Fiction

inhale. Imagine that you are the eldest daughter of a heavily religious middle-class family living in the suburbs of Ohio. Imagine that I am your younger sister. Imagine that I am lying in bed as I write to you, the lamp throwing reliefs over my face, knowing that you will never get this letter.

exhale. A month ago today, you sat mom and dad down in the living room. It was an hour after church and thirty minutes before mom was supposed to get the pot-roast out of the oven. There was a plate of apples on the coffee table when you began your speech. It was overturned on the floor by the time you were done.

inhale. My therapist showed me a breathing technique yesterday. I spent an hour on her dusty afghan carpet, crouched underneath bladed light, feeling the bone-drum clatter of heartbeat against breastbone. It was a waste of $175 of dad’s co-pay, but at least now I know what to do whenever I see your silhouette. Whenever I find myself in front of the door of your bedroom, hand on the wood sheltering casual silence. Inside, your bed is still unmade. Your closet door is still yawning open. The hanger of the jacket you grabbed on that last night is still broken in two on the carpet.

exhale. At dinner these days, we are three people and a ghost. Mom is always bent over her plate like it holds her heart, and dad is always blank-eyed, his skin salt-seared from his morning somewhere cloudless. After his violent, knee-jerk reaction, it’s almost surprising the way he’s mellowed out. The way he has pressed spine into putty. The bible on his nightstand is untouched, caught perpetually flipped open to Psalm 127:3. It’s almost funny how mom has done the opposite. Fingers folded in prayer, the lines on her palm have been cut into one. If anything, she is more religious now. After mass she is always one of the last supplicants in front of the cross. I can almost imagine that beneath her flowered skirt, there are permanent grooves in her knees. She hasn’t taken our family picture off of the mantle yet, and every time the candlelight sparkles over your face in its little glass frame it is an exercise in nostalgia. An exercise in loss.

inhale. At church today during the sermon, I slid a foot over the burnished wood of our pew and expected to feel your Mary-Janes in the space beside mine. I should be used to the absence by now; if I count that first one, it’s been four weeks since you last sat next to me. Time moves slowly here, like honey, like rosary beads down string, like the gentle clucking of neighborhood mothers, handkerchiefs fluttering in the air like dove wings. When the pastor sees me he is always stilted, wooden words falling hollow like rosary beads every time I open my mouth. As if all it takes to break me is a casual tragedy. As if I am not already broken. With every look they give me I wish I could undo myself. With every sigh I am one step closer to coming undone.

exhale. During Sunday-school, we draw hopscotch squares on bare cement, wreathe them in chalk flowers and the purple dust of the only pink we have. The other girls never say your name around me. When they do talk about what happened, they couple their words with dyke, damned, deserved, syllables stretching longer the less they knew you. The first time it happened, I asked to be sent home. Now when they do it, I sit on the bench and imagine slamming fist to throat until their fish-mouths are scarlet red on pavement. I am almost ready. I am almost coping. I am almost surprised, really, at how easy it is to adapt to tragedy.

inhale. There is a version of this story in which they do not erase you. There is a version of this story in which mom smiled and dad frowned and at the end of the day we still gather round the dinner table. There is a version of this story in which they reconciled faith with the child they raised, and hand in hand we walked into the sunset. In the version we lived, there was no exultation. No sweeping spotlight. Only the fatal kiss of car against skin against asphalt after you ran out onto a dark street without looking both ways, blinded by tears and our parent’s rejection. Only a town of pointed gazes and the whispers swirling around our pew like storm drains after rain. Only a grave in a cemetery two hours away and an empty mantlepiece where our family picture of four used to be.

exhale. On some nights I still wake up at 1 am to the sound of your body hitting the hood of the car. The wet thud as you flipped over glass. The hum of the engine, as the ambulance took you away. The doctor’s voice, as he told us he was so sorry. You will never know this, but the truth is that mom cried while we sat in the ER. The truth is that the dead do not soften under the tears of the living. The truth is that though I am pressing pen to paper as if in confidence, when in reality I will never know if you can forgive me for not running after you. For standing up too little. For choking back the words, even now.

inhale. Imagine, that as I write this, the sky is bleeding into the horizon. It is Monday morning. Imagine, that from my bed, I can see the lawn, where morning light cleaves and morning dew melts into rain. Imagine that you are now buried, somewhere silent and green, too far away for me to visit on my own.

exhale. I miss you, sister.  But let me finish writing this letter. For a second, as I lean against the wall between our bedrooms and hear nothing on the other side, I ache. I let your absence envelop me. Let it swallow me whole. I will never not miss you.

