Adelaide Award Anthology 2018: SHORT STORIES, Vol. Two

SHORT STORIES
It’s his brown socks next, then his pants. How compliant and
obliging they are. The pants briefly wrap themselves around my
arm, like a cat with its claws out or a child reluctant to follow along,
pulling painfully at your outstretched hand. But I’m right there,
ready to help.

“It’s OK,” I say as I pry them away. “You’ll like the park.”
The white undershirt is the next one on the list. It escapes my
grip for a moment as I carry it down the street, and it surrenders
itself to the wind. How far would it fly, if I let it? Would it reach
the ocean shore? Would a seabird take it to its nest, to keep its eggs
warm? Do seabirds have nests, or do they sleep on top of black rocks
amidst the sea spray? Do they ever feel lonely, those seabirds, or are
they just glad to be free?



After the first few times, he stops asking about his things.
“I must have left my sweater at the station,” he mutters absent-

mindedly. It feels like there is less of him in the house now, like he
is wearing thin. I shrug. I do a lot of shrugging these days. It feels
like I’m exercising my shoulders, first left, then right, then both at
the same time. There is a rhythm to it, like running. Shrug, shrug,
shrug, and away I go.



His police hat is the last piece of him I take to the park. It refuses
to budge, holding on to the hat stand like a drowning man, but I
won’t take no for an answer.

“Come on, move it,” I say to the hat.
I am emboldened by my newfound strength, my shoulders
more flexible and resilient from all the shrugging, my legs sturdier
from all the walking to the park and back. If the hat had an elbow, I
would grab it, gently but firmly. That’s how it’s done. Steering them
by the elbow is the way to go.

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When I get to the park with the hat, it looks like there’s a man
sleeping under the bench. There isn’t, though. It’s just all the clothes
I’ve been placing there, gently, day after day. It’s strange that no one
wanted them. They are good clothes. Anyone can see that. Even I can.

The invisible sleeping man’s empty knees are bent at an impos-
sible angle. I cover his imaginary face with the unwilling police hat.
Would you look at that: it fits perfectly.



Over the next few days I go through my own clothes. There’s
nothing else for me to do, really. This is the next step, there’s no
question about it.

I find the red sequined dress he bought for me years ago. I
never wore it once. How little must he know about me to buy me
that dress. And even if I wanted to wear it, I wouldn’t be able to now.
My new shoulders would never fit in it. But it would look lovely on
a smaller woman with narrower shoulders. It really would.



“Honey,” he says that night after work, “It’s the Police Officer Ball
tomorrow night, remember?”

At first I think he’s talking to someone else, but there’s no one
else here, so he must mean me.

“Could you wear your red dress, please, Honey? The one with
the sequins? It looks so good on you.”

Who is this woman he’s talking to? I’ve never worn a red se-
quined dress in my life. And he’s never called me honey before.



The moment he leaves the next morning, I get to work. There’s so
much to do; it needs to be perfect. That’s the least I can do for him.

I place the red dress neatly across the bedspread. It’s exquisite,
truly. It’s just not me. I add a pair of silk stockings, and a Chantilly

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lace and satin slip with matching panties. A pearl necklace and ear-
rings. A pair of high-heeled shoes he bought after he took a work trip
to Sacramento. I never asked what the trip or the shoes were for. I
just said thank you, as one does to be polite. And to keep the peace.

There. She looks lovely. The sequins catch the light like fish
scales in bright sunshine. I wonder if she’s a good swimmer. I’m
becoming a runner, myself. It’s like growing into a brand new skin.
I’m not very fast, not yet, but my pace is steady and I don’t stop. The
two of them will look good together, I’m sure. Much better than he
and I ever did.

This is my parting gift to him, the woman in a red sequined
dress, in satin and silk, and high-heeled shoes. The woman who
could have been me, only just. It doesn’t matter if she’s invisible,
either. She will go well with the invisible man, the one sleeping
under the park bench. They can look at the stars together. Maybe
they’ll even hold hands and kiss in the summer rain, who knows.
Keep each other warm at night, in winter. And in this world, who
could hope for more?

I put on my sneakers and pick up my purse. That’s really all
that I need. I leave my keys on the kitchen table and carefully close
the door, making sure it locks behind me. I walk down the stairs,
each familiar crack and stain a bygone song. The pavement meets
my feet with a welcoming thud. I start off walking, but as I come
closer to the park, I suddenly break into a run. It’s as if my legs have
a mind of their own, and their mind is set on flying. I pass by the
invisible man and his bench. One of the sleeves of his sweater flaps in
the wind. It looks like he’s waving me to stop, but I keep on going.
I’ll see where it takes me.

Halfway around the world isn’t that far when you’ve learned
how to run.

Dr. Masha Shukovich is a hybrid prose writer and a poet. She
holds an MA and a PhD from Texas A&M University and was

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the 2017 winner of the San Francisco Writing Contest in Adult
Fiction. She is currently attending the MFA Program in Creative
Writing at Goddard College as the second-place recipient of the
2018 Goddard/PEN North American Scholarship. Her creative
work has appeared in I come from the World literary journal, Per-
mafrost Magazine, Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2017, and
elsewhere. Her writing focuses on the elements of magical realism,
as it examines the notions of hybridity, postcolonialism, and the
supernatural and natural coexisting in the same space and at the
same time. In both her prose and poetic work, Dr. Shukovich seeks
to illuminate and demystify the multifaceted and fraught concept
of the mistrusted, inscrutable, and ultimately unknowable racialized
and gendered Other that continually shapeshifts, embodies disjunct
subjectivities, resides in the margins and liminal spaces, and pushes
against the sacred and protected national boundaries of citizenship
and belonging.

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The Bubble

By Annina Lavee

This is not a toy. Allie opened the closet door then reached her hand
onto the shelf over the dresses. Out came the long thin plastic bag
with the white label and black letters. It had lain there untouched
for over a year.

She knew Peter would forgive her for this, might even praise
her, although that was going a bit far, really. He was gone and
couldn’t have an opinion about this where he was, if there was a
where.

A bale of straw in the backyard fronted with a target was where
she aimed her arrows. The feeling of strength in her shoulders was
what she loved when she pulled back on the string of the bow, then
let the arrow fly to its destination.

Years earlier, she was standing in the hallway that led to the
bedroom of their home. “Are you ready darling?” she asked.

“In a moment. I just have to find that tie you gave me,” Peter said.
In the bedroom, she found a pair of legs sticking out of the
closet door, like a discarded mannequin, while the rest of his body
was hidden in the dark of the closet. She laughed, remembered his
attempt at magic tricks when they had first dated.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“What are you doing, a bad Houdini?”
He coughed several times while she stood there.
“Dusty back there?” she asked.
“Here it is.” He began to reappear, torso, arms, then his full form.

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She gasped. His face was covered with a mask, the mouth ajar,
in imitation of the Munch painting, the Scream. In his left hand he
held the dark blue tie with white dots, haloed in dust. She laughed
again. He pulled off the mask exposing a broad grin. She thought he
still looked handsome even with jowls forming. Peter was a tall man
with black bushy eyebrows, thick, wiry black hair before it turned
grey, before he went bald. She’d adored him in the beginning of
their relationship and it continued. Of course, they had problems
over the years but nothing they couldn’t work through.
“Here let me shake it out for you.” Her hand was outstretched.
“I can do it.” He coughed again.
“All that dust,” she said.
The following day he was still coughing, and the day after, and
the day after.
“Don’t be silly, it’s just allergies,” he responded when she sug-
gested he make an appointment with the doctor.
Spring pollens were in the air. She had a feeling about this. By
fall he agreed.
The dark shading on the x-ray was two inches in diameter, ap-
proximately. They couldn’t be exact without cutting into his body,
which they did finding that it had spread, was inoperable, and re-
quired radiation and chemo. Allie and Peter referred to the mass as
“It” making the cancer less solid in some way.
An old friend of Allie’s recommended Dr. Sheriff. He seemed
trustworthy. David liked him although Allie was never sure this was
the test of a good physician; still, he was well respected in his field
and his diplomas hung as testimonials, covering a huge portion of
his office wall. Was it fate? Was it out of the general chaos of life
that Peter had received this diagnosis? She didn’t know anything
other than that a harsh reality had stopped at their door, which had
been carefully locked each night. He courageously moved through
all the passageways of treatment with a half-smile. She collected him,
comforted him best she could after the vomiting fits.
Allie didn’t like Dr. Sheriff even if he was any mother’s dream
for a marriageable daughter, with cave deep brown eyes, a body that
she imagined had once run on a football field, the guy who kicked

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the ball when the time was running out, when his team hadn’t made
enough forward motion for those extra points. No getting hit in the
head, even with a helmet on for him. She was sure he had run for
political office in high school and won. With the last name Sherriff,
Allie decided that his parents must have been stoned when they
chose his first name, Marshall.

“We’re going to take good care of you,” he said to Peter. “I
want you to not worry about anything. You’ve got the best on your
side.” The treatments began; the side effects began; the vomiting
began; the hair loss began.

