2022 Prime Number Magazine Awards
for Poetry & Short Fiction

This year we received more than seven hundred entries from forty-five U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), and fourteen countries. A big THANK YOU to everyone who entered!

Our Judges for 2022

See our list of Finalists in each category

2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry

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Judge’s comment: I love “Umbra” because the speaker helps me see my own hands in a new way: as fish or birds, as shadows. This is the best sort of poem: one in which the reader makes discoveries alongside the poet, one in which the ordinary becomes magical.

~~~

Laura Apol is the author of five collections of poetry, including A Fine Yellow Dust (2021), winner of the Midwest Book Award for Poetry. Laura is an associate professor at Michigan State University and served as the Lansing Michigan poet laureate from 2019-2021. Her recent work focuses on poetic inquiry, international collaboration, and the therapeutic uses of writing in response to trauma. Find her at www.laura-apol.com

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Judge’s comment: In “At the Greenlawn Mortuary” the speaker is well aware of the irony that her mother, who tried “so hard to stay / ahead of life’s dust—" has, in death, become dust herself. Yet—in her stealth exploration of skeletal remains and weeds—she also finds hope.

~~~

Eileen Pettycrew’s poems have appeared in CALYX, The Westchester Review, The Normal School, SWWIM, Gold Man Review, The Scream Online Dreams Anthology, Watershed Review, Slipstream, and elsewhere. She was a finalist in New Ohio Review’s 2022 NORward Prize for Poetry. Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Judge’s comment: In “This Pill” the speaker describes how a pill s/he has taken alters the speaker’s view of the world. The speaker tells us how it “sweeps / birds from the sky” and how it “Numbs the act of witness—” her/his riveting details building towards a lonely, terrifying conclusion.

~~~

A third-generation artist, John Van Dreal began painting and writing at age seven. He earned his formal education in Fine Arts at Humboldt State University and Brigham Young University and educational psychology at Brigham Young University, maintaining careers in both fields while writing. A musician and award-winning artist with work featured in collections throughout the Pacific Northwest, Van Dreal uses his creative vision and accessible writing style to explore both the darker and quirkier sides of human behavior. He resides in Salem, Oregon, and is currently composing his first novel.

2022 Prime Number Magazine Award
for Short Fiction

Communist

When I was in eighth grade, my best friend’s mom published an editorial in our local newspaper supporting some far-off Arizona copper miners demanding better wages and working conditions. If that wasn’t bad enough, she gave her full name followed by “Communist.”

Mrs. Hamlin’s editorial appeared in the spring of 1967, a time when most people were more worried about civil rights’ demonstrators, war protestors, and hippies than copper miners. But everyone knew Commies were infiltrating the Blacks, sponsoring protesters, and ruining America’s youth with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It made sense Commies were also behind labor unions, especially after Mrs. Hamlin, “Communist,” came out in favor of the copper miners. 

Until I met her, all I knew about Commies was they had The Bomb, which was reason enough to fear and hate them. Except, according to Mrs. Hamlin, we had The Bomb first, so if we’d been Commies, we’d have wanted a bomb of our own. She favored equal opportunity and fair pay, believed private property was the root of all evil, and considered Dr. King a hero, not troublemaker. She deemed all wars immoral and, unlike my parents who ridiculed pop music, thought The Beatles, especially Paul, were cute.

After her editorial came out, eggs were thrown at Jack’s house, and Mrs. Hamlin received mail advising her to go back to where she came from, which happened to be New York City. Jack’s dad, a research scientist for a pharmaceutical company located in our small, Indiana town, had been hired away from another company out East. Mr. Hamlin worked long hours and, most evenings, fell asleep in front of the TV. If he cared, one way or the other, that his wife was a Communist, he didn’t let on.

Although Jack lived in a big house across town and I lived in Sunnyside, an aging development of three-bedroom slabs, we were bound together by a love for baseball. It didn’t hurt our friendship that I wasn’t the most popular kid and my classmates were slow to accept newcomers, but these weren’t considerations two teenage boys dwelt on. Rangier and stronger than me, he played short to my second because he could make the throw from deep in the hole and I couldn’t. He batted lead-off because he could get on base with a grounder up the middle as easily as a line drive to right, while I hit seventh where I couldn’t do much harm.

When we weren’t playing ball, we followed our favorite teams. An only child, I spent many evenings with my dad listening to the Cardinals’ games on KMOX radio. We cheered for Gibbie, Brock, and Roger Maris, the former Yankee star who’d broken Babe Ruth’s homerun record. He wasn’t breaking records in St. Louis, but he was helping the Cards win a pennant.

Mrs. Hamlin and Jack followed the Yankees, but with Maris traded, Mantle in decline, and Whitey Ford retired, these Yanks weren’t the Yanks of old. Although they struggled to stay above .500, Mrs. Hamlin said the Yankees were winners, and they’d be back, just wait.

Because my parents worked late—my dad a car salesman, my mom a store clerk—I regularly dined with the Hamlins following baseball practice. These meals weren’t spaghetti from a box, meatloaf, or casserole. Mrs. Hamlin made dishes bearing names I couldn’t pronounce and swimming in sauces I would’ve drunk through a straw. After dinner, she and Jack drove me home.

Sometimes, her thick red hair cascaded onto her shoulders like a movie star’s. Other times, she wore it swept up into a bun, revealing the enticing curve of her slender neck. I liked watching her drive, one hand on the wheel, the other searching from radio station to station, a cigarette dancing between full lips. One minute, we had The Rolling Stones on WLS and the next the latest news from NPR.

Mrs. Hamlin had an opinion on everything.

***

Mid-season, our team was leading the league when Jack’s mom published another editorial, this one supporting the copper miners’ decision to strike. Again, she signed her name, “Katherine Hamlin, Communist.”

At our game the following day, our best pitcher, Mike Schumacher, refused to take the field with a Commie’s son. Mike’s dad, a self-identifying member of the John Birch Society, wouldn’t allow it. The game went on without Mike, but no one talked to Jack or even cheered when he homered in the fifth. After we pulled out the win despite the absence of Mike’s arm, Mr. Schumacher huddled with Coach Miller.

When I told my dad what had happened, he said he doubted Mrs. Hamlin was a real Communist because real Communists didn’t go around announcing the fact. More than likely, she was no more than a misinformed agitator, bad enough in my dad’s view.

“But maybe, she’s right,” I said. “Maybe, those miners aren’t being treated fairly.”

“Billy, that’s between the miners and management.”

When asked about the Birchers, my dad said that although he’d never join, he respected them. They stood as our front line against Commies, Pinkos, and Fellow Travelers. Like Commies, Birchers held in-home meetings and recognized each other with secret handshakes. But unlike Commies, who wanted only to enslave and rule, Birchers represented freedom and free enterprise.

“Son,” my dad said, “those Birchers will lay down their lives to protect us from the Reds.”

“Yeah, but what’s this got to do with baseball?”

My mom looked up from her Good Housekeeping and gave her stock answer. “Listen to your dad, Billy. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

A few days later, Coach Miller made his decision. Convinced by Mr. Schumacher, several parents had signed a letter refusing to allow their sons to play if Jack continued to play. Coach had no choice, and I didn’t blame him when he kicked Jack off the team so we could have a team.

But with Jack gone, I wanted to quit. The way I saw it, if Jack couldn’t play, I wouldn’t play. My dad, who hadn’t signed the letter because he didn’t want to get involved in politics, insisted otherwise. If I quit the team on account of Jack getting kicked off, people might consider me a Commie sympathizer which would reflect badly on the family.

“But you said Mrs. Hamlin wasn’t a real Communist.”

“I did, and I doubt she is. But she’s claimed it, and now she owns it.”

“Billy,” my mom chimed in, “I might not be the best Christian, but I am a Christian, and it would break my heart if you sided with those godless Commies.”

***

Jack’s ejection from the team should have been the end of it. But at our next game, Mrs. Hamlin and Jack stood along the third base line, holding posterboard signs. Mrs. Hamlin’s read FREEDOM MEANS FREEDOM; Jack’s blared BASEBALL FOR ALL.

At first, some of the parents politely encouraged Mrs. Hamlin and Jack to lower their signs and take a seat, but when they refused, a couple of dads confiscated the signs and smashed them on the ground. Mrs. Hamlin and Jack sat down, locked arms, and raised their fists in protest. People booed and threw popcorn, but Jack and Mrs. Hamlin didn’t budge. After a while, cops came and escorted them off the field.

“Agitators,” my dad concluded. “Like I said.”

“The problem,” my mom observed, “is you’re judged by the company you keep.”

“Yep,” my dad agreed. “Birds of a feather.”

In fact, my mom said, she and my dad had discussed it, and they thought I should break off my friendship with Jack.

“But he’s not a Commie.”

“Listen,” my dad said, “people talk, don’t think they don’t.”

“That’s right,” my mom said. “And we don’t want them talking about Billy Kramer.”