Amy Wang is a sophomore from California. In her free time, you can find her reading fanfiction. Her work is published or forthcoming at Twin Pies Literary, Ogma, and X-R-A-Y Lit.

Snow falls. Today: Wake up. Outside the glass the field is white, sprung with down. Turn to see myself in the glass but see Imogen instead. Her wrinkles etched onto me; scars inked into me. Ache but Imogen doesn’t budge, flails tight against my pores. Yell Get out get out get out from behind the glass. Today: I want to Get out get out get out where Imogen can’t be seen. (Things I carry: warmth ran between jawline, bedsheet heat welled into heart.) Where I won’t be seen as Imogen, where I can’t see myself as Imogen. Get out get out get out! Beyond the glass is a blinding blizzard, in that blizzard is a field. Get up: Imogen brushes my teeth. I brush my teeth. Rinse; twice. (Wool: Imogen is allergic to wool; I dress in wool.) Mother sees me see Imogen in glass, scowls at my foggy disproportion. Mother pours me breakfast porridge, tries to unfrown my visage. But I, I don’t touch the porridge, no, instead I pin Imogen down in the glass. Tell her I don’t want to wear her anymore. Tell her I want to peel myself like an orange, her skin like my rind. Mother yells at Imogen, NO, she yells at Me! Get Out! Late for School! Get sick without sweater! (Mother-heated words pelted at the spine; made to wear as parka.) But Get Out Get Out Get Out Get Out Today! Getting out to that field of snow! Imogen, she blinds away against the cold. The cold is where I finally breathe. Today I threaten, strangling Imogen with my own hair, teeth grazing her own skin. Break her glass. Sniff its sour edge. (Gloves gloved, feet shoed, no, booted!) Yesterday, I hid in her closet. A symmetrical skeleton to her bones. But Today I’ll Get Out! Get Out & Away, Away to See Imogen where she can’t be Seen, Away into that blizzard field! Get! Out Out! Out Get-ting! Out To-day Out Today—

—Today, it snows. Today, sitting on the welcome mat I boot my feet, boot Imogen’s feet. Today, sitting on the leaving mat I have decided to Leave. Check the thermostat, once. Twice. Thrice. I check it until my face is limp against plaster walls. Check stove. Check doors, windows (Don’t look for myself in the glass!) Coat on, hair out from under the scarf, my breath already hazed like the blizzard. I’m Leaving Today. Leaving the chrysalis where I’ve homed, I’m leaving all my glassy shards behind. Gonna Leave Imogen behind to go to that snowy field, gonna leave her for the cold. Getting Out! I know what I’ll do, yes, I will Leave her behind. I’m Leaving to where I’ll be seen without Imogen. Leaving this land, no, this nation of Imogen. Leaving the Imogen nation. Leaving the Imagination. Get out! I’m Leaving! Today, I’m Leaving Imogen behind! I Leave Imogen Behind! I Leave what is Imagined Behind.

Crystal Peng is a high school student living in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been awarded first prize in the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize and has appeared in Poetry Pause and Sine Theta Magazine.

(i)  Sarah:

At the end of the summer, I awoke to the sound of her leaving. A suitcase thumping down the stairs then rattling the gravel of the driveway. I lay in bed and imagined her sitting in the car, waiting to see if I’d come out and say something.

I didn’t.