It grew smaller.
It grew bigger.
And bigger, spread through his lungs where it had initially set
up housekeeping and was killing Peter, its host. Such a strange dis-
ease she thought; it must hate itself as much as she hated It.
Then Peter was accidentally overdosed with chemo. He lay
there pale, so thin she could see many of his bones poking against
his skin. “These things happen,” Dr. Sheriff said. “Life isn’t fair.”
No apology. In the cafeteria she heard one of the nurses complain
that a chart was incorrectly entered—was sure she heard Dr. Sheriff’s
name—a decimal point in the wrong place. She leaned closer but
couldn’t overhear the rest of the story.
“Water,” he said. “I’d like some.” Peter was so weak; he lay in
the hospital bed on white sheets; behind him on the wall were green
buttons and red buttons, and nearby plastic tubes that lay on carts.
Allie walked over to the counter and poured a full glass of
water, then handed it to him. His hand shook as he raised the cup
to his lips, took one sip then the rest landed on his chest dribbling
over onto the sheets.
“Too full.” His voice weak but edged. “Look what’s happened.
Don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, I–”
“Go for a walk outside will you, hovering over me makes me
nervous, it’s pitiful.”
“I’m–”
“Go!”

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“He’d always been kind and generous. She walked into the hall
and made a call. “Could you just talk to him for a moment, calm
him down?” she said.
“No,” Dr. Sheriff responded. “The disease has gone to his
brain, there’s no point in a conversation. It’s the medicine that must
do the work.”
“But just a few words. He’s agitated. Is it because of the over-
dose?”
“No, I have other patients waiting.”
After she hung up the phone a little bubble formed in her belly.
Every time after that when she spoke with Dr. Sheriff that bubble
grew; the opposite of a child was growing inside her. She called the
surgeon, who had operated on Peter, who spoke with him, calmed
him down after a few moments. He recovered, got some strength,
then his organs began to shut down.
Several years later, her belly was still inflated, pooched out.
She hadn’t been able to shut down her mind, that went over and
over and over the details of what had occurred during those nine
months, of watching Dr. Sheriff remove fluid from his lungs, the
long needles, the suffering Peter endured. For two weeks at night his
legs went into spasm; he screamed in pain as she would try to release
the cramps in his legs by rubbing them gently.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Sheriff said, “your body lacks potassium. Didn’t
the nurse mention that? It’s what’s causing the cramping; just buy
some supplemental potassium and it will stop.”
They’d had no children; she wasn’t worried about aging; it
was the end that concerned her. Her own death. How would she
manage on her own depending on how it went; what would end her
life and when? This was when she realized that the perfect balm for
how she felt day after day was to do something to stem the growth
of that bubble.
She pulled back the bow with the arrow aimed at the belly
of Dr. Sheriff, then let her aim adjust as he came closer to his car.
Maybe this was too harsh a punishment? If the lawyer she’d spoken
with had given her any hope it would never have come to this.
Perhaps his heart had a titanium valve that caused him to be so

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cold. Maybe it was enough to scare him, or just let him experience
some pain. What was she doing? This was crazy, she knew. But she
couldn’t release the tension in her arm, enjoyed the strength she
felt as she pulled back tighter. She had felt useless; now she was in
control. The fuse that started with a hiss in her brain, moved down
her arteries, veins, flashed into her body; a clicking noise began in
her throat each time she took a breath. She started counting, to help
her concentrate. Her foot slid on the gravel but stopped once she
planted her heels. She almost lost the tension on the leather. Life
wasn’t fair. All she had to do was lean in at the right moment, when
he’d see her in the scream mask, just before she’d let it go.
Annina Lavee teaches screenwriting at the University of Arizona.
Her work has appeared in The Literary Journal Brevity, The Ade-
laide Literary Journal, Sandscript (winning second prize for poetry),
The Awareness Journal, The Mountain Eagle and the Desert Leaf.
She has received grants from the Arizona Arts Commission and the
Tucson Pima Arts Council and was a finalist in the Arizona State Po-
etry Contest-Jorie Graham judge in 2003. She attended the Squaw
Valley Community of Writer’s program with scholarship and was a
semi-finalist for the 2014 Tucson Festival of Books Contest. Lavee
worked in film production in New York City including as producer
of the short film/video unit at Saturday Night Live. She is a freelance
writer and filmmaker.

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The Cicadas

By Meg Paske

2003.

I was 22. It was the year of the 17 year cicada cycle. The technical
name of the breed was Septendecim. Others simply referred to them
as locusts. They were beautiful and terrifying—blue and yellow with
bright orange, ornamental trim. The size of humming birds. Only
male cicadas make the sound for which they are famous and the
music they made gave me a buzz through the summer.

There were millions. They droned on like a distant train, never
to approach. Their sound became a constant reminder of what hap-
pened that summer. I still hear them in moments and glimmers of
melancholia. I remember everything.

There were warnings; I suppose I ignored them. The reck-
lessness of our games; the constant thrill of action without conse-
quences; the heat of the summer built up as the sound of the cicadas
droned on.

I met Rosie outside of the library. She leaned against the brick
of the building, smoking a Lucky Strike. Something about her enig-
matic presence drew me to her like a magnet. I smiled at her as I
approached. She took that for a request to bum one from her, I
guess; by the time I reached her, she had already pulled another from
her soft pack. I had never taken a drag from a cigarette in my life.
She lit it while her own burning smoke still hung from the side her

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mouth. She handed it to me casually. I didn’t know what to do. I
didn’t know what to say.

My arms, full of books on sundry topics: Tiger Lillies, the
works of Dorothy Parker, an old book by Margaret Atwood and a
re-edited collection of Stephen King’s first stories: originally pub-
lished under Richard Bachman—the “Bachman Books.” My fa-
vorite was “The Long Walk.” I had read it at least a dozen times. I
shifted the pile to rest on my left forearm.

Even among the smoke, I could smell—inhale—her scent. It
emanated from her: patchouli and wild flowers. Her long, cut off
t-shirt (some 80s big hair band) barely covered her torn to shred
denim shorts. Unevenly cut, they revealed bone thin legs shoved into
brown cowboy boots with pink and green flowered trim. A stunning
contrast to her dark braids and even darker eyeliner.

Rosie was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
With my free hand, I took the cigarette. Not knowing what
to do with it, I put it up to my lips and tried to look natural. I had
barely sucked in, when I entered a coughing fit. Rosie raised a half
smile—that half smile with which I was to fall in love—she ashed
out her own cigarette on the bottom of her right boot.
She tenderly took back the smoke from my now trembling
right hand. I could not take my eyes off of her. I visited the library
frequently, but never had I seen (or noticed) her before. I wondered
how I could have missed her.
“I’m Rosie.” That was all she needed to say. She grabbed the
hand that had just betrayed my smoking virginity and instead of
shaking it, she kissed it. From that point forward we were welded
to one another.
“Angela,” I blurted out.
“Some collection you got there—planning on reading them
all?” She smiled again – her mischievous half smile—and winked.
“I suppose. Most I’ve read already.” The words flew from my
mouth, cut the air like a miter saw.
“Well, if you’ve read them before, you’ll have some time on
your hands then?” She half asked, half declared. “Let’s go.”
The cicadas droned on.

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I followed her to a park near the library, dropping my books off
on a picnic table. We walked around until she found an acceptable
place to land. I started to sit down next to her and she grabbed my arm.
“No, sit directly across from me.” I complied.
She continued without so much as a breath, “Now, we’re going
to look directly into each other’s eyes, Angel.” Her command, her inti-
mate demeanor—at once absurd and charming—struck my mind like
a lead pipe. No one has ever called me Angel. God I hope she doesn’t stop.
“Four minutes.” A pocket watch materialized. “No looking
away, no talking, no touching. Those are the rules.” My first of
Rosie’s games.
My heart raced. Is this happening? Ten minutes ago, I had been
blissfully unaware of Rosie’s existence and now we were gazing into
one another’s eyes like lovers. The cicadas droned on; they drowned
out the sound of my wild heart. I watched her watch me. The four
minutes melted into one after the other, after the other. By the final
moment, when she looked down at her watch—four minutes to the
second—she grabbed my other hand. She kissed it.
“Have you done this before?” I asked meekly, having no clue
of anything else to say.
“No.” She whispered, “Now hush. And listen.”
We leaned back together, side by side now, into the grass. We
closed our eyes and listened to the cicadas. I heard her kick off her
cowboy boots, and her foot brushed against mine. Caressed my calf
and started rising towards my thigh. Suddenly, she shot up.
“C’mon…there are people you need to meet.”
I forgot all about the library books, lying neglected on the
picnic table.
The remainder of the summer was a haze of Rosie’s dreamy
games, smoking Lucky Strikes (I finally got the hang of it) and lis-
tening to her poetry, watching her, experiencing her. Her friends
proved all as captivating and ageless as she, but none kept a hold on
me like Rosie. I never learned their full names; they all went by the
names she had given them: Kali, Cat-eye, Heidi, Glendo, Rumor. The
cicadas droned on through our caroling days and sultry night. We
spent every minute together and slept only a few moments each day.