Without Jack’s glove and bat, our team finished nearer the middle of the spring-league pack than in the lead. Coach claimed to be proud of us, anyway. We would face future adversity, too, he warned, whether injury, inclement weather, or an opposing pitcher’s hard-breaking curve. What mattered, Coach said, was how we dealt with adversity. After losing Jack, we could have folded like a cheap beach chair and ended up in the cellar. Instead, we’d dealt with his loss like champions, playing our best and ignoring the rest. No coach could expect more.

***

In the past, I’d been considered too young to be left alone at home over summer vacation. Instead, I’d been sent to YMCA and church camps or, when camps weren’t available, shipped to my aunt’s house where I was made to play with cousins I didn’t much care for. But now that I was older, I was left on my own and expected to keep busy cutting the grass, painting the garage, and tending the vegetable garden. It wouldn’t be long, my dad said, before I’d be old enough to land a paying job. If I wanted to play ball, then, I could play industrial league softball like any other working man.

Jack and I had hardly spoken since Coach kicked him off the team. After school ended, I didn’t even bump into him in the hall or cafeteria. There were neighborhood kids my age, but Steve Myers remained stuck on model cars, and all Terry Hooley talked about were his 4-H rabbits. The more I reflected on it, the more unfair it seemed that I’d been banned from seeing my friend Jack. After all, we’d done nothing wrong.

One June morning, the garage painted, I broke free and, against my parents’ wishes, biked to Jack’s house.

Mrs. Hamlin answered the door, smiling as if nothing had happened and saying how happy she was to see me. When asked if Jack could play, she replied they were in the middle of his piano lesson, but I was welcome to wait inside.

This was the first I’d heard about Jack and piano lessons. “Sure, if it’s okay.”

He appeared behind his mom. “Hey, man. Long time no see.”

“Yeah, I’ve been painting the garage.”

“Well, you’re here now,” Mrs. Hamlin said, “and that’s all that counts.”

I watched and listened while they practiced Bob Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Her fingers, nails manicured and painted red to match her lipstick, floated over the keys. Although Jack hunted and pecked, I could see he’d played before.

When they finished, I clapped and told them how impressed I was.

“Let’s all sing,” Mrs. Hamlin said. “Billy, please join us.”

“Oh, I can’t sing.”

“Neither can Dylan,” Jack said, and we all laughed. “C’mon, get in here.”

My only previous experience with singing was on the few occasions a year my family attended church. There, I kept my head down, mumbling and stumbling over the words in the hymnal. But here, encouraged by Jack and his mom, I gave voice to the lyrics, and by the fourth verse, I was belting out the tune, too.

“Excellent,” Mrs. Hamlin said. “You have a very nice voice, Billy.”

Jack punched me on the shoulder. “You sing all right. Not as good as you field but not bad.”

Mrs. Hamlin explained that Jack and she usually baked following his piano lesson, but since I’d come all this way, she would understand if we wanted to play.

Before I could respond, Jack spoke up. “Let’s bake first. We’ll play catch afterwards and have something tasty to chow down when we come inside.”

Little Debbie, Dolly Madison, and Betty Crocker were the only bakery we enjoyed at my house, but I sensed Jack and his mom had something different in mind.

Mrs. Hamlin led us into the kitchen and suggested we make a strawberry tart. Strawberries were in season, she explained, and Jack and she had picked two quarts the day before.

First, we needed to wash our hands and put on aprons. Here in the States, she said, only women wore aprons. But in Europe, the most famous chefs were men, and they wore their aprons with pride.

Next, we gathered ingredients and equipment. Flour, eggs, cream, sugar, and butter aligned on the counter. Mixing bowls and measuring spoons and cups joined what Mrs. Hamlin called our mise en place.

We followed a handwritten recipe, mixing dry in one bowl and wet in another. “Baking is science,” she said. “Our measurements must be precise.”

We formed a doughball, rolled it out, and placed it in a special tart pan. We spread pastry cream over the dough, and then Jack’s mom layered carefully sliced berries, just so, on top. “Food should look as good as it tastes,” she instructed. “No one will eat if, first, they’re not engaged visually.”

After popping the tart in the oven, she sent Jack and me outside, claiming she couldn’t have done this without us.

Like before, we tossed the ball back and forth and hit grounders and pop-ups to each other, all the while chattering about pennant races and our favorite players. But without the anticipation of an upcoming game where our skills would be put to the test, we lacked our old enthusiasm. After a while, the heat got the best of us and we headed inside.

Our timing couldn’t have been better. That strawberry tart was fresh out of the oven and looking and smelling great. But, Mrs. Hamlin said, before we enjoyed the tart, growing boys like us needed something more nutritious. She’d made sandwiches, and not just ordinary sandwiches. She’d made Monte Cristo sandwiches with ham, brioche bread, and gruyere cheese.

While Jack and I ate our sandwiches, she topped the tart with fresh whipped cream and plated slices. After inhaling our plated portions, I followed Jack’s lead and dug into the pan. In no time, we snarfed the entire tart. Mrs. Hamlin laughed and said it looked like Mr. Hamlin would have no desert that night.

“That was the best pie, I mean tart, I’ve ever eaten,” I said.

Jack elbowed me. “I told you we should bake first.”

Then he stood, flashed a mischievous smile, and announced he was going to the bathroom and might be a while if we caught his drift. Mrs. Hamlin frowned and said there was no reason to be crude. After Jack left, she began clearing dishes. When she reached around for my plate, her left breast brushed my arm. I wasn’t trying to see, but the top button of her blouse was undone, offering a generous glimpse of freckled cleavage.

I felt like I’d been caught leafing through the lingerie section of my mom’s Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Blushing hot and red as a St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball cap, I snapped my head around and stared at the wall. Mrs. Hamlin moved toward the sink and, after a moment, asked if I had a girlfriend.

I stammered I couldn’t imagine it with a girl from my school. Those girls were more like sisters or cousins than potential girlfriends.

 “That’s okay, honey. You have plenty of time. You’ll be driving soon. You’ll meet other girls, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder, her fingertips squeezing gently. “You know what I think? I think the girls are going to like Billy. You’re a very handsome young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’ll only become more confident with time.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I replied with the first thing that came to mind. “Do Communists believe in God?”

She sighed and shook her head behind closed eyes, giving the impression she’d heard this question before. “It’s complicated. They believe the Church is a threat to the State.”

“But do you believe in God?”

“There’s no easy answer to that, Billy. I don’t believe in God like they teach in church if that’s what you mean. How about you? Do you believe in God?”

Before that moment, it had never occurred to me that not believing was an option. “I don’t know. Probably not like they teach in church.”

 She winked. smiled, and leaned in so close I could smell her perfume. “Well, sweetie, that can be our little secret.”

***

Mrs. Hamlin owned a French cookbook, and under her leadership, the three of us set out to prepare as many dishes from it as time allowed before summer’s end. Nearly every day, as soon as my parents cleared out, I pedaled to Jack’s house. Sometimes, I felt guilty, what with my parents working hard and expecting me to do as told. But mostly, I didn’t see the harm as long as I kept up the yard and garden and didn’t get into trouble. It wasn’t like I was leading a revolution or joining a sit-in.

Except for the occasional burger on the grill, my dad didn’t cook, and my mom considered cooking to be just another burdensome household chore, one not far removed from cleaning the toilet. Mrs. Hamlin said that was understandable because my mom was a busy “career woman.” She was to be admired for working outside the home in a man’s world. But for her, Mrs. Hamlin said, cooking was a joy and a way of expressing love for Jack and Mr. Hamlin.

To get us started, she mail-ordered exotic items like truffles, caviar, and foie gras. Local farmers provided herbs and vegetables along with quail eggs, rabbit, and pheasant. Lobsters, shrimp, and clams arrived frozen from the coast.

Standing elbow to elbow with his mom, Jack and I learned to slice and dice. We pan-roasted, sautéed, and seared. She directed us with passion—this was how to de-bone fish, truss a hen, butterfly a beef filet—and moved about the kitchen in her tight-fitting Capri pants or bell-bottom jeans with the grace of a ballerina. While creating what she described as “beautiful and delicious food,” trout en papillote and coq au vin, Mrs. Hamlin commiserated with the struggles of the proletariat and criticized the smugness of the bourgeoisie. She introduced us to Marx, Lenin, and the old Bolsheviks, Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev.

When asked how our fancy cooking reconciled with her communist principles, Mrs. Hamlin didn’t see a conflict. Her grandparents had entered this country as poor refugees. They cooked using vegetables in season and meat and fish harvested from the land and sea. They added flavor to otherwise bland dishes with sauces, spices, and herbs. In her view, French cuisine honored rustic peasants, like her grandmother, who’d passed down recipes through the generations.

