taxes on the top 1%
of individuals will generate $3 trillion in revenue, for a total of $6.8
trillion in additional federal revenue”(Johnson, 2019). This is without
mentioning that people would be receiving free and lower-cost treatment
and medicine. Medicare for all could save the American worker thousands
over their lifetime without raising their taxes (Galvani, 2020).
Government action like this would not be a new thing. During the
economic hardship of the early 20th century workers who got sick or
injured would not be able to work or pay for treatment. In 1905 Upton
Sinclar published “The Jungle” which focused on the life of factory workers
during and shortly after the industrial revolution (Constitutional rights
foundation, 2008). This quote puts into perspective there conditions:
“There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of
steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of

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tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every
hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound
quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at
four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men
in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and
whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could
work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years. ”(Sinclar, 100-02).
Because people like Upton Sinclair brought these things into the light
the government stepped in. Roosevelt, just months after the Jungle was
published, said "There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up
with the muck-rake”. Many laws concerning the meat packing industry
itself were passed(including the creation of the FDA), however there
were also laws aimed at improving America's healthcare system. Labor
groups, often taking inspiration from European health care systems
(Constitutional rights foundation, 2008).

In conclusion, the United States needs to adopt universal health care,
other nations have seen the benefits of universal health care such as
higher life spans and cheaper medicine. The government has put in place
reform like this before and needs to do it again to serve its people. As
voters we need to write to our elected o cials to call for change in our
government, and we need to vote for politicians who will modernize our
healthcare system. Once again it is time for us to advocate for those who
have been exploited in our workforce. We cannot expect our ill to survive
in a system that wants to take as much money as it can from them.

“The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance
to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor
man was down, and he had to stay down.”— Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Works Cited:
CBSThisMorning. “Bernie Sanders Talks about What His ‘Medicare
for All’ Plan Will Do.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Apr. 2019, Accessed 21
July 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCKC8DXTNJs.

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Constitutional Rights Foundation. “Bria 24 1 b Upton Sinclairs the
Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry.” CRF, Constitutional
Rights Foundation, Accessed 21 July 2022. https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-
of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-
the-meat-packing-industry.html

Galvani, Alison, et al. “Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the
USA.” The Lancet, The Lancet, 15 Feb. 2020, Accessed 21 July 2022.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-
6736(19)33019-3/fullte xt#%20?eType=EmailBlastContent&eI
d=ac666dcf-c1bb-4eb0-a6ea-39c4a9bb5 321.

Gleckman, Howard. “Sanders Proposes a $23 Trillion Tax Increase,
Mostly on High-Income Households and Businesses.” Tax Policy Center,
19 Mar. 2020, Accessed 21 July 2022. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/
taxvox/sanders-proposes-23-trillion-tax-increase -mostly-high-income-
households-and-businesses

Government of Canada, Statistics Canada. “Section 4: Maps.”
Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 30 Nov. 2015, Accessed 21
July 2022. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91-214-x/2015000/
section04-eng.htm

Ho man, Beatrix. “Health Care Reform and Social Movements in the
United States.” American Journal of Public Health, © American Journal
of Public Health 2003, Jan. 2003,Accessed 21 July 2022. https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447696/.

Simon, Johnson, et al. “Medicare_for_All_Revenue_Letter.” Received
by Senator Elizabeth Warren, 31 Oct. 2019, Accessed 21 July 2022.
https://assets.ctfassets.net/4ubxbgy9463z/27ao9rfB6MbQgGmaXK
4eGc/d06d5a2246

65324432c6155199afe0bf/Medicare_for_All_Revenue_Letter
Appendix.pdf?sou rce=soc-web-ew-tw-rollout-20191101. Accessed 21
July 2022.

Mecklenburg, Robet S. “What Employers Can Do to Accelerate
Health Care Reform.” Harvard Business Review, Harvard University,

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8 May 2017, Accessed 21 July 2022. https://hbr.org/2015/10/what-
employers-can-do-to-accelerate-health-care-reform

Mulcahy, Andrew W, et al. “Research Report Comparing Insulin Prices
in the U.S. to Other ... - Aspe.” Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation , Sept. 2020, Accessed 21 July 2022. https://aspe.hhs.gov/
sites/default/files/migrated_legacy_files/196281/Comparing-I nsulin-
Prices.pdf

Ortaliza, Jared, et al. “How Does U.S. Life Expectancy Compare to
Other Countries?” Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, Health System
Tracker, 8 Apr. 2022, Accessed 21 July 2022.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-
expectancy-compar e-countries/#Life%20expectancy%20at%20
birth%20in%20years,%201980-2020% C2%A0.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Comparison of
U.S. and International Prices for Top Medicare ... - Aspe.” Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Oct. 2018, Accessed 21 July
2022.

https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/259996/
ComparisonUSInternatio nalPricesTopSpendingPartBDrugs.pdf

Our world in Data. “Life Expectancy vs. Health Expenditure.” Our
World in Data, Accessed 21 July 2022.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-
expenditure.

SINCLAIR, UPTON. Jungle. W W NORTON, 202

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