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Kali took care of us. She warded off, as she called it, ‘the bad
cosmos,’ from infiltrating our perfect one. We stayed up until dawn,
making plans for the rest of our lives. Each of us, as she declared,
had a calling. Mine was the keeper and my name remained the name
Rosie gave me the day we banged into one another’s souls. I was
Angel.
Cat-eye was pragmatic. She only allowed our nonsense to go so
far. She wore solely blue, and kept her hair the same color: buzzed
at the sides, with a tuft of forget-me-not waves sweeping across her
forehead. She cooed to the rest of us when our ‘games’ went too far.
She was not there the night that it happened.
Heidi was the only virgin in the group. A self-proclaimed
asexual. We looked at her as the innocence of our community and
as such, she always wore her hair up in thick blond braids upon
her head. She declared the music of the cicadas as our theme of
love and togetherness. To Heidi, their drone fed our communal
embrace.
Glendo spent his time making love to the rest of us. He was
our source of power. Making love with Glendo was not about
having sex, it was about being fed. Like coital vampires. Other than
Heidi, Rosie was the only one who resisted his advances. She saved
her affection and love for me, but; she insisted on my participation
with Glendo’s fucking. She said it sustained her through me and
that was enough.
Rumor was the silent one. He stuttered so badly he barely
talked, but when he sung, his voice was more genuine than any
others’ I had ever heard. His song could change the world. We
danced to his song. Rosie’s favorite part of life, as she put it, was the
freedom of dance. She was terrible at it, and knew it, but danced
whenever she could and wherever.
The cicadas droned on; providing a constant backdrop for Ros-
ie’s dance.
The night it happened we were having a picnic in a cemetery.
Our family, the one Rosie created and pulled me into like a magnet;
the one for which I abandoned all logic and reason to be a part; the
only family I ever knew, drew closer to one another by the minute.

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I did not make love with Glendo that night. I was preoccupied with
Rosie, with her unabashed beauty. Her long dark hair spun like ser-
pents in unruly waves, surrounding her fair skin, every few moments
brushing my own face, neck, chest.

The cicadas droned on, particularly loud that night. Loud
enough to almost mute the sound of a nearing train whistle. The
cemetery bordered a track that was rarely, if every used. I was sur-
prised to have heard the whistle at all.

Rosie perked up immediately and insisted we get to the tracks
and witness the train as closely as possible. Had Cat-eye been there,
things might have ended up differently. Rosie took off. The rest of
the family fled after her. This seemed to all of us more than one of
Rosie’s madcap games, and that of a terrible mistake on the verge
of explosion.

We found her though, perched on a log, overlooking a slight
downward descent towards the tracks. Just close enough to antic-
ipate the rush of the approaching train. Rosie was safe. The train
whistle blew louder and the cicadas droned on. Soon, as it became
quite clear the six of us were to be experiencing an encounter with
a train, like never before. I began to get nervous. I was the keeper
after all. I took a place by Rosie on her log. I grabbed her hand and
we waited. No one spoke. Rumor began to sing.

Suddenly, almost without a warning (though the whistle at this
point had blown more than half a dozen times, each mounting in
decibel level) the train flew by the point in the woods through which
we sat. It felt like we were being sucked into our own personal tor-
nado. We all began to hold each other’s hands, and hummed a long
with the music Rumor was making; though it was barely audible.

Still, the cicadas droned on.
After what seemed like hours, the train passed completely. We
sat silently for a moment, the whistles, the blast of the train, the
buzzing of the cicadas, dissolving into a cacophony of delicious vi-
brations. The most wonderful feeling of pure happiness, of unfettered
love, washed over me as I continued to grasp Rosie’s hand. I turned
and kissed her right cheek. Rosie had a thing about always being on
the left side of people. A neurosis that endeared her forever to me.

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Again, Rosie emerged from her temporary trance. “We must
dance.” She whirled, she flew, down the hill: graceful as an egret. We
obediently followed, single file. I led. Rumor was the last. He began
to sing a song about angels.
Rosie and I danced without abandon. We made love with our
hearts and our bodies, close enough to touch, far enough away to gaze
into one another’s eyes. Four minutes came and went, as quickly as they
had the first day Rosie kissed my hands—the day I fell in love with her.
And then it happened.
Rosie collapsed, having slipped on one of the slick rails, greased
by the oil used on the tracks and dampened from the mist that had
begun to fall. The mist of which none of us had taken notice. She
fell as gracefully as she had melted down the hill not but minutes
before. Rumor’s music ended.
Rosie struck her head on the rail. Rosie’s dancing ended.
The cicadas droned on.
When Rosie emerged from her coma, it was mid-October; the
cicadas had long since hibernated into their homes, underground.
They droned on in Rosie’s mind. She wept for weeks, begging them
to leave her. Weeks turned to months—years. I wished desperately
for my mind and Rosie’s to be welded back together as one. Her
Angel had failed her. Her Angel had danced her into oblivion. The
cicadas droned on.

2020.

“Rosie, hush, and listen. The cicadas are back.”
We sat on a bench, near the window from which she peered

every day, silently begging the cicadas to abandon her mind. I had
visited her since the day that it happened; every day we sat on our
bench for 17 years. “I know,” she said, grabbing my hand. A tear
fell down her cheek and stained her hospital scrubs. This year, this
summer, was the closest I have been to sharing Rosie’s mind again.
Until another 17 years pass.

The cicadas droned on.

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Megan Paske is an author, piano teacher, cat mom, and french horn
and piano enthusiast. Writing has been a lifelong passion for her.
After penning her first letter to the editor at age 13, she went on
to study Journalism at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her
fiction work has made its way around the literary fiction journal cir-
cuit—online and off—since 2015. With her ninth published story
and first fiction prize in 2017, she is on her way to finding her literary
voice. She is an avid fan and participant of National Novel Writing
Month (NaNoWriMo) and looks forward to completing her fourth,
full-length manuscript this upcoming November. Outside of fiction,
she chronicles her experience living with Bipolar Disorder, along
other life adventures, on her blog, https://livemymadworld.blog/.

Megan lives in Neenah, Wisconsin, with her husband and their
five cats (because four wasn’t enough).

365



The Peddler Ibrahim

By Emily Peña Murphey

At the end of each winter, when the first breath of spring was begin-
ning to stir among the grasses, an exotic visitor came to the valley
and the upland rancherías. He was a lean and sinewy man of indeter-
minate age who pulled behind him a small wooden cart, positioned
between the traces like a beast of burden. The cart looked old and
was about the size and shape of a casket, with large iron-rimmed
wheels. It was painted with intricate designs, in dust-abraded colors
that had once been bright. It was filled with various, trunks, sacks,
valises, and a lacquered antique jewelry box that was always con-
cealed under a worn carpet.

The cart’s owner was a peddler, or buhonero, who sold inex-
pensive items of utility or beauty and made a circuit through the
villages of the Sierra and some of the region’s haciendas and larger
cities. In addition to selling small household items and trinkets, he
also purchased from the local women the pieces of needlework that
they had laid up during the winter months, to trade at a small profit
in the mercados further along his route.

Since the peddler had a long and untrimmed beard and always
wore a black cloth cap, he was referred to by some as el Judio An-
derero, the “wandering Jew.” Others took him for a gypsy and fear-
fully guarded their young children while he was about. But the fact
was that no one really knew his origins or faith; and his anonymity
lent an air of romance to his brief presence during an otherwise drab
season.

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The stranger was more formally known as Señor Ibrahim. Be-
cause of his unconventional occupation and due to a general mistrust
of the foreigner, the Zacatecos did not welcome him as a social guest
but only as a transactor of business. However, Innocencia Cisneros,
in her need for companionship had once or twice persuaded him to
pause in his travels for refreshment and a conversation.
On this February morning, when el buhonero arrived at her
ranchito, Innocencia had been in the dooryard scattering feed to her
small flock of chickens, with the infant Arnulfito bundled snugly on
her back in a sling fashioned from her rebozo. The night’s frost on the
higher ground was beginning to relent a bit and devolve into mud in
the ruts and hollows. Chencha heard the sound of footsteps and trun-
dling cart wheels approach haltingly up the mountain trail, and soon
saw the familiar stranger rounding the pirulito tree to enter her small
front garden. The peddler rested his burden for a moment to catch his
breath and greeted the young mother with a gentle, “Buenos días.”
“Y a usted! Bienvnidos!” Innocencia replied, pleased at the
sight of the traveler. It was the second visit that he had paid her
at the homestead established for her by the man who was now her
master. She threw the last nubbbins of corn to the flock, set down
the feed pan, and wiped her hands on her apron.
Señor Ibrahim, as always, refused her invitation to enter the
house so Chencha went inside to retrieve the products of the past
season’s needlework from its storage place in the the old cedar trunk
at the foot of her bed. The grandest offering was an hilo retirado
linen table cloth with a dozen matching napkins, which might ul-
timately grace a living room in one of the fine homes in Ciudad
Zacatecas. In addition, there were five sets of cotton dishtowels em-
broidered over stenciled patterns in groups of seven, each marked
in chain stitch letters for a day of the week. There were also various
small drawn-work doilies and antimacassars.
Ibrahim had an eye for workmanship and beauty, and knowing
Chencha’s work to be of the finest quality he always gave her a good
price. With what generosity he could manage, he also made sure to
leave her with a small pilón such as a pretty handkerchief or length
of ribbon, for she was one of his favorite clients.