 She often reminisced about New York, its restaurants and theaters, museums and parks. Only Paris was better, she said—the food, language, and people. The French had fashion, too, and those brilliant, sexy Existentialists, Sartre and Camus. You could be a Communist in Paris, and no one would bat an eye.

 “But there’s no baseball,” Jack said. “Those Froggies don’t play.”

“They have art, literature, and philosophy,” Mrs. Hamlin replied. “They have cafés, where people meet to drink wine or espresso and discuss the avant garde. Don’t you want to go, Billy? I’d go in a minute.”

“A New York Minute?” Jack teased.

“Yes, smarty-pants, a New York Minute.”

The farthest I’d been from home was the Ozarks to visit my dad’s hillbilly relatives. Until I met Jack and his mom, going to New York or Paris seemed unimaginable. But listening to her talk made me want to go more than anything.

When not cooking, Jack and I spent time in the cool of his room rather than the steamy heat of his backyard. My mom listened to country western and gospel on a console stereo proudly displayed in our living room, but Jack had his own turntable and records. Over and over, we listened to Sgt. Pepper and Scott McKenzie’s song about going to San Francisco with flowers in our hair. When we tired of listening, we joined Mrs. Hamlin at the piano or took turns trying chords on Jack’s silk-string guitar.

Mid-July, the hottest day of the summer, she decided we needed a break from cooking. We packed her car, a long, sleek Cadillac with fins and plenty of chrome, and drove to the Indiana Dunes State Park. Jack loaned me cut-offs, and he and his mom changed into swimsuits, hers a green one-piece that matched the color of her eyes and fit snug as a second layer of skin.

We played Wiffle ball on the brown sand beach overlooking Lake Michigan and swam in the cold, blue water. My mom took pride in retaining her “figure” but didn’t see the point in exercise or sports. Mrs. Hamlin also had a figure, but instead of curves, her swimsuit revealed angles and muscles, dimples and points. Not to mention, she hit and threw nearly as well as Jack and I. And when she raced us to shore after daring us to accompany her far beyond the drop-off, she won every time.

After stopping for hotdogs and suds at a local root beer barrel, we returned home, sun burned and exhausted. Mrs. Hamlin slipped away for a nap while Jack and I showered. He was still rinsing off when I started downstairs. About the time I hit the top step, Mrs. Hamlin exited her bedroom at the far end of the hall. Wearing only a towel that barely covered breasts and behind, she rummaged a hallway closet. Mesmerized, I stopped short, unable to look away. After a moment, her search at an end, she must have sensed my presence. I expected her to chastise me, but instead, she clasped the towel about her, pirouetted, and sang, “Ooh, la, la.”

She giggled and, over her shoulder, said that could be our little secret, too.

***

The following week, Detroit erupted in race riots. Looting, vandalism, and arson prevented the Tigers from playing home games. At the governor’s request, President Johnson sent troops with tanks and machine guns. There was fear the violence in Detroit would reach other cities, and while most people blamed the Blacks, Mrs. Hamlin, Communist, posted an editorial blaming laws and policies that prevented Blacks from receiving better educations and jobs. Until Blacks were freed from their chains and the awful ghettos in which they lived, she wrote, we could only expect more Detroits.

After her editorial appeared, my parents sat me down and announced they were on to me. In fact, my dad said he’d known I’d been visiting Jack on the sly almost from the get-go. He admitted he should’ve put his foot down earlier but had refrained because he hoped I’d come around on my own. But now, following Mrs. Hamlin’s latest editorial, he was left with no choice. I was going to Bible camp, like it or not. By the time I returned, only a couple of weeks of school vacation would remain, my bike would be under lock and key, and I’d have plenty of chores facing me.

“We’re very disappointed, Billy,” my mom said.

My dad laid it on. “This could hurt my business. People can buy cars from anyone. They don’t have to buy from a man whose son is friendly with Communists.”

My mom demanded an answer. “Has that woman been brainwashing you?”

“Mostly, we cook and play music.”

“Cook?” my dad sat back.

“French stuff.”

“French?”

“What kind of music?” my mom asked.

“Dylan and The Stones. Others.”

My dad drew a breath.

“Well,” my mom said. “You won’t be listening to that trash at Bible camp.”

***

It rained every other day, and on the days it rained, we passed time in dark, damp cabins, slapping mosquitoes and talking sports and girls. One boy had smuggled in a deck of cards and showed us how to play poker with deuces and suicide kings wild. We gambled for cigarettes and matches, the winners sneaking into the woods to puff away.

Another boy had brought a Playboy magazine. Evenings, after dinner and prayers, we hovered over the centerfold by flashlight, arguing whether Hugh Hefner had made it up or if Miss June truly wanted to be a nurse and, in fact, hailed from Peoria. We debated who among the girl campers had already given up their virginity and who held to it like a fan clutching a foul ball.

Like I’d told Mrs. Hamlin, the only girls I knew attended my school, and they came across as too plain and familiar to be girlfriends. By comparison, the current crew of Bible camp girls was prettier and more mysterious than girls I’d attended classes with since first grade. Their swelling breasts and round bottoms were omnipresent at the cafeteria, in craft classes, and around the swimming pool. Uninvited, Susie, Debbie, and Nancy hijacked my thoughts and stalked my dreams.

Then my thoughts and dreams began to also feature Mrs. Hamlin, the look of delight she displayed when licking frosting from a spoon, the sound of her laughter when Jack cracked one of his dumb jokes. She so ruled my heart and mind that when a swarthy boy from Kokomo—the only one among us who shaved—claimed to have felt up his hometown neighbor girl, I lied and boasted I’d seen a full-grown woman naked. I described a friend’s mom flashing dappled breasts and orange bush. What happened next, my cabinmates begged to know. Nothing yet, I admitted, before adding she’d winked and danced a little dance.

“She wants you,” the Kokomo kid assured me.

“If you don’t move on that,” a homely boy from Ft. Wayne advised, “someone else will.”

But no sooner had I let on than I was besieged by guilt. “This is our secret,” she’d said, except now, it wasn’t. Mrs. Hamlin now belonged to my buddies no less than Miss June, free as the Playmate to inhabit their lurid fantasies. And, also, my fantasies, for having conjured Mrs. Hamlin’s nakedness, it tortured me night and day.

I slogged through the remaining days of camp, inflamed by desire and taunted by the other boys. Ooh, la, la. 

When I returned home to a bike locked down and a long list of chores, my mom said she hoped I’d learned my lesson. My dad said Bible camp had been my chance to learn my lesson the easy way, and he hoped I didn’t have to learn it the hard way.

I found newspapers in the trash reporting that the Detroit riot had been quelled but not without loss of life and extensive property damage. More editorials had been written, a few by Mrs. Hamlin, others by those with opposing views, most prominently a coward who gave his name as Anon Y. Mouse.

The first chance I got, a shimmery August morning, I walked over an hour to Jack’s house, keeping to the shadows and beyond the tree line.

***

A For Sale sign stood in the yard, the Cadillac in the drive, its rear window broken. Mrs. Hamlin answered the door, wearing red shorts that showed off her shapely legs. The family had received threats, she explained; rocks were thrown, epithets shouted. She’d sent Jack to live with his grandparents in Connecticut. As for her, she refused to be bullied and planned to stay put with Jack’s dad until he found another job elsewhere.

On the verge of tears, I asked if Jack was coming back.

“No, sweetie, I don’t think so. But you can visit. Maybe, we’ll see the Yankees play.”

I stood silent and rooted in place, trying to make sense of it all. When I didn’t speak or move off the porch, she invited me inside, saying we could cook or listen to music. But I didn’t want to cook or listen to music any more than I wanted to see the Yankees play.

She fetched glasses of iced tea before we settled on her sofa. She admitted to feeling badly about the problems her editorials had caused, but she didn’t regret writing them. She stood by everything she’d said.

“So, are you a real Communist?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes, you have to get people’s attention to make a difference.”

“I hate this town,” I said. “It’s a stupid town. I wish I was leaving with you and Jack.”

She ran her fingers through my sweat-damp hair. “I know, I know.”

That’s when the lie I’d told the boys at Bible camp swelled inside my throat too large to contain. I hadn’t intended to confess, but in that moment, I knew I had to come clean or carry the burden of my dishonesty for the rest of my life.

She blinked and sat back. “Well, I wasn’t exactly naked.”

“But we had secrets.”

“Secrets?”

“You twirled. You said that was our secret.”

She gave me a sad smile before cupping my face in her hands and kissing me, not a kiss the way the French kiss, no more than a peck to the forehead, really. “We had a good summer didn’t we, Billy?”

“Do you hate me?”

“Oh, no, of course not. Jack and I love you.”

“You do?”

“You’re very special to us.”

If I’d had the words, I’d have told her I loved them, too.

***

That fall, the boys returned to school taller and thicker, the girls cuter and plumper in what the boys called all the right places. Not long after a new family moved into Jack’s house, packages arrived in the mail, one containing Jack’s guitar and the other Mrs. Hamlin’s French cookbook.