After I heard her drive away, I went out and sat in the glasshouse, like every other day that summer. It was always warm in there, even if it was cool outside and I liked the heavy smell of tomatoes that hung in the air. I sat there every day that summer and read and drank coffee or lemonade. She had started making lemonade that July, almost obsessively. I’d come inside and the squeezed-out shells of lemons would be piled up on the countertop like carcasses. The local pharmacy started refusing to sell citric acid to her. After that, she would disappear for hours, sometimes even the whole day, driving to the farthest pharmacy possible. I think she just wanted an excuse to be away. I think maybe she bought other things in the pharmacy, but I was never sure. She often returned home slightly different, as if some part of the fabric of her being had been altered almost imperceptibly, face flushed, eyes bright. The day she left, I searched the house for any hint of evidence, even the bins. I wanted the satisfaction of an incriminating, ominous bottle of pills but maybe she just didn’t leave anything behind, not even a note or a message on the answering machine or any feeble attempt at an explanation. I suppose maybe she thought that it was all perfectly apparent. I thought it was a bit rude. That night I got a bus into the city. I was planning on celebrating, I think. The start of a new life or whatever. But I just ended up walking around in the dark. I found this street, lined with red brick houses and big leafy trees. It was nice. Expensive. I got a kick out of walking down it slowly, staring through the windows. Each scene of perfect family life framed in golden light. I stayed outside each house as long as I could before there was risk of being noticed. People can feel it when they’re being watched. I stopped outside one house because I liked the front garden, big towering sunflowers bending over the path up to the door. The downstairs curtains were drawn but I glanced up towards the light spilling out of the upstairs window. There was a man, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. He was handsome and looked tired. When I saw her, I nearly snorted laughter at the sheer serendipity of it. Her hair was still wavy from the plaits she had in the night before. She came up from behind and wrapped her arms around him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. She didn’t glance out the window and see me standing, staring up. I briefly considered throwing a pebble, or ringing the doorbell, just for the sheer fright that I’d give her, but I decided that ultimately, it’d be a very awkward and unpleasant situation for everyone involved. They moved out of view suddenly, her pulling him back into the room, fingers clutching at the fabric of his shirt. I wanted to shout at them to come back, so I could get one last glance at her face because I think I knew, even then, that I’d never see it again.

(ii)  Annie:

I left on the first of September because it felt like the right time of year to start something new.

I thought about leaving a note. Maybe tucked in amongst some withering flowers or in the drawer of my desk. It could have said, “I’m leaving,” it could have said, “I’m sorry.” But I thought that might be a bit melodramatic. I thought I’d just slip away quietly, and she mightn’t even notice that I was gone. She was never here that summer anyway, always in her head, or a book or out in the greenhouse. And she’d just come inside and help herself to lemonade that I had slaved away to make without even a word of thanks. I kept making it. I started wishing that her teeth would turn yellow and rot, maybe even fall out. I used to have horrible thoughts like that that summer. I think maybe because I knew that she hated me and that he loved me. I used to go on really long drives, just to get a break from the way she looked at me. He’d drive to meet me, wherever I ended up, be it some beach or forest or small village. He didn’t even mind if he had to drive for ages.

We always had sex in his car, not mine.

We used to go for long walks as well, wherever we ended up. He liked walking, probably because he was from the city and city people always get a kick out of walking around places with no lampposts. He would sometimes ask to meet her, usually when he suspected that I was in a particularly good mood, which didn’t happen very often. He had this dream where we all lived together, one big happy family in his nice red brick house. He was full of silly ideas like that. When we decided I’d be moving in with him he asked me to bring her with me.

I refused.

He said something about family responsibility. Something about me only having one sister. I said we had spent enough of our lives living together already. I didn’t choose her to be mine, genetics did, but I chose him. And besides, my parents had left it all to her, the oldest. Everything. The house and the fields and even the fucking greenhouse. It was all hers, I was just living in it, and I knew she was just waiting around for me to leave. So I did. I got up early and I drove to his house in the city and we spent the day lying in his bed, which would gradually become ours, watching the light change on the leaves outside the window. I lay in his arms all day, drifting between tears and laughter until night and exhaustion crept into the room. I watched him undress by the window and wondered if we’d be happy. I wondered if I’d be happier. Then I went to close the curtains, to shut us in from the outside. I looked out at a world all lit up by streetlamps. The view from his house, our house. The street was almost deserted, aside from one person, who for a moment I almost imagined was her, walking down the street, walking away from me.

Robyn Gill is in her final year of English and Drama in Trinity College Dublin. Previous publications include Sonder and Lilun Magazine. She recently attended the International Literature Festival Dublin as one of the Young Writer Delegates.