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While he was looking over her wares, Innocencia went out to
the choza de cocina and tossed a handful of tea leaves into a small
clay pitcher. This she filled with water from the enameled kettle
that still boiled on the hearth stones, left over from her own early
morning coffee and kitchen chores. Once the tea had steeped for a
few minutes Chencha strained it into a china cup and sweetened it
liberally with honey, in the style that she recalled was to her visitor’s
taste.
Exiting the hut she carried the steaming cup around to the
huerta and invited her buyer to sit and warm himself on the sunny
bench that stood against the whitewashed front wall of the little
house where she and her child lived away from polite society. As
she seated herself beside her visitor, perhaps detecting the fragrance
of the honey, her infant awoke and began to fret. Chencha shifted
him around to the front of her body, lifted her huipil, and gave him
the breast. She sighed deeply as she felt the familiar constricting
sensation of her milk letting down.
“What a handsome young child you have there, Señora!” the
old man observed as he stretched his bones and blew on the hot tea.
“So you have taken a husband since I last saw you.”
“To be truthful, no,” Chencha replied casting her eyes toward
the ground.
She paused for a moment and wondered if this outsider could
be entrusted with her story. Feeling weary of her burden of secrecy,
she decided to take the risk and go on.
“If I might ask that you tell no one, abuelo, the fact of the
matter is that I am a barragana, the concubine of the hidalgo of
the hacienda La Calandria. He purchased me from my family by
forgiving a debt that my unfortunate father incurred as a laborer in
his silver mine. Don Onofrio has a legal wife and family in the city;
this infant Arnulfito is the natural child I have borne him.”
“Que barbaridad, my hija!” the peddler exclaimed sympathet-
ically. “You can trust me to secrecy about this matter. I have no ties
to anyone in this community, and I learned long ago not to engage
in women’s idle gossip.” Then he sat back and mused for a moment,
taking a deeper swallow of his tea.

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“In truth, I think it no sin,” he went on, “for in days gone by
the law of my faith permitted men to take more than a single wife,
and such unions were blessed by our religious leaders.”
“And what faith might that be, Señor Ibrahim?”
“Mahometano, amiga. I am Libanés. My family has followed the
Spaniards throughout the world as merchants and traders. I myself was
born in the city of Guadalajara, where my people were shopkeepers
for generations. I took to the road as a young man when there was not
enough trade there to serve myself in addition to my older brothers.
And now I am so accustomed to this life that I suppose when I leave
the world they will bury me facing the East in this little wagon!”
“May God grant you a long and healthy life, mi tío! But if I
might be so bold as to ask, have your brothers taken many wives?”
“Oh, no, in a Catholic country such as Mexico it’s no longer
possible to do so—at least not openly. But, figurate! In the cities many
married Chrisitans such as your master keep a mistress in a “casa
chica,” and it’s considered no shame.” He took a few deeper draughts
of the now cooling tea and began to muse on his own relations.
“My oldest brother has done so well that he once took a trip to
España itself, and visited many of the ancient castles and mosques
of the Arabs and African Moros. They were built before the dreadful
time when we and the Jews were cast out of the kingdom, or else
left with the choice of conversion to Christianity or annihilation.
Look at this!”
Ibrahim got up and fumbled for a minute in a leather satchel
among the various parcels in his cart. He drew out a battered tinted
photograph, which he handed to Innocencia. It showed a vast palace
with boldly striped archways, vaulted golden ceilings, and exquisite
pillars and courtyards.
“La Gran Mezquita de Córdoba!” He said proudly.
Innocencia appreciatively remarked that she had never seen a
building grander than the local church or hacienda, but that this in
comparison looked like something conjured from a fairy tale.
“It is as real as this bench we are sitting on, my dear, but sadly
no longer in use for its original purpose. I’m sorry to say it was con-
verted into a Christian church some centuries ago!”

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“And yet our sacerdote has told me that we, the Jews, and the
Arabs are all brothers because we worship the same God,” Chencha
countered, hoping that her words might serve as some consolation.
“True enough, mi hija, but just the same there is no denying
that mine are a defeated people. Well, enough of such talk!” he said,
finishing his tea and setting the empty cup on the bench. “The sun
is climbing in the sky and I have a long distance to travel.”
Taking a worn leather pouch out of his vest pocket, the old
man proposed a sum that he might offer Innocencia for her handi-
work. The two haggled for a moment in a friendly manner and then
arrived at an agreement.
Señor Ibrahim got up and fumbled briefly under the patterned
rug folded along one side of his cart’s interior. Chencha saw with
some excitement that the peddler was reaching into the painted jew-
elry box that she’d seen the year before. He removed something
carefully and then lowered the lid.
Placing in her hand a tiny pair of gold earrings, he said, “This is
a gift for you, for being a good trader of stories! May the Lord bless
you some day with a little daughter to wear these!”
“Ojalá que sí!” Innocencia replied, accepting the gift and
thanking Ibrahim warmly as they bid one another farewell.
Stepping between the traces of his wagon, the peddler took
them up in his callused hands, jolted the wheels into motion, and
started off on the rutted track toward the descent of the Eastern slope
of the mountain.
As Innocencia sadly watched him depart, there came to her
mind the lament of an old ranchera,
“I am like the wind that runs about the ends of the earth.
”It travels among many pleasures, but not one of them is
yours.”

Emily Peña Murphey is a retired psychotherapist with academic
training in psychology, social work, and Jungian psychoanalysis. She

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has family roots in Texas’ Río Grande Valley and the Smoky Moun-
tains of North Carolina, and sings and plays the traditional music
of both regions. She has published short fiction in several online
journals, and enjoys writing from a cross-cultural perpective. Her
current projects include a collection of short stories and a trilogy of
trans-border novels. She lives in Philadelphia.

372

The Snake Preacher

By Clay Anderson

Carolyn needed a change in her life. She was in a rut that seemed to
follow her like a wraith. She was smackdab in the middle of fifteen
children and was sent away with nine of the others when her daddy
ran off. Her mother couldn’t care for them all, especially when
her only job was collecting disability and welfare. With only a sev-
enth-grade education, Carolyn found work at a chicken processing
plant in Free Home, Georgia. Monotony was the only constant in
her life. She spent eight hours a day pulling skin off chicken thighs
and her thumbs had calluses a quarter-centimeter thick. That was
okay. Her heart had some fuller still.

It was hard to make friends at the chicken plant. Most of the
women didn’t speak English, but Carolyn struck up an acquaintance
with an older lady named Darlene. The aged woman was always
cheerful and had a constant sunny disposition. After several months
of friendship, Carolyn asked Darlene her secret to happiness and
the older woman explained it was her personal relationship with
Jesus Christ.

“There’s gone come a day,” Darlene said. “When the bellies of
the earth will open right up, and some’ll be set free and some’ll be
devoured. I know I’ll be dancin with the Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and
God himself. Yup, Carolyn, I’ll be stampin my feet like ye wouldn’t
believe. Ye can too and I’ll show ye how. Come on with me to
Saturday night service to hear the great reverend and I promise ye’ll
feel the same.”

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That very weekend, Carolyn found herself sitting in the pas-
senger seat of Darlene’s busted Honda Civic. Nothing worked but
for the engine and radio, which blasted gospel music at full volume.
She had asked to turn it down, but Darlene shook her head no.
Carolyn wasn’t sure if this was because of the automobiles inability
or the drivers. Darlene warned her that it was a long drive to the
church. It was in Fannin county and right on the Tennessee border.
Carolyn had never been that far North before, so the excitement
overpowered her anxiety.
Darlene was headed towards McCaysville but turned off just
after Epworth onto an old two-lane road. They kept going until
Carolyn saw up ahead what looked like an old gas station. The whole
thing was painted white by an unskilled hand. Even the ancient
pumps were slathered in the color. Out front by the road was a sign
that read: The Overcoming Church of the Good God Almighty and
Rev. Grag Winterford. This confused Carolyn because she’d never
seen Greg spelled with an A but felt it probably imprudent to ask.
Perhaps the church had only four E’s.
Darlene pulled into the Godly service station and parked next to
a pickup truck that looked like it barely survived some war. Carolyn
looked around and noticed that most of the cars were in various stages
of awful. The nicest vehicle was a John Deere tractor. Yet, she couldn’t
really judge. Carolyn had never owned nor driven a vehicle in her life.
When Darlene shut off the car the music abruptly stopped
and the absolute silence hurt Carolyn’s ears. “Now,” Darlene said.
“I was waitin fer us to get here before I told ye about our services.
We worship the real way. None like those heretics ye find in all
the others. We follow one rule and that’s what’s in the king James
Bible. And, sweetie, another thing. Don’t be alarmed but we handle
serpents here. But, don’t ye worry child, we don’t force nothin on
nobody. So, just watch and open yerself up to the spirit. Ye ain’t
ready anyway. Cause when ye grab the snake, ye cain’t have yer
min on other things. The spirit tells ye what to do. If ye get bit, ye
must’ve misjudged the spirit.”
Carolyn sat back and listened with a mixture of fear and cu-
riosity.