Although the Cards won the pennant and went on to win the Series, beating Boston in seven, my heart wasn’t in it. My dad couldn’t understand; these 1967 Cards featured future hall-of-famers at nearly every position. How could I not cheer for them? My mom wanted to know what my problem was. Didn’t she and my dad work hard every day so we could have the nicer things in life? Couldn’t I show the least appreciation, the least interest in our family?

 Instead, I withdrew, becoming sullen at home and detached at school. I eschewed text books in favor of authors of my own choosing: the Beats, Ken Kesey, and James Baldwin. When failing History and Geometry looked as likely as not, a counselor called me to his office.

“You’re smarter than this, Billy. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. What’s going on with you?”

“Is there anything wrong at home?”

“Not mine. How about yours?”

But I somehow survived the semester and even managed to fall in with a new crowd, classmates who presented as artists, poets, and musicians, outsiders who dabbled with drugs, hated The Establishment, and wanted to drop out of Society. Like them, I grew my hair long and perfected the insolence I’d previewed with my guidance counselor. When I formed a garage band, A Moveable Feast, for which I played rhythm guitar and sang lead, my dad threatened to kick me out of the house. My mom said she couldn’t believe she’d raised, of all things, an inconsiderate, ungrateful hippie.

“What’re the neighbors going to think?” she asked.

“I don’t care.”

“Well, Mr. I Don’t Care,” my dad said, “see if that gets you through high school. See if that lands you a job.”

“I don’t care.”

By the time baseball season rolled around the following spring, people had stopped talking about Commies and Birchers. The Tet Offensive and the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were on everyone’s mind.

Anon Y. Mouse opined in the “People’s Forum” that their deaths, regrettable though some believed, in fact signaled God’s will and an opportunity to reclaim traditional values and demonstrate to our enemies a stronger and more united America. I responded with my own editorial, arguing for an unconditional withdrawal of troops from Viet Nam, more and better public housing, and the legalization of marijuana and LSD.

Of course, I signed my editorial, William Kramer, Communist.

 ~ ~ ~

Judge’s comment: As judge, with nearly three hundred entries to read, I gravitated towards the stories that stuck in my memory on my first reading. One such story is our contest winner, "Communist." This story is not flashy, keeping its reader engaged on a deeper level, through its keen observation, enduring characters, indelible settings, steadfast prose, and a well-built structure. "Communist" is a top-shelf story by a gifted writer.

~ ~ ~

Gary V. Powell is a retired lawyer, poet, novelist, and author of short fiction. Twice an honorable mention for the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, winner of a 2015 Eric Hoffer Award (Gover Prize for flash fiction), and a finalist for numerous other fiction awards, his work can be read in many literary magazines and reviews including the Thomas Wolfe Review, Carvezine, 2012 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Atticus Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Pisgah Review, Best New Writing 2015, and Sleep Is a Beautiful Color: 2017 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology. His chapbook, Super Blood Wolf Moon, won Kallisto Gaia Press’s 2020 Contemporary Poetry Prize; more recent poetry appears in the Main Street Rag and San Diego Poetry Annual.  His chapbook, Permafrost, is forthcoming in 2023 from Finishing Line Press. His novel, Lucky Bastard, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing (2012).

Lunch

I was meeting Melinda for a late lunch at a reliable midtown brassiere. We hadn’t spoken in over a year. Then there she was on my computer screen, instant messaging me out of the blue. We set up this lunch and I logged off before she could change her mind. You see, I already knew what had happened, or so I thought. I’d heard her estranged husband’s condensed, and undoubtedly slanted, side of the story. Now I was about to hear hers. The truth, I am sure, lies uncomfortably somewhere in between. What’s that they say about every story? There are three sides. Yours, mine, and the truth. Even the truth, I am sure, gets distorted, partially erased, or embellished until it, too, bears minimal resemblance to what really happened.

We’d fallen out of touch, the way friends sometimes will. It wasn’t a falling out, just a falling away. Different lives taking different paths. I’ll readily admit, I was always envious of her. She was thinner. Prettier. Wealthy. Not over the top, never have to work again wealthy, but conspicuous consumption, big house, exotic five-star trips, expensive clothes, I’ll hire someone else to do it wealthy. For as long as I’ve known her, which spans decades, she seemed to have the world on a string which, as I’m sure you have surmised, wasn’t the case. Otherwise, why would I be telling this story? Still, she was easy to envy. She wasn’t one of those types blissfully unaware of their good fortune either. On the contrary. She knew hers, and she worked it. Truth be told, she’d made calculated moves to get to where she was. Very little was left to chance, or so she thought. In the end, so much of life is nothing but chance, and chance, as we all learn at some point, cuts both ways.

I arrived early, a bad habit of mine. This was a place I once frequented. I was shown to a prime table, elevated so you had a view of the room, but also tucked in a corner for privacy. What I really wanted was a big glass of expensive pinot grigio, but the occasion seemed to call for sobriety. I ordered a seltzer. I sipped my drink and watched the clock. She arrived, as she often had over the years, twenty minutes late, not quite late enough to qualify as rude, but late enough to make a statement.

I recognized her the minute she walked in. We hugged lightly and told each other how wonderful we looked. What else do middle-aged women do? After all, if we don’t say it, who will? I must admit, she did look good. Maybe a little older, but still put together. I had no idea that the perfectly coifed hair was a wig or that beneath that Chanel jacket she was missing a lung.

I need to back-track. As I said, I’d heard the story from her husband’s point of view. We’d sent them a Christmas card, like we always did. The husband, Michael, called immediately, professing shock that we “didn’t know.” It was my husband who answered the phone and listened to the story which he then promptly related to me, altering the narrative in the retelling a bit, I am sure. This is Michael’s side: She’d kidnapped the girls at the end of summer, taking them to Manhattan to be close to family and friends. (Was I hurt that she hadn’t contacted me, that somehow, I, possibly her “oldest” friend, wasn’t on that list of friends and family? Of course, I was.) She had cancer and was being treated at Sloane. That was her excuse for New York. The marriage had been a sham for years. Things had been coming undone almost from the start. There was an incident, trumped up, where she accused him of assault. All a lie, one of her many, many lies, he said. And the cancer—

When I heard the word cancer I didn’t blink. I assumed a mild skin cancer or an early-stage breast, easily removed with an in and out lumpectomy. Perhaps a light uterine tumor that required a bit of scraping. That would be her style—all the drama without too much trauma, and certainly nothing that would require a cameo, much less a lead, by the grim reaper.

Life tends to throw a few curve balls, and it threw her more than her share at the end. Maybe some cosmic force was making up for all those picture-perfect years. Maybe all those years weren’t so picture-perfect after all. In the end, Melinda taught me this: anyone’s life can fall apart in a multitude of unimaginable ways. Just because one bad thing happens, you are not immune to others. It’s elementary probability. You flip a coin five times and get heads each time. Flip it a sixth time, and you’ve still got a 50-50 chance of getting heads. You simply cannot increase your odds of getting tails. Each flip is an independent event. Cancer. Divorce. Betrayal. But there’s also the house of cards effect. Build a house of cards, remove one, and sometimes the whole thing comes down on top of you. Either theory, you’re screwed.

Towards the end, in the months after that lunch, she asked me multiple times to write her story. “You’re the writer,” she said, begging on the phone, pleading in an email, beseeching me in person. “Write what happened. Tell the world what he did to me.” It was a good story, for sure. Sex. Money. Power. Betrayal. But how could I? I was not witness to the coming undone and, instead, only heard her side—as slanted as his, I am sure—at that long, strange, booze-less lunch. I’ve never returned to the restaurant since that day, much as I loved their fresh oysters, crème brulee, and wine list. I doubt I can eat there again without the specter of that day sliding into the booth next to me.

 By that lunch, she viewed everything through the twin lenses of hatred and fear, both of which have the tendency to distort the truth much like a funhouse mirror. In some ways it didn’t matter because seven months later she was dead, her worst-case scenario played out despite all the doctors, all the lawyers, all the money, all the prayer, all the Jewish hail-Marys, all the everythings that she could muster. At the end, I hope the morphine was working. I hope she was not alone or that, if she was, she was drugged enough not to know it. I hope there were angels, and choirs, and a platoon of handsome, white-robed gentlemen with chiseled chins and broad shoulders and deep dark eyes to greet her at the gates of wherever. I hope there was some semblance of peace. I hope she knew she was loved.