BIRTH

The doctor tells me she is small, underweight. In those brief fragments of the day where she is asleep, I’m afraid of something I cannot name; I place my hand over her heart, requiring those quiet fists of reassurance to know she is still here. The visitors—bearing an assortment of pink items and dinner platters—tell me she is beautiful. A blessing, they say. God’s child. Yes—but I am not the right one for this child. I worry she will slip through my hands, shatter like a glass vase in front of me, that soon I will bear witness to my faults. I feel she is safer in my mother’s or sister’s hands. Why isn’t she growing? It’s only a matter of time, the doctor says. Time. This is what they tell my husband about his visa, too: wait for your time, wait until America wants you. My husband waits with sleepless nights and a restless mind. I wait with a foreign body; it’s an exercise, I suppose, preparing me before I am once again foreign to a new country. I cannot recognize these rough patches of skin that had once emerged as barriers, sensing my daughter as an invasion. Now, her presence is enough to make me forget myself. I awaken to her cries, and when she drifts back to sleep, her fingers are wrapped around mine. At that moment, I feel she is melting me, softening me in all the hard places.

CRAWLING

We are here in America, here where the baby first begins to eat the soft rice I mash with my hands. American food is cardboard, the doctor said to me. Feed her what you eat. I wish for the doctor here besides me. I wish for my mother and sister, too, but these are the choices we made. Life is a trading game, my mother once said to me: you give up one thing for another. I do not have enough time to wonder if we have given up too much. The baby exhausts me. Every waking moment she is shoving something down her mouth. She thinks she is invincible, unaware of the harm she is capable of inflicting upon herself, oblivious to anything beyond her needs and wants. Slow down, I want to tell her, along with the other women in the apartment whose English I cannot understand. I am reduced to a nod and smile in front of them, suddenly missing something everyone else seems to have.

ADOLESCENCE

When she begins to take the yellow school bus in the mornings, she forgets about me quickly. I am reminded of all those sleepless nights I once spent with my hand over her heart, realizing she will never know of them. When I first begin to drive—in front of the wheel—I am reminded of those first months with the baby in my hands: my heart pounding with fear, afraid of what I would do. My daughter wants a good, fast, TV mom, but I am nothing like that. She is embarrassed by my English, by the kind of mother I am. I try to do what I can for her; I cook the pasta and bread she asks for. She wants it bland, tasteless: a replica of the image on the back of the cardboard box. Don’t follow your friends, I tell her. What do you know, she says. I don’t know many things, I say. I tell you what I know.

TEENAGE

She begins to come home later now, performing in the theater at her school. It makes me proud to see her on stage. Her English is clean, sharp: comes out wrapped graciously in slick film. It is nothing like mine. But when my husband and I go to see her, she meets us in an empty hallway before rushing us home. She does not want us there.

With my empty days, I begin to work at a department store. There are clear glass cases holding diamonds and creams, and in a long time, I wish for something I cannot have. Instead, I buy my daughter a few things she wants: a phone, some nice shoes, some makeup for her shows. Thank you, she says, before disappearing into her room. Americans say thank you only because they must.

On the rides to and back from the department store, my body begins to ache: a pain I recognize only from my daughters’ birth many years ago. Because of these winters, I tell my husband. I tell him not to worry; he is tired enough, and I do not want to burden him with my inconveniences. On a day the pain is particularly bad, my daughter comes home crying. She shuts the door behind her. You don’t understand, she says. You will never understand. I say no more. I have become a burden: something unwanted, incapable. Her sobs slip through the door, and all I can do is listen.

AFTER

Osteogenesis Imperfecta: this is what my doctor tells me is breaking my bones. I call my daughter to tell her; she is in New York studying English Literature. I keep the phone call brief, not wanting to disturb her studies. With my daughter gone now, it is only my husband and I. We go on long walks before we go to bed early. Too early. I am reminded of all those sleepless nights we once endured with our visa’s pending, our daughter crying. There was a time she made me afraid, but now, she is strong enough to follow her dreams, to get what she wants. America lets her follow her dreams. This is what it was all for, I suppose. What we have given and what we have received. My daughter comes home one Friday. She is older now—beautiful in the way everyone said she would be. We are watching TV and she takes my hand, wraps her finger around mine.

Dedeepya is a high school student from Minneapolis. She finds inspiration in busy streets and warm weather. She loves coffee mugs (although not coffee!) and long bike rides.