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“He’s is the best preacher we ever had. He’s never been bit.
But, that’s cause he’s a true man of God. We had this other reverend
before who weren’t worth a darn, excuse my language. He didn’t
even pray over the snake box or nothin. Ye have to be anointed to
pick up a snake. Goodness, he got bit and almost died. The thing is
sweetie, if ye have to look in the box to see where the snake’s head
is at, ye ought’n be tryin to get that snake out the box in the first
place.” Darlene smiled at Carolyn. “Ye d no need to worry. Just
enjoy the service. But, we late so let’s get a move on.”
Carolyn followed Darlene and they opened up the Holy ser-
vice station’s double glass doors. The first thing that struck Carolyn
was the music. A blast of tambourines, electric guitar, saxophone,
and atrocious voices singing “I Saw the Light” off cue. The clap-
ping of hands and stomping of feet. Carolyn almost immediately
entered a heightened and confused state. She felt her eyes dilate
and her heart race. There was aisle that ran down the middle split-
ting the congregation in two. Men stood on one side and women
the other. The men wore overalls and ripped jeans. The woman
homespun clothes and dresses that stretched all the way down to
the floor.
The inside of the church surprisingly didn’t look like a ser-
vice station. The walls were covered in various pictures of Caucasian
Hippie Jesus. Behind the makeshift altar was a cracked and faded
tapestry of The Last Supper. A mustache was drawn on the androg-
ynous apostle to signify the sex.
An enormous woman was behind several milkcrates stacked to-
gether, which made for a makeshift pulpit. As Carolyn and Darlene
entered, she started up the congregation to singing “Will the Circle
Be Unbroken.” Next to the lectern sat an elegant cherry wood box
atop a stool. The color was deep-set, regal, and slightly exotic. The
box was trimmed in gold with matching hinges and lock. A serpent
was etched into the side and was a glorious mixture of ornate and
terrifying. Curled up and ready to strike. After the last stanza, the
music leader smiled broadly and moved to the side. Once she did,
Carolyn could see the preacher who’d up until that point had been
hidden from view. The preacher rose and hugged the fat woman

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tightly. He kissed her on the cheek and mouthed thanks, and then
pointed for her to join the other ladies.

Grag or Greg looked just a little older than Carolyn. He wore a
thin t-shirt, jean shorts, and kidskin cowboy boots. The only adorn-
ment was an enormous cross belt-buckle. Even before preaching a
word, he was sweating and constantly wiping his face with a red ban-
dana. It was a constant struggle to mop his forehead, cheeks, neck,
and eyes. Despite this, Carolyn could tell that there was something
great about him. It wasn’t just his charisma or attractiveness. It was
so much more. Like he held secrets to this life and herself that she
needed more than anything else in the world.

“I was bad in sin,” the preacher started. “Drankin, drugging,
whorin. There weren’t a hooker in the county that I didn’t dip my
wick in. I lived in sorrow the likes of which ya’ll aint never seen.
Well, one day, I done had enough. I went and got my gun and was
fixin to load her up. But, as I was about to, I heard this voice that
said, ‘put that gun down.’ Then, suddenly I was hit by this here
power in my head and it knocked me to my knees. I cried out for
the Lord to have mercy on my soul. Then, God set me into the
spirit and I began speakin in tongues as the spirit wished. I then
got my life in order. I got rid of that their whiskey and marijuana
cigarettes. I told the devil to get behind me and he done it. A short
time later, I took up my first serpent. Praise God for that. Amen
brothers and sisters.”

The preacher slapped an enormous bible onto the milk crates
and they shook violently. “Lemme give ye the words people. Straight
from the good book. Hear his own words people, I say, hear his own
words. Brothers and sisters, he said ‘these signs shall follow them
that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak
with new tongues; they shall take up serpents and if they drink any
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover!’” He paused and wiped his brow. Then, he
shuddered, shook, and shouted. He reached over and unlatched the
serpent’s box and hauled forth an enormous canebrake rattlesnake.
He put his face up next to the snakes. They seemed to watch each
other, until the snake drew back and turned to the congregation.

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The preacher draped the snake over his forearm and the tail wrapped
around his fingers.

Suddenly, Darlene raised her hands in the air and started to
rock back and forth. Carolyn watched as her co-worker turned her
face upwards and started making a noise that sounded like a dying
bird. Darlene was gibbering unintelligibly, yet it was the most beau-
tiful thing Carolyn had ever heard. She felt her heart spark like some-
thing electrified. Shocks of excitement bubbled up like a wellspring.

“Hear his own words people, I say, hear his own words,” the
preacher shouted. “Hear them! Brothers and sisters, he said these
signs shall follow them that believe. ‘In my name shall they cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents;
and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover!’ That’s the gospel
friends. From God’s own sacred lips. He said ‘the apostles were all
filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues,
as the spirit gave them utterance.’ Now, ya know folks, this book
here weren’t just done for them apostles. Weren’t just for them by
brothers and sisters. When that their Holy Ghost came down with
tongues of fire and they started speaking in an unknown tongue,
God didn’t intend for just them apostles to do that thing. It’s for all
of us folks. All the believers.”

Darlene’s voice raised into a crescendo. Carolyn watched and
found herself transfixed. Darlene was chattering in an unknown
tongue. Whatever the language was it sounded sing-song. Carolyn
shut her eyes and tried to understand, but her mind was alive like
she’d never experienced before. Then, Carolyn realized in her horror
that her legs were vibrating. They moved like they were almost not
part of her. As if they had a purpose and course of their own. She
gave up and let her legs have their own way. They moved faster and
faster. Then, she let go. Carolyn hopped up and down and her body
convulsed. She looked up at the preacher who held the snake in his
hand. His face burned red and his eyes bulged.

Greg screamed, “We better know who our savior is!”
“We do!” Shouted the congregation in unison. His voice was
like a hurricane wind and everyone was swept away.

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“I know who our savior is!” The preacher exclaimed. “Do ye?”
“We do!” The congregation shrieked.
Then, the preacher looked right at Carolyn. She felt a pulse of
current flow through her. She noticed his smile and he gave her a
wink. Here was the great relief. A haven for safety. Someone who
could make the loneliness and despair go away. Just seeing him
standing there like a lion made her feel a swoon of ecstasy. This was
what she always needed.
“Do ye know who yer savior is?” The preacher asked again, but
this time he seemed to direct the question straight to her.
“Oh, yes!” Carolyn screamed. “I do!”
Carolyn started suspecting that things were wrong with her
marriage to Reverend Grag when he broke her mother’s jaw and
cracked open her brother’s head with a pair of vice grips. Since
saying “I do,” things went from bad to worse to hell on earth. Only
after signing the marriage certificate did she finally find out how he
spelled his name.
Things started out as emotional abuse, then vocal, and finally
reaching its terrible apex with regular beatings. This man of God
acting like someone possessed by demons.
The congregation said he’d only backslid. The honorable rev-
erend would come back around. He still preached with a fire the
likes of which they’d never seen. He handled serpents, laid on of
hands, spoke in tongues, drank strychnine, and anointed his flock
with oil. He’d even shoved his hand in an electrical socket one night
and came away unscathed. They said Grag was still a vessel for the
lord. No matter in what form or shape.
Every Saturday night he’d roll into The Overcoming Church of
the Good God Almighty half drunk, handle snakes, and preach with
fire and brimstone. The other six days of the week, he’d sin like a
man with a first-class ticket to hell.
When they got married, Carolyn quit her job at the chicken
plant and moved into Grag’s single wide trailer. Their home was der-
elict and decrepit. A junkyard dog would turn up his nose. Yet, the
snake’s shed behind the trailer was something to behold. Corrugated
steel and an air conditioning unit. Heat lamps for when it got too

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cold. Carolyn envied them because at least they were shown a bit of
affection. A thing her life was devoid of. Brutality was all she knew.

The first time Carolyn held a snake, she was struck right above
the collarbone.

The Overcoming Church of the Good God Almighty was alive
with the spirit. Darlene led the congregation in song. Grag had ele-
vated her to music leader. She clapped wildly and off rhythm to “I’ll
Fly Away.” She looked like someone going through an epileptic fit.

Carolyn stood like a stone in the front pew and played with
her dress nervously like a troubled child. Afraid in a way that she
didn’t understand. Grag stared at her with his lips taught in anger.
She knew exactly why. Carolyn wasn’t overcome with emotions.
Other women screamed, danced, and spoke in tongues. He’d ham-
mered into her that she was his appendage and her actions reflected
on him.

After the song, Grag rose to the milkcrate lectern and screamed
at the congregation. “There are some of ye in this here room, who
don’t have the spirit! Ye show up here, here, here in this house of
God without commitment to Jesus Christ!” He pounded on the
podium with both fists several times and his eyes bulged almost like
something out of a cartoon. “Some in this place ain’t never took
up the serpent! Ain’t never experienced the fire of the spirit!” Grag
threw his head up and pointed directly at his wife.

“My own lovin wife. She ain’t never done it, but she’ll do it
now.” Grag strode over and snatched up his wife by the arm and
dragged her towards the serpent’s box.

Carolyn wanted to break from his grip and flee. But his fingers
dug deep into her skin and Carolyn felt warm blood trickle down her
arm. No crying out, she thought. It would only make things worse.

She trembled involuntarily with fear as he stood her next to the
serpent’s case and forced her to face the congregation. Then he un-
clasped the lid and brought out an evil looking viper. The egg-shaped
head turned to Carolyn and glared at her with a malevolent smile.

Grag draped the serpent across her shoulder. Almost immedi-
ately the snake reared back and struck her viciously just above the
collarbone.

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It felt like someone stabbed her with a red-hot poker. She
dropped the viper and it slithered down the aisle towards the
church’s exit. Grag hustled towards the wayward serpent and
picked it up with a joyous smile. Like everything went exactly as
planned.
Then, he spent the next twenty minutes haranguing her in
front of his flock about how she misjudged the spirit. Wasn’t worthy
before the presence of God. As he droned on, Carolyn laid on the
floor and suffered. Her shoulder felt like it was on fire. The pain
pulsating and throbbing like she’d been shot. Carolyn pleaded for
death as a relief, which never came. Only when the service was over
did Grag reluctantly take his wife to the hospital.