We’d known each other for thirty-plus years, most of our adult lives, we liked to calculate. Of course, there were gaps. Periods of weeks or months or even a year or so when we didn’t speak, or in later years, email. Still, it’s a long time to stay in touch, even with the gaps. I went to both of her weddings and was there for the birth of her first daughter at New York Hospital. In fact, I was the second person to see the baby, after her father. Melinda’s father. Not the baby’s. That’s another story, but I suppose part of this story, too. That baby—Lily—was the dividing line. There was life before Lily and life after Lily. The child would hardly know her biological father, although he did fly in from London later, the week when she was born, and would, years later, make telephone contact with Lily when she was thirteen or fourteen, but I’m getting off track here. What I want to say is this: Lily was everything to Melinda. She was her sun, her moon, her stars. After Lily, Melinda was different. They say children change you, and they do, believe me they do.

Lily may not remember her father, but I do. He was eccentric, crazy, a wild man who always dressed in black. He was smart and clever and sardonic and had a caustic tongue. I’d visited them in Knightsbridge. I remember well the glistening all-white branches that blanketed the restaurant in Belgravia where their wedding reception was held. I remember the butler who would answer the door at their place in the east 60s back in New York where they briefly lived. I remember, too, the call from Melinda informing me that she was leaving London, and husband number one in the process, and coming back to New York, she and her five-month baby bump, Lily-to-be. There were many late spring and early summer New York afternoons, when the three of us would stroll up and down Madison—always Madison Avenue! Lily would be tucked in her expensive beyond-McLarren pram, wrapped in something soft from Paris or Milan, and we would stop at a sidewalk café for a light lunch or afternoon cappuccinos, the baby, her eyes wide open, taking it all in.

***

“Are you ladies ready?” the waiter asked. He stood at attention in his crisp white jacket, his pad and pen ready. We ordered. Spartan food for the occasion. Plain grilled fish. Plain steamed vegetables. Like I always did with Melinda, I was careful to order in the same price range as she did. Yes, I would love a dozen Kamamotos Washington state on the half shell! And, oh, that ceviche appetizer sounds divine! And, of course, that pinot grigio glistening in the glass at the table next door, but— She always picked up the check, and I was from always cognizant of the tab. Melinda reached for a roll from the breadbasket, broke it open, and asked, “Where should I begin?”

The story was familiar enough. You have enough friends and family who go through a divorce, and nothing can really surprise you. It’s all the same. He/she abused her/him physically/mentally/emotionally. He/she was manic depressive/bi-polar/alcoholic/addicted to drug A, B, or C. He/she stole/squandered/failed to make enough money. He/she lied/cheated/fell in love/lust with someone else, or simply out of love/lust with his/her current spouse. He/she didn’t love her/him enough. Simply invert the wedding vows, and there you have it: a litany of reasons why. Like a Chinese menu, take one from column A, one from column B… In her case, there was an altercation on a street corner that may or may not have happened as she related it. There was another woman met on a business trip that he may or may not still be involved with. There were threats to the girls that may or may not be true. What I do know about divorce is that once the gauntlet has been thrown, all bets are off. The parties involved will stop at nothing. Secrets are revealed, medical records Xeroxed and distributed, stories planted in the press and whispered loudly among family, friends, and neighbors. Once that gauntlet is drawn, there’s no wiping off the blood, no slipping it gently back into a sheathe. Their case was no different. And like all divorces, cliché as it sounds, it’s the poor kids caught in the middle. Those poor girls! Those poor, beautiful designer-clad, private-school-educated, passport-stamped girls!

The second daughter, Heather, was born during one of those gap years in our relationship. I did get the pretty pink announcement in the mail and sent the requisite expensive gift. Of course, new husband Michael was there for the second child, so I was ancillary, peripheral at best. By then, Melinda was already ensconced in one of those big houses, miles away from my cramped New York apartment, living a different life. On the cocktail circuit, hobnobbing with those whose names sometimes appear in bold letters in the press, arranging dinner parties for twenty-two with matching, imported china and crystal. (For my own wedding, she and her not-quite-yet-second husband gave us a set of champagne flutes from Tiffany’s and a matching champagne bucket. We’ve broken all but one of the glasses over the years. I still think of her whenever I drink from that final flute.)

“So, he called you,” she prompted. “What lies did he tell you? Tell me exactly.” She wanted a blow by blow of the conversation, but it was months ago, and Michael spoke with my husband—not me—and anything that was said would surely be mangled in this telephone game of telling the tale.

“Not much,” I lied. My husband had been on the phone with him for nearly an hour. “That you’d taken the girls and left. Moved back to New York. That you had cancer—” I said, keeping it as vague as possible.

She rolled her eyes. “That bastard. It’s all wrong,” she said. “That’s not how it happened at all. He left everything out—everything.” And she proceeded to tell me her side, blow by blow, leaving out none of the possibly true, possibly false sordid details.

***

We met in a typical way decades ago. We were sorority sisters back at a Big Ten school, both from New York, although she hailed from the city and I from the sticks upstate. We liked to joke we were the only two who had ambitions that extended beyond marrying a Beta or a Fiji. While others were busy planning weddings as graduation approached, we were itching to get out into the real world. I moved to New York, taking an entry level publishing job. Melinda moved to Miami and took a job selling advertising. My very first winter-time tan was compliments of a five-day vacation I took to visit her in Miami that first year in New York. I still remember driving to Coconut Grove in her little red Mercedes convertible, sitting at a sidewalk restaurant in mid-winter, sipping a coconut concoction, marveling at the wonder of it all.

From there, it is a kaleidoscope of memories. Dinners in New York, paid for by her, whenever she was in town. Long distance telephone calls deep into the night, dissecting one romance or another, all before flat-rate calling plans. She always offered to call me back and put it on her bill. Her first London wedding, and the subsequent split. Melinda and Lily-to-be moving back to that luxury Fifth Avenue apartment. Melinda meeting Michael, who would become husband number two shortly after Lily took her first steps. I was dating my own future husband by then. In fact, Lily—toddling at one and a half—was one of our flower girls on a dazzling Saturday morning the following June.

***

The waiter brought out food, setting the plates in front of us. I waited for him to leave, then asked, “How are the girls? This has got to be tough for them.”

“They’re great,” Melinda lied. Suddenly it dawned on me that never during our long, circuitous friendship had she ever said anything was anything but great. Things were always great, or wonderful, or fabulous, or amazing. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the face she put on for everyone, or just for me, her oldest long-running and arguably best (or at least top three) friend. Did she ever share her doubts and demons with anyone?

“They love their new schools. They’re happy. They don’t miss him.” At the mention of her husband, I could see her jaw tighten, her shoulders tense. She rattled on about their summer adventures. Trips to the Hamptons. Tennis camps. A long weekend in the Berkshires.

I listened. Maybe Michael was the ogre she depicted, or maybe not. He’d always seemed nice to me. I’d liked him, in fact. He was always cordial, friendly in an aloof, lawyerly kind of way. He was handsome and successful, and traveled in circles beyond my sphere. She had married him a year after my own wedding, and he had formally adopted Lily. Whenever Melinda and I had lunch in the city, once a month or so at that point, often at this very restaurant, she seemed deliriously happy. They had moved to an expensive northern suburb. A year after that, she gave birth to her second daughter. And a year after that, my husband and I had twin girls. The four of them—Melinda, Michael, Lily, and the new baby, Heather—came to visit bearing expensive gifts and bags full of designer hand-me-downs. Over the next few years, our paths crossed sporadically. She lived her Connecticut life and I tried to balance two babies and a high-pressure job. At some point, they moved to Maryland. I was working at the ad agency and had a client in D.C. I flew down once or twice a month. I started staying over an extra night, sleeping in one of their well-appointed guest rooms in their palatial new house in a woodsy corner of Maryland, always bringing an empty suitcase for more hand-me-downs for my own daughters. There was a period of a year or so when we spoke several times a week and where, on my visits, we stayed up late—the three of us sharing a bottle of wine, talking business ideas, the new economy, all the wonderful things that we were all on the cusp of as the new millennial approached.

Then I changed jobs. The D.C. trips dried up. She’d call occasionally when she was in New York, and we’d get together for lunch or dinner. When I asked how things were, her answer was always “wonderful.” The husband was wonderful. The girls were wonderful. Her life was wonderful. Who was I to doubt? Maybe it was. Maybe for a long stretch they really were living a Polo ad life, and everyone was happy and there were no cracks, let alone fissures. I hope so.