For that time, she’d voluntarily took up the serpent. The next occa-
sion when she’d been struck, it wasn’t her idea and not in church.
It was in the shed behind her and Grag’s trailer. Her husband was
in a drunken and jealous rage. He accused her of cheating on him,
but that was his delusion. She’d never even been with another man
in her whole life. Yet, she knew for a fact that he’d been unfaithful.
Carolyn found out after her Godly husband contracted her with
chlamydia.

Grag screamed that she was “a whore of Babylon” and “the
Devil’s spawn.”

He knocked her around and pulled her hair. When she fought
back, he took out a gun and placed it against her temple. Grag
ordered her out of the trailer into the backyard. He marched her
into the snakes’ shed and demanded that she stick her hand in the
diamondback’s cage. When she demurred, Grag jammed the pistol
into the front of her mouth and shattered all four of Carolyn’s front
teeth. Blood poured down her chin and she couldn’t stop crying.

“Do it ye bitch!” He screamed. “I am the Lord’s mouthpiece
and ye will do as I say!”

Trembling uncontrollably, Carolyn stuck her hand in the cage.
The diamondback tagged her in the fleshy part between her pointer

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and thumb. She collapsed to the ground. She’d passed out from the
pain but came to when Grag started pissing on her face. He held his
pizzle in one hand and the gun in the other.

He was smiling down at her. “Get up ye Jezebel. Ye Bath-
sheba!”

Carolyn rolled over slowly. Her whole arm was pulsating like
a pump. As if the pain was in rhythm with her heartbeat. Giver and
taker of life.

Once on her stomach, she tried to push herself up but the
pain was unimaginable. Carolyn cried out, “Great God Almighty,”
and convulsed like a woman in labor. Grag must’ve realized that
she was failing, so he snatched her up violently from under her
bitten arm. She saw a flash of white light and vomited down the
front of her shirt. Grag paid no attention and dragged her towards
the trailer.

Inside, he threw Carolyn into the formica kitchen table and
demanded that she sit. He slapped a piece of paper and a pen down
in front of her. The poison and pain made Carolyn dizzy and con-
fused. She understood that her husband was holding a pistol to her
head, but everything else was a blur. Agony was the only thing she
fully understood.

“Write down everthin I say,” Grag shouted. “Word fer fuckin
word.”

Carolyn did as commanded. It took her a few moments to
realize that he was making her write down a suicide note.

“...Momma Winterford, Grag is asleep, yer son is asleep, and
I got snakebit,” he dictated.

She set down the pen and Grag punched her in the chin.
Carolyn tasted a new flood of warm blood in her mouth. A tooth
dangled on her tongue. Reluctantly, she picked the pen up and con-
tinued writing.

“I don’t want no help,” he said. “He’s asleep. My husbands
asleep. Grag’s asleep.”

With that, he forced Carolyn back outside and marched her
towards the snakeshed. Grag demanded that she put her hand in the
cage with the enormous canebrake rattler. She pushed against him

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and tried to flee, but he grabbed her hair and twisted it around his
hand. Carolyn felt like he was going to rip the scalp from her head.

“Listen ye bitch. Ye daughter of Lot! Ye’ve got a choice. Either
stick yer hand in thar or I’ll shove ye face first.”

Quivering, Carolyn placed her hand in the cage and the ser-
pent struck. Before her brain could register the pain, she’d vomited
black bile and blood everywhere. Grag still held her by the hair and
began dragging her back towards the trailer. She was retching and
eventually fell to the ground. A softball size clump of hair ripped
out. Grag began cursing and kicking her. After a while, Carolyn
managed to rise, but she still felt the poison spreading. Her faculties
were going haywire with spasms and soon would shut down.

Once inside, Grag threw her down onto the couch and he
started drinking more Everclear liqour. Soon, he drifted into a
drunken sleep. Carolyn was drifting in and out of consciousness.
She tried to rise but collapsed. She continued to vomit bile and
thought about how she’d cut off her arm with a dull knife to stop the
pain. The only thing she registered was the sound of Grag’s snoring.

Carolyn rose again slowly, driven by the will to live. She knew
something the honorable reverend didn’t.

She was pregnant.
Finally, Carolyn stumbled into the kitchen and picked up
the telephone. She called her neighbor, who’s not a member of
the church, and asked her to phone 911. Carolyn struggled to stay
awake, but managed to spill out a condensed version of what hap-
pened. She begged her to make sure that the ambulance didn’t use
lights or sirens. “Ye’ll wake ‘im and he’ll kill me graveyard dead.”
Her neighbor agreed and hung up the phone.
Carolyn moved like a maudlin madwoman with hands raised
like a penitent through the kitchen to the back door and stumbled
into the yard. The blast of cool air revived her and she stopped for a
moment to look up at the stars. A brilliant cornucopia of twinkling
light. This gathered her strength and Carolyn placed one foot in
front of the other. Finally, she reached the end of the driveway and
walked out into the middle of the road. A fresh wave of nausea and
pain overcame her and she collapsed in a heap onto the pavement.

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The next thing that Carolyn remembered was an EMT loading
her into an ambulance. Later, she had flashes of being in a hospital
with doctors screaming. Finally, she came to at Emory University
Hospital in Atlanta. She looked at her hand and saw that it was still
there. Somewhat numb, but still there. So was the bump in her ab-
domen. After a while, a nurse came in and smiled at her.
“Yer gonna be alright. Ye and the baby.” She watched as the
nurse shook her head. “What the hell was ya handling snakes for?”
Carolyn shut her eyes. She wasn’t sure which one the nurse
meant.
Clay Anderson is an Adjunct Professor of History at Reinhardt
University in Waleska, Georgia. He received his BA in History from
Kennesaw State University and MA from Mississippi State Uni-
versity. He’s published a nonfiction journal article and two book
reviews. He is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing at
Reinhardt University. His first novel, The Palms, will be published
by Adelaide Books in the Fall of 2019. He lives in the mountains of
North Georgia with his two dogs.

383



Allium

By Niikah Hatfield

The restaurant sat on the banks of the river, perched in the delicate
place between water and land. It left its diners careening out of the
bowl shaped windows and over the rapids that rushed day and night
past the laughter and the fragrance and the smells.

In the kitchen, Jorge leaned over a tumbling pot of soup, tasting
it with one of his silver spoons. Around him, the clash of knives,
sound of sizzling foods, and the constant chatter of the kitchen staff
mingled with the aroma of French cooking. The spoon hit his lips,
and for a second he was the eye in the dinner rush hurricane. The
only hint of that other world was the pungent kick of crisp onion
soup that hit his tongue with the perfect consistency that lingered
somewhere between thick and smooth.

And high up on the lonely mountain that rose just over the
edge of town, Carina sat in a halo of candle light with her blond hair
falling over her shoulders, eyes closed, and fingers curled into an “O”
on her knees. It could have been an “O” for onion, or Om, or even
omniscience. But that was a different matter entirely.

She had been sitting there for hours, unaware of the falling
dusk or the stars above the city haze. She had slipped into a deep
place in her mind, where the world sat in external rings around her
and she herself was the core, the heart of the universe.

“Jorge!”
The stainless-steel door to the kitchen burst open, and the head
chef stood in a cloud of guest’s murmurs.

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“Yes, Francis!” Jorge pulled himself upright, spoon at his side,
and hand almost raising in salute. Almost.
Everyone parted way for Francis without losing the rhythm of
what they were doing, and in two seconds he was face to face with
Jorge.
“Some very important guests have just arrived, Jorge. I mean,
like Michelin star important, and I want you to cook for them. You
hear me?” His voice bellowed out to the rest of the staff. “Jorge
will prepare the food for table thirty-seven. Jorge, and Jorge only.
Understand?”
A murmur of yesses and nods swept over the kitchen, and
Francis turned back to Jorge.
“You best do right by me, Jorge. I am trusting you to hold the
reputation of this place up. Hear me?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, of course.”
“Good. Now go on and do your special secrets. And get back
to work!” He barked to everyone as he passed back out into the
dining room.
Jorge sighed and turned back to the bubbling pot of soup. He
passed the ladle off to his right hand man and picked up the ticket
for table number thirty-seven. Out of his apron pocket, he pulled
two bulbs. A dusky pale orange and covered with a papery skin, one
could almost mistake them for wadded up paper balls.
They were Jorge’s little secret; they were what set him apart
from the rest of the sous chefs and what had somehow brought
him to the top of the ladder. Use too much, and the dish would be
ruined, too little, and their pungent taste would only linger as a sad
trace in the symphony of flavors. But just right, and it was like the
bass drum of a marching band, bringing everything together without
drawing attention to itself. What where they? Onions, of course.
Plain, old, onions, dug up from his mother’s garden last fall. Yet
there was something special, something different in those onions.
Something that made people stop in their tracks and remember a
piece of the past.
Jorge peeled them and set them just off to the right of his
cutting board, in between the oil and the herbs. Into the lamb chop

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pan, he minced onion’s tender cousin shallot and cooked it in the
hot oil, stirring it just often enough to prevent them from going
brown. For the seafood, the carefully peeled African prawns and the
thick cuts of scallop, he ground them into a fine paste and hid them
in the fragrant sauce of herbs and olive oil. The appetizer of crostini
and rolled pancetta was decked with a bold array of caramelized
onions hidden in the disguise of slivered parmesan. Anyone tasting
it would never have guessed their presence, but without them, the
dishes would be lacking that last bit of flounce that brought the
party to the plate.

Carina opened her eyes to the fluttering of her candles reaching
the end of the wick. She curled her toes into the red Persian rug,
the breath coming back into her chest and body with the vigor of
awakening. She used to have asthma that settled into the bronchi-
oles of her lungs, but ever since she had been told to rub her chest
with onion oil, that had gone away. Even now, as she stretched and
sucked into the bottom of her diaphragm, there was a hint of a smile
at the corner of her lips because she could breathe so well.

She blew out the last of the flickering candles and stood up.
The curved wall was made of glass, and the city lights stretched out
before her. She stood there on the ledge, arms crossed over each
other, and wondered at how many lights there were.

A black ribbon twisted through the city glow where the river
ran, and even in the dark she could make out the tall spires of the
churches and temples jutting into the night. After a moment, the call
of hunger made her turn back into the depths of the cave, where a
high bar and counter curved along the back of the room.

She sliced open a thick avocado, smiling when the seed made a
soft plopping sound as it separated from its flesh. From a slender jar
she poured garlic oil onto the rest of a baguette, and then she took
the food back out front to eat.

As she sat there, licking up the mix of fats and sharp spices, her
mind wandered back to her meditation.

It had been a long time since she had gone on a journey like
that, with the layers of her mind peeling away in concentric circles.
The outer layers, representing her present, alert consciousness, fell

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away easily. They always did. It was when she dug deeper and the
circles became thicker and were held more closely together that she
struggled. There was less space to breathe there, a sense of urgency
until she finally reached the center, where at last there was a small
pocket of air and the universe.

Jorge lay the last curling slivers of chive over top the garnished
plates, and watched as they were whisked away to meet the diners.
Now, came the waiting. The terrible waiting, when one could only
twist their fingers and hope that they had performed well. That, after
the seed had been planted, it would grow into something strong and
sturdy, even without the farmer’s touch there to aid it.

Jorge busied himself with little things, like wiping the counters
after the assistant cooks, stirring the already homogenized sautés on
the stove, micromanaging the plating of the last entrees going out.
His work, he knew, had finished the moment the meal was carried
out on a silver platter, but he busied himself still, pretending that
all was well.

It was only as he stood there, waiting for the news as the
kitchen turned from production to cleaning, that he allowed his
mind to wander. It slipped out of the building and up the river to
the base of the hill. There, a narrow path led him up through the
thicket, twisting over the jutting rocks to the top.

From the back of the mountain, one could hardly tell that
anyone inhabited the place. Sumac bushes stood untouched, the
ground beneath them still soft and not worn by footprints. But where
the trail came to an end, on the left side of a little ledge in the rock,
there was a door and eight windows that looked out onto the city.

“Jorge.”
He blinked, and realized he was nearly alone in the kitchen.
His towel lay in a twisted heap on the counter before him, and
Francis stood just inside the swinging doors with his arms folded
across his double-buttoned coat.
“Jorge, you cooked tonight.”
Jorge’s fingers clenched the towel. Francis stepped forward.
“You cooked tonight for two very important people, and you
did something outside of the books.”

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Jorge looked down. He didn’t know what to say, what would
be the best response. So he said nothing.
“I don’t know what you put into those dishes, but it was bloody
something, Jorge.” Then Francis opened his arms. “You did it, my
man. We have a star.”
Jorge squeezed his eyes shut, blinked, accepted Francis’s
awkward embrace. They stepped apart, then, and both men stood
looking at the red tiled floor.
“Well, then, chop, chop,” Francis said. “I’ll catch you to-
morrow.”
The stainless-steel doors swung for a long time after he had left,
and Jorge just stood in the empty kitchen and stared at the ground.
In his pocket, he fumbled against something round. He pulled out
a single baby onion, its oblong shape barely formed under the pale
skin. Lifting it to his nose, he sniffed it, and a moment later began
to cry. If anyone would have asked him, he would have said it was
from the smell and couldn’t possibly have been for any other reason.
Carina heard the footsteps coming up the trail long before she
saw the light, and she was waiting by the door when Jorge came in.
He smiled and lifted off his bags, and her long arms welcomed him
into a kiss. Neither said anything. She led him to the carpet, lit a
single candle, and turned out the light.
In a halo of darkness, they pulled off each other’s clothes like
thin papery layers of skin. There were tears in their eyes, stinging wet
salt against the sweetness of their lips and sweat.
They did not speak because they did not need to. Their minds
and their quietness spoke for them, and any words would have ru-
ined it all like a poet trying to capture an un-capturable moment.
A moment like when eyes meet and two people see each other for
what they really are, not for the dirt that clings around them or by
reputation of who they are growing next to. Words could have been
close, but not as close as the listening, as the call and response that
becomes the dance between the world and the plant.
Their roots intertwined deeper and deeper, reaching into the
rocky soil of the mountain, taking hold, and growing something
larger, something sweeter, than the rough black seeds from which

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they had sprouted. Something that with time would be as subtle and
beautiful as Om on a yogi’s lips, something as rich as an onion in
the hands of a skilled chef.
Niikah Hatfield is currently a student at Northern Michigan Uni-
versity of Marquette, where she is studying ceramics and creative
writing. When not creating stories or artwork, she is often outside,
playing music, or chasing after dreams. She is the author of Kana’s
Vardo, and her work is published in Adelaide Review, Ore Ink Re-
view, The Marquette Monthly, and others.

390

A Young Leaf

By José Sotolongo

Claire’s best friends in high school were involved in the senior play.
When they asked her to help them paint scenery after classes, she was
delighted to be invited. She called her mother at work to let her know.

“Who are these people?” her mother asked.
Maria and Judy had both been to the house, and Claire frowned,
annoyed her mother did not remember, but she described them.
“Oh, the chubby Italian and the Jewish one,” her mother said.
“Your father and I aren’t crazy about them, Claire. You’re too care-
less about making friends.”
Claire pleaded into her cell phone, and her mother relented.
In fact, Claire’s mother didn’t know how much time she spent
with Maria and Judy. She went to their houses after school every day.
Judy’s mom, Rachel, worked from home, and served the three girls
tea and scones after school. “A proper tea,” Rachel would announce as
she brought the tray to the kitchen table. She had studied in London
and had adopted certain habits, such as greeting Claire and Maria
with kisses on both cheeks, the European way. Because Claire was so
tall, Rachel had to stand on tiptoe to reach her face. She could not
remember her parents kissing her or showing any tenderness.
After a late session in the school’s auditorium painting scenery,
Rachel was driving Claire and Maria home, Judy in the front seat.
It was already dark.
“Everybody buckled in?” Rachel said as she put the Volvo in
gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

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Claire, in the back seat alongside Maria, struggled to find the
seatbelt buckle buried between the seat and the backrest. She found
a cylindrical object, three inches long, before she found the seat belt.
“What’s this?” she asked Judy, showing her find.
“Oh. That’s a mezuzah, a religious thing we do.”
Rachel explained as she drove down a narrow street. “It holds
a piece of parchment with a handwritten prayer, and we attach it to
doorsills. I had given up on finding that one.” She chuckled.
Claire held on to it.
Seconds later, as Rachel elaborated about Judaism, she drove over
some railroad tracks where the barriers had stopped working. Claire
didn’t have time to scream. She saw the oncoming train a split second
before it hit the car on the driver’s side. It killed Rachel outright, and
badly maimed Judy, who remained quadriplegic until her death, two
months later. Claire suffered a broken leg, and her left ear was almost
completely torn off by a piece of metal. Maria suffered only bruises.
Her ear was reattached in the emergency room, but remained
numb due to nerve damage. The fractured tibia required surgery,
and for the next several weeks she did schoolwork from home. She
remembered the accident several times a day, and got so short of
breath she would close her laptop and rest her head on it. The image
of Rachel’s bloody carnage and Judy’s neck and torso twisted at an
impossible angle replayed in her brain like a horror film gone ber-
serk. She sobbed in bed, not only for Rachel and Judy, but for the
destruction of what had been her benign, fair universe.
Maria came to see her. It was the first time they had seen each
other since the accident, and Claire was still in a wheelchair. Her
brown hair, which had been shaved around the ear for the repair,
was growing back in spiky clumps.
“I’m still having nightmares,” Maria whimpered, and took a
tissue from her pocket. Claire struggled to stand up, but was finally
able to do so and hugged her. She ignored the pain in her fracture
under the cast.
“I can’t stop thinking about it either. How can this sort of
thing happen to good, young people?” Claire wiped her face and
nose with her hands.

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Maria shook her head and said, “My cousin died in a car acci-
dent last year. He was only twenty-eight. I think death is something
we just have to get used to as we get older.”
That spring, as she began to use crutches, she sat under a catalpa
tree in her parents’ backyard. She could not believe that God, that
supposedly merciful entity, could allow the death of good, young
people, and that it was something she would have to accept. She read
about Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and the nature of God in those
religions, to see if she could find a difference from the Christian God
that would help her understand this new reality. All she discovered
was that in Judaism the concept of a merciful God was a topic of
doubt and debate.
Under the catalpa tree, she thought about the prospect of col-
lege and making more friends, maybe even falling in love. She had
not liked any of the boys in high school, particularly, and had been
looking forward to college and meeting new people. But if God
could be so uncaring and cruel, why get attached to new acquain-
tances, maybe even get to love them, as she had Rachel and Judy,
then risk losing them? She wished she could escape somewhere,
withdraw from the world that seemed so cruel and uncertain.
By late spring the fracture had healed. On the first day she
was strong enough to walk home from school, she passed by the
Catholic church she had gone to occasionally with her parents. The
structures were familiar: the church, the adjacent school, and the
convent protected by its ten foot walls. She wondered what life must
be like sequestered inside those walls, where one could focus on un-
derstanding God’s ways. She crossed the street and walked into the
rectory without ringing the bell.
She called out “Hello,” and Father Sanchez came out of his
office. He seemed annoyed, but he invited her into his wood-paneled
office and asked her to sit down.
She had planned only to ask about life in a convent, but she
was moved by the religious carvings and images all around, and she
blurted out, “Father Sanchez, I’ve decided I want to be a nun.”
He had a pale round face, and his thick black eyebrows went
up. “What’s this all about?”