Time flies. We attended Lily’s bas mitzvah one spring. Here she was thirteen and I could still remember her, a mewling infant in that expensive pram. On the big screen, a montage of Lily’s life flashed in quick progression. Beach holidays. Birthday cakes. African safaris. Pony rides. You couldn’t help but feel envy for the life the little girl was leading. She arrived in a sparkly, clingy dress that was much more than thirteen and you couldn’t help but imagine the glittery, yellow-brick road to Oz that stretched ahead of her. But the road was curved and all that glitters is not gold and the wizard sometimes is no wizard at all, merely a façade and a fake and a fool, and fifty percent of the time—yes, a full fifty percent—the coin comes up tails, like it or not.

***

 Back at the restaurant, I picked at my entree and sipped my seltzer, wishing it was wine. “What about the cancer?” I finally asked. “He said you have cancer.”

 She sipped her hot tea, hesitated, and then started talking. As so many stories do, it started innocently enough. There was a small, nagging growth at the back of her head. Nothing to be concerned about, her doctor said. She had it removed. It grew back. She had it removed again, the doctor still unconcerned. In fact, he was so unconcerned he didn’t bother to biopsy it. The second time it grew back, she saw a new doctor who, removing it a third time, sent it to the lab. Yes, it was cancer. Only it wasn’t one of those easy cancers that you cut out, do a little chemo, maybe radiation, and then get on with your life. This one was rare, stubborn, unusual—just like Melinda.

She was in and out of hospitals. There was a summer spent tethered to an IV pole, her youngest daughter Heather playing nurse at home while the oldest Lily was away at camp. And where was Michael? According to Melinda, he disappeared. Meetings and retreats that he could not miss miles and miles away. There was a girlfriend she suspected and, knowing Melinda, she might have been right. She had her ways of snooping and finding things out. Frankly, I would put nothing past her. According to her, when he was in town, he was cruel. He called her ugly, ripped her wig off, tossed it one day from a car window. He made the girls cry. Then, before I knew it, she changed the subject and started telling me about the new guy she almost slept with two weeks ago who, even after popping a few blue pills, couldn’t get it up. The first sex since the not-quite-ex. An important milestone to mark.

“And now? What do they say at Sloane?” I asked, fully expecting good news. After all, she was at Mecca, the place where everyone who is anyone goes should the ‘C’ word enter their lexicon. The research was the latest. The doctors were the best.

“I’m dying,” she said.

I couldn’t quite look her in the eye. “We all are,” I joked. “Sooner or later…”

“No, I’m dying now. I doubt I have a year,” she said.

“You don’t know that,” I said. Then, “Hey, at least you don’t have to worry about retirement or your 401K.” It was a bad joke, one I regretted the minute the words were out of my mouth. She was not now, or never was, the kind of person who had to worry about a 401K. Melinda gave me an odd look. “I’ll be dead within a year,” she said. “Which is too bad. I wanted to be there for Heather’s bas mitzvah. I’m thinking of having it early. She’s not quite twelve, but we could do it after the holidays.”

“You’re not dying,” I said. “You can’t be dying. You look just fine. You look wonderful.”

She ignored me. “What kind of theme do you think? Where do you think we could have it? You’ve been to a lot of them in the city.”

And me, her shiksa girlfriend, the girl from upstate New York who never met a bagel until she went away to college, started rattling off a list of restaurants where we’ve attended bar mitzvahs over the years. Suddenly I was on a tear, describing the picture-perfect cupcakes with the rainbow colors served at Johanna’s party last fall. “I can get you the name of the baker,” I say. “Really, they were the best cupcakes ever.”

The waiter appeared. “Dessert ladies?” he asked.

I ordered a cappuccino and she requested another herbal tea, as if it’ll do any good at this stage of the game.

In the end, it was a familiar story. Remember, this is a divorce story. He/she didn’t love her/him enough. Isn’t that always the crime in divorce? Doesn’t every betrayal begin with trust, every good-bye begins with hello? Memory is fallible/malleable/deniable. What truly happened? Who the hell knows, and does it make a difference?

Meanwhile, you think you will beat the odds, that the fifty-fifty rule won’t apply to you, that even though the odds are even heads-tails, you, and you alone, are entitled to tails all the time. You’re entitled to happy ever after, to good news/it’s benign/the cancer is gone. We lingered over coffee and tea, and this is what I wished for her, this friend I had known for nearly forty years. I wished her a happy ending, but it was not to be.

After that lunch, we talked almost daily. For the first time since we’d met, she stopped pretending her life was wonderful. It seems her run of bad luck wasn’t quite up. Her largest business client dropped her. There were friends and family who disappeared or disappointed who, when push came to shove, picked him—the enemy. That was the thing about divorce. You always had to pick. The divorce dragged on with court dates and depositions and psychological examinations. Records were sealed and unsealed, all the while the lawyer bills were mounting, stretching into the stratosphere. I bored her with the minutia of my own mundane life, amusing her with the antics of my own aging parents and squabbling siblings. One day I asked the question that has been looming, the proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla squatting in the corner. “What will happen to the girls?”

There was silence on the other end. It was her biggest fear. That they would end up back with Michael. But what were the alternatives? And was he really that bad, or simply another victim of divorce? I didn’t know the answers. I joked that they could come live with us. We’d build an extension. She laughed and said, half serious, that we could move into her place in the city. It was big enough, although it was only a rental, and cost a fortune, and who the hell was she kidding anyway?

I only saw her three more times after that lunch, the last time late at night, on my way home from yet another bas mitzvah, me sneaking into Sloan long past visiting hours to say hello and what turned out to be good-bye, although I didn’t know it at the time. She looked well, or at least not at death’s door. There were flowers on the windowsill, right next to two framed pictures of the girls, her reason for living, her confidantes, her everything. I didn’t stay long as my husband and children were waiting in the car idling at the curb in the November rain. I told her I’d see her soon and she said she loved me as I walked out the door which, as you might imagine, was not the kind of good-bye we were accustomed to. I know I turned to wave, but I can’t remember if I told her I loved her back.

She was home again in a week, and I spoke to her every day over the holidays. She kept talking about getting away, maybe going to Antigua with the girls for a few days. There was a resort there she loved. My daughters have several hand-me-down t-shirts from the place. So, when I couldn’t reach her for a stretch of days in mid-January, I didn’t think much about it. I envisioned the three of them, picture-perfect all, lounging on the beach in Antigua, the gentle Caribbean waves lapping at the shore, the palm trees swaying ever so slightly.

I continued to call but kept getting leave a message. To be honest, I started to get irritated. Why couldn’t she call me back, just to let me know she’s alive? I played games with myself. I would leave five messages, but no more than five messages, and then it was her turn to call. I left my five messages over the course of a week, only she didn’t call back. I bargained with myself, allowing two more messages, no more. “Just checking in. Seeing how you and the girls are doing,” I said. “Call me back. I miss you.” Then one day, a Monday, there was an e-mail from Michael. There were a dozen or so of us on the distribution list and the message was short. She had died two days before. The girls would be sitting Shiva.

We went, of course. Like everything she’d done in life, it was extravagant and over the top. An enormous portrait of her and the girls and the dogs loomed over the room. Her mother kept asking folks, “Did you know my daughter?” She would point to the picture and say, “There she is.” Melinda’s father, long divorced from the mother, was there, too. I asked him what was going to happen to the girls. He shook his head. “No one knows.” Michael wasn’t there. That, at least, would have made Melinda happy. At one point, Lily, the oldest, came through the kitchen. She was sixteen, a year younger than her mother had been when we first met ears ago. I must have blanched. I could have been seeing a ghost.

***

This is what I know. Melinda is dead, buried somewhere in the 914 area code in a very small, very private ceremony to which I wasn’t invited. She was my friend and I miss her. Dead. The word still trips me up. I have known others who have died, but she was my first real friend to die. I suppose someone must go first and, after all, she was always first at everything. Why not this?

I think about her girls, more often than I should. Now and then, I email the husband to whom the girls were, of course, returned. He emails me back, saying everyone is fine, that the girls are adjusting as best as can be expected, that they, of course, miss their mother. I promise dead Melinda that I will visit them.

***

The waiter cleared the dishes and brought the check on a shiny silver tray.

“Shall we split it?” Melinda asked.

We both slid American Express cards onto the tray, her Platinum one trumping my washed-out green card. I remember thinking I should have ordered the oysters after all. I should have had the wine. My head was reeling. We left the restaurant. Outside, an idling car with a driver. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, getting in and naming the address where I had a dentist appointment twenty minutes later. I was thinking of the driver, waiting that whole time, the meter ticking, time sliding away, while she and I ate lunch.

~~~

Cindy Dale has published over twenty stories in various literary journals and websites including The South Carolina Review, The Wisconsin Review, Zoetrope: All-Story Extra, The Potomac Review, and Ars Medica, among others.  Her stories have appeared in four anthologies and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the recipient of an Edward Albee Fiction Fellowship. She lives on a barrier beach on Long Island and is at work on a novel.   

Bikhari

Pinki hates to beg, the way it makes her feel. But she has no mother or father to take care of her, no other way of making money. She’s up at the Apollo Cinema stoplight, knocking on car windows, tugging at the pants of men on two-wheelers, and when someone gives her a rupee or two, she bows and says, “Thankoo,” with folded hands. Stands for hours on the streets with that helpless look on her face, a look she’s perfected over the years: sad eyes, curled lips, making her small body smaller. She keeps the money in a purse with a long strap that she hangs across her shoulder and then moves on to others, relying on their unreliable kindness. Some look at her greasy hair and raggedy clothes and threaten to slap her if she touches them with her filthy fingers again. But she’s used to these threats. Most men only raise their voices to look good in front of their women. She knows how to read danger; understands when to retreat and when to continue bothering until they relent. 

End of the day, she walks to the Irani chai shop, where the bespectacled Parsi owner likes her. She talks the old man out of a hot glass of sweet masala chai and bun maska. The tea she drinks right away, the bun she takes home for her sister and grandma. They love the soft bread with the generous spread of Amul butter.

She heads to her spot on M.G. Road at night—a competitive strip with all kinds of invalids. Today, like every day, there’s the boy with twisted limbs. All he needs to do is sit outside any café with glass doors, and it’s ka-ching every time a customer enters or leaves. Pinki admires him for how he guilts them into giving him money; then there’s the kid with no legs, who goes up and down the street on a small, wooden plank with wheels. He looks the part, too: skinny, enormous head, bulging eyes. The customer didn’t have to come to him; he went to them. There are a few others: a leper, a blind, mute kid who sticks out his gangly arms. They’re outside a fancy jewellery store for the rich, but the rich don’t pause for charity.

Pinki walks on toward the beer shop. All kinds of people—college boys on their way to a party, men returning from offices, teenagers who bribe strangers to buy alcohol for them—tossed money her way. Sometimes foreigners—her most preferred customers—not only gave generously but also halted and spoke with her, which always surprised her.

She likes this time of the day. The air’s cooler and people are more relaxed and likely to part with money. When she gets to the beer shop, she stands next to it, head propped against the wall covered in paan stains, eyes down—needy, despicable.

The first time someone threw a rupee at her feet, she was eight and, on the street—scared, cold, with her parents, grandma, month-old sister watching a bulldozer demolish her house.

Illegal construction, the government men said.

So many families, just like hers, stood in silence as the four walls they had called home for years turned to rubble.

A customer struggles with three cartons of beer bottles. Pinki offers to help him to his car. “Can you manage?” the pot-bellied man asks. “You drop one, I’ll break your head.” He gives her a ten. She folds her hands in gratitude. Minutes later, another man calls her over. “How old are you?” There’s something in his eyes she recognizes. A hunger, eyes trained at her chest.

“Fourteen.”

He pulls out a twenty and waves it in front of her face. When she reaches for it, he grabs her hand. “You’ll come with me?”

“My sister is alone at home.”

“You can bring her also.” He grins, exposing his gold-capped tooth. He scratches his groin.

“OK.” She notices his eyes brighten.

“Good girl.” He pulls out another ten.

“Help!” she screams suddenly as a group of men approach and the man panics, lets her go. She snatches the notes from him and runs as fast as she can.

“Whore,” the man yells but doesn’t chase after her, for which she’s thankful.  

She runs until she feels safe, feels she’s lost him. Her heart beats so fast, she has difficulty breathing. She bends at her waist, resting her palms on her knees.  

Go to school, people always say.

If you pay for it, I will, she wants to say. 

She’s outside Khan Hotel, which serves the best beef curry in the city. She hasn’t eaten a proper meal in days. The smell of food from the kitchen ignites her belly. “Come in, sir. Best beef. If you don’t love it, we’ll change our name. That’s a promise,” a man in a pink shirt and trousers hawks repeatedly. His job is to invite passersby to come into the restaurant. “Shoo, leave,” he says, pausing in the middle of his pitch when he spots Pinki.

She waits patiently for customers in the brightly lit alley. She won’t tell her grandma about the man who grabbed her because she’ll cry. Though she considers herself lucky. She’s heard of children being bundled up in vans, taken away for days and having things done to them. Pinki waits on the opposite side of the restaurant. A few paces from her, a man pees against the wall. He notices her and turns to show her his penis.

She runs again till she reaches the main strip. Her night is far from over; she needs to take some money home; the thirty rupees she’s made is hardly enough. Near the Joshi vadapav centre, she sees a foreigner in a colorful shirt and loose shorts, tall, over six feet, swallowing the last of his deep-fried potato dumpling. After he pays, he looks from one end of the street to the other, irritated.

“Help?” she asks him.

“Oh, hey, please. The Orchid hotel? Know where that is? I left my phone in my room like an idiot.”

“Yes, I can take,” Pinki says.

The man’s impressed. “You speak English?”

“Little-little.”

“Picked up in school?”

“Road.”

The man laughs. “Ace. Name?”

“Myself, Pinki. Thankoo.”

“Nice to meet you, Pinki.”

“Same-same. Where from you?”

“From Toronto, Canada.”

She nods like she knows where that is. “What you want?”

“I was supposed to meet my tour guide. Been waiting for an hour now, the man never showed up.”

“Billu? Beard, tattoo on arm?” She knows of him; knows he cheats tourists.

“Not sure about the tattoo, but he has a beard. Know him?”

“Yes. He go back village, family problem.” She knows it’s wrong to lie, but what other way there is, she thinks. She needs the money.

“Ah!”

“I take you.”

“You work for him?”

Pinki says yes. “I also guide. Pune best guide. Ask anyone.”

The man gives a hesitant smile. “You are?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, I’m around for another day before I head to Bombay. I’ve already paid Billu five hundred and will pay the other half tomorrow. Cool?”

“OK.”

Pinki shivers, there’s a chill in the air. The man, now visibly relaxed, lights a cigarette. A police van drives by, spilling red on the streets, shops, people. Pinki curtsies. “Welcome, India. Thankoo.”

The man laughs. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Now, how do I get to my hotel?”

***

After the foreigner disappears into the hotel lobby, Pinki wonders if she should’ve lied. What if Billu finds out? What will he do to her? But soon, thinking of making money and using it for things she needs makes her fears fade. A hundred rupees will buy her bananas, potatoes, onions. Three hundred will feed her family for weeks. And five hundred. Her thoughts are interrupted by the loud honks of a truck, and she tells herself she must not get overexcited. Maybe the foreigner was drunk or high on something like most tourists are. Maybe he won’t remember a thing in the morning. Maybe Billu will show up and tell the foreigner the truth. The legless kid waves at her.

At home, her sister sucks her thumb in her sleep, a string of saliva leaks down her chin; her breath is loud and wheezy. “There’s roti and onion for you,” grandma says. “A nice woman at the temple gave. Eat before you sleep.” She lies back down, the creak in her knee making her wince.

Officials had come with bulldozers to raze their homes in the middle of the night. Her sister was still asleep in her mother’s arms. When everyone was weeping or protesting, her father went around consoling families, asking if they needed help. She recalls an old woman who was wailing, striking her chest again and again, mourning that she had lost everything. Her father wiped her tears and gave her the little money he’d saved over the years. Then, with all their belongings wrapped in sheets, Pinki and her family found refuge near the sidewalk of the Khadki railway station.

Home now is a blue tarpaulin sheet held up by sticks. A train whistles; must be the one to Belgaum. It’s almost midnight, dogs bark and howl as if talking to each other. By tomorrow, she may be able to buy medicines for her grandma’s joint pain; take her sister to a doctor, find out why she has rashes on her body; even pay for some blankets for the winter; get some groceries, eat a proper meal. Her old house comes to mind sometimes: the way they slept next to each other; the patter of rain on their metal roof, a lullaby. Water always leaked in and her father stuffed pieces of cloth in the corners. Pinki closes her eyes and imagines her father’s calming embrace.

***

The following day, she combs her hair, puts on a pair of grey pants, a white shirt, and stands outside the hotel, eyeing the door anxiously. The guard in the blue uniform and turban, manning the entrance glares at her before raising his stick and charging. “Chal bhaag,” he snarls. “Clear out before I break your head!”

Pinki, trembling, says, “Waiting for foreign, sir.”

The guard is furious, his bushy moustache twitches. He won’t think twice before walloping her with that heavy cane. So, she moves away to the cigarette kiosk, far enough to be safe and keep an eye. Just then, a scooter backfires nearby. She knows that sound, the syndicate boss, Pappu, who all the beggars on the strip work for. He has a cheap silver chain around his neck, a dark mat of chest hair peeps out of his shirt.

“What did I tell you, bitch?”

“I not working, meeting foreigner.”

“No lies! If you want to work here, it must be for me.”

“Aai shapath,” she says, swearing on her mother. 

Suddenly, he grabs her neck. “And I know exactly what you’ll be good for.” He chuckles darkly, flings coins at her that skitter against the curb. Pappu closes his mouth around a cigarette without lighting it and Pinki watches him drive to the blind kid—hot spoons took his eyes out—to collect half of his earnings. Pinki spits at the coins and waits by the pavement.

The foreigner steps out of the hotel with apprehensive eyes, as though he isn’t convinced Pinki will keep her promise. His face lights up when he spots her, gives her a big smile and gestures her over. She stands beside him as he starts his heavy motorcycle, the engine sputtering to life after three kicks. “What are you waiting for?” he says. “Hop on.” She’s apprehensive of the guard even as she climbs onto the vehicle, half-expecting him to whack her on the back while saying, you really thought you can ride with Saab?

The man smells like fresh soap and sweetened milk. She tries not to think back to memories of being punched, kicked, or slapped, all because she accidentally grazed against someone in clean clothes. At first, she’s afraid to hold him, touch him, but he brakes to swerve a dog running onto the road and her chin smashes into him. The man looks over his shoulder as if to say it’s okay. Onlookers pause and examine this moment in wonder and shock, some even pull out their cell phones to document it. Oblivious, the man rides on.

“So, Pinki Guide, you’re up.”

With the wind whipping in her face, she leans in close to the man and speaks as loudly as possible. 

“Myself, Pinki. Please. Thankoo.”

“Yes, I remember,” the man laughs. “Which way?”

She points to the right, naming buildings and places as they pass them.

“Shaniwar Wada…Peshwa Fort…Aga Khan Palace…Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum…Chaturshringi Temple…Osho Ashram.”

***

After sightseeing for a few hours, they stop at a restaurant for a meal. Pinki is startled when he asks her to reserve a table for the two of them while he parks the motorcycle instead of making her wait outside and handing his leftovers later. The place is noisy. Guests are talking, eating, servers with food on trays are moving from table to table. One of them, his walnut-sized Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, notices her and starts shouting. “Aye! Out, out!” He takes a step towards her, palm poised to strike. Pinki, wide-eyed with fear, swallows, her words not rising up her throat as everyone stares.

The foreigner is agog. “Is this how you treat customers?”

“Beggar, sir, you come. Please, welcome-welcome.” He points to an empty table, still asking Pinki to leave.

“She’s with me,” the foreigner declares emphatically, pulling Pinki closer, a protective hand firm on her frail shoulders.

“Sir, people like her not inside allowed.”

There’s a hush in the restaurant, everyone curious to see how this will play out. “Call your manager,” the foreigner demands.

Minutes later, an alarmed manager in a black and white outfit with a cheap-looking bowtie hurriedly scampers towards them. He knocks a cleaner in his rush, making him drop the dirty dishes on the floor.

“Sir, problem?”

“Yes, big problem. This man tells me I can’t bring my friend inside the restaurant. Is this how you treat paying guests?”

The manager, who Pinki’s sure would’ve done the same thing, but now in the presence of the white man, clicks his tongue and sucks his teeth. “Sir, he idiot. You come, sir. Doesn’t knowing manners.” He guides them to a large cubicle, meant for a family of eight, close to the kitchen door. As they walk by, Pinki notices how the others move their plates closer, arranging their limbs carefully, so she doesn’t brush against them.

“You no worry, sir, I care take you.” Pinki notices the manager’s cheesy smile as he hands her the fraying menu card, almost saying what dark magic did you do on this poor white man? 

This is the first time she has been inside a restaurant and the smell of the onion sambhar, the coconut chutney floating in the air and the way her body sinks into the chair make her uncomfortable. She is suddenly conscious of the eyes on her, the sounds of people chewing, chatting, the squeak of the ceiling fans. The foreigner looks up at her. “You okay?” he asks, and all she can do is nod. She’s used to being shoved, cursed in words invoking her mother, father, sister, ancestors, offered money by men with paan-stained teeth for spending a night, but not kindness. The foreigner treating someone like her with respect and letting her sit across from him, unfurls something inside her; takes her mind to a place she doesn’t let herself go to too often, and the tears threaten to flow. Her parent’s faces haunt her, staring back at her in the glass of water along the walls. She longs to touch her mother’s cheeks