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She told him about the accident and the devastation she had
witnessed. “I can’t live in the outside world, so exposed to death.”
She leaned forward in her chair.
“That’s absurd, Claire. Priests and nuns die just like anybody
else.”
“Yes, but nobody in a convent dies suddenly, like my friend
and her mom.”
“That’s no reason to enter a convent, Claire. You go into the
religious life because you get a message from God that it’s where you
belong, not to run away from the world.”
“Isn’t my wish to go into a convent enough of a message from
God?”
“What nonsense is this?” Father Sanchez stood up. “You think
you’re the holy oracle? Go away now. Talk to your parents about
this first.”
After dinner that evening, she went to the living room, where
her parents were watching TV. She sat on one arm of the sofa, at the
other end from her mother. Her father was in an armchair. During
a commercial break, she told them of her idea.
Her mother shook her head. “Claire, you don’t know what
you’re talking about. You don’t know what they’re like, those nuns.”
Her rotund father, in his maroon robe, got up from his arm-
chair and came close to Claire. “What is this all about?” His voice
was loud, and Claire flinched. “You should be thinking about get-
ting married and having children after college, like a normal girl.”
“That’s not what I want.” Her voice was small when she spoke,
but she was determined. “I really feel that I belong in a convent.”
“Let her do what she wants,” her mother said, and used the
remote to change the channel. “You have to do what you think is
best, Claire. Just don’t come crying when you can’t stand it there.
We’ll turn your room into a guestroom, and you can stay there when
you visit, but we expect you to be mostly on your own.”
She went back twice in less than a week to see Father Sanchez,
and he relented. After telephoning her parents first, he arranged
for a meeting with the mother superior of another convent, and by
then she had read several memoirs by religious figures. She was con-

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vincing enough to be accepted into the order, and her parents, their
self-absorption no match for her determination, agreed. She entered
the order a year later, at eighteen, as Sister Agnes.



Sister Agnes went to the Reverend Mother’s office, as the senior
nun’s note had requested. She inched open the mahogany door and,
because of her height, ducked her head as she walked under the
doorsill. Mother Michael was sitting at her desk, and she looked up
from some papers.

“Ah, I see you got my note. Have a seat, Sister Agnes.” She
was close to seventy, but she skittered around her desk like a youth
to sit on the chair next to the young nun. “Come closer, bring your
chair here,” she said, taking Agnes’ left wrist with both her hands
and pulling her closer. “I want to know why you’re leaving our house
every Friday for an hour.”

Sister Agnes was startled by the abruptness, and she didn’t an-
swer immediately. She tucked a stray strand of hair into her wimple,
and her fingers touched her numb left ear. She got a waft of her
underarm, a reminder that unscented soap was the only toiletry al-
lowed.

“Yes. I started going to the churchyard across the road a few
weeks ago.”

“July tenth, to be precise, was your first outing at midday,
during what was supposed to be your hour of prayer.” The old wom-
an’s voice was firm, but without reproach. “What’s going on?”

Agnes looked down at her long thighs in their brown habit.
“Sister Agnes,” Mother Michael took Agnes’ left wrist again
and shook it. “Why the silence? Are you having doubts?”
Agnes took her arm back gently, and put both hands under
her thighs.
“Yes, Reverend Mother.” Her voice was just audible. She felt
the cousin of embarrassment as she admitted this uncertainty thir-
teen years into her religious life.
“Doubts about your life here?”

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She shook her head. “Not about being here. It’s my faith that
seems to be slipping away.”
“Not so infrequent.” Mother Michael nodded. “It happens to
many of us. Maybe all of us at some point.”
Agnes smiled with relief, but said nothing, not hearing an in-
vitation to elaborate.
Mother Michael’s face darkened for a few seconds, then she
looked at Agnes and stood up. “Let’s take some steps.” The senior
nun took hold of both of Agnes’ wrists and pulled her up to standing.
“Sister Gregory is our spiritual counselor in these matters. I want
you to meet with her twice a week, after vespers.” She led Agnes to
the door by the hand. “Now go get ready for chapel.”
That evening she spotted Sister Gregory’s stooped, twiggy figure
as they exited the dining room into the courtyard. “Mother Michael
wants me to have some meetings with you,” Agnes said to her.
“I know.” Gregory’s clear blue eyes glowed out of the pale,
crinkly face. “She told me this afternoon.”
“Where would you like to meet?”
“How about under the tree across the road, where you’ve been
sitting alone all these weeks?” Sister Gregory showed the ghost of
a smirk. Sister Agnes didn’t have to ask the old nun how she knew
where her private hour was spent. Furtive scrutiny of all their lives
was a given. “Let’s start tomorrow afternoon.” Sister Gregory turned
away towards the chapel.
Early the next morning, before she went to work in the con-
vent’s vegetable garden, Sister Agnes crossed the road to sit under the
catalpa tree instead of going to prayers. The tree reminded her of the
one in her parents’ backyard in Pennsylvania. Its large, lime-green
leaves made it seem tropical to her, out of place here in Massachusetts.
As she sat down on the stone bench, an older couple, perhaps
in their fifties, exited the side door of the church, a few yards away.
They ambled up the path towards her, and as they passed she noticed
the woman’s eyes red from recent crying, the man’s jaw set in anger.
Agnes gave a little wave at the woman and almost stood up, but
reigned in her eagerness and just looked into her face. The woman
glanced at her and kept walking.

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Since adolescence, there was a need in her to comfort people
who appeared in emotional distress. In the convent she was keenly
aware of other sisters’ unhappiness, and sought them out if they
looked troubled. She regretted not having studied psychology in
college as a novitiate, as she had planned before taking her vows.
Instead, she had majored in botany, because she thought it would
be more useful to tend the convent’s garden, a source of income for
the sisters.
Later that day she sat under the catalpa tree with Sister Gregory,
and the older nun probed about Agnes’ previous life.
“In school I was always the tallest girl in the class, of course. So
I dated mostly boys from the basketball team.”
Sister Gregory nodded and chuckled, looking up at the top of
Agnes’ wimple. “You’re a tall one, all right.”
Agnes saw a kindness in this frail, elderly sister’s expression that
she had not seen often in the convent.
“I had planned to study psychology.” Agnes continued. “And
I made friends easily. My name was Claire Donahue before I joined
the order.”
“A good Irish name.” Gregory nodded and grinned, her blue
eyes radiating crinkles. “Now tell me specifically what you are
doubting. Is it your commitment to religious life?”
The younger nun hesitated. “I want to stay in this community,
but I’m not sure I should.”
“Why not?’
Agnes shrugged.
“Are you having doubts about God, then?”
She did not answer immediately. Her left ear tingled, and she
ignored it.
“We’re supposed to believe that God loves us,” Agnes said at
last. “I’m having trouble believing that.”
“Tell me what has shaken your faith.”
“The death of Sister Mary James was the last straw.”
Sister Gregory remained silent a moment. “Yes. That was hid-
eous. It’s hard to understand the ways of the Lord sometimes.” She
shook her head.

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Agnes remembered the day that the Reverend Mother had
announced that Sister Mary James, who cooked for the poor, and
with whom Agnes had served lunch to the indigent every day, had
advanced breast cancer. Mary James had wanted them all to know.
All thirteen sisters had been standing outside chapel, and Agnes’s
height made her face visible to all, a beacon flashing grief.
Agnes did not need to detail the cancer’s spread despite the
surgery and the chemotherapy — everyone in the convent had
seen it. They all watched as Mary James turned, in just two years,
into a withered twig. A beautiful woman who had done nothing
but care for others was suddenly emaciated and unable to care for
herself. Agnes cleaned her bedpans and changed the sheets, sticky
with oozings thick as resin. She could not accept the demise of a
still-young, kind woman, and felt a mounting wrath at God when
Mary James moaned in pain as the cancer began to consume her
bones.
“Every day we pray to a good and merciful Father,” Sister
Agnes said to Sister Gregory. “How can I believe in these words
after that horrible death?”
The old nun looked grim and nodded, then she stood up.
“That’s enough for today. Too much, in fact.” She started for the
convent across the road, then stopped and turned. “But we’ll have
to talk about this.”
Sister Agnes followed her, glad that for now she hadn’t con-
fessed to cursing God in the chapel instead of praising Him. The
love for God she had hoped to find in the convent seemed to be
non-existent here.
“You said Mary James’s death was the last straw,” the old nun
said at their next meeting. They sat side by side on the stone bench,
the catalpa tree shading their spot. “What were the other straws?
What came before?”
Sister Agnes did not want to relive bad memories, but she
wanted to be honest with Sister Gregory. The old nun was taking
time from her duties for this counseling, and her unwavering eyes
showed interest in everything Agnes said. She told the attentive old
sister about Rachel and Judy, and their untimely, horrible deaths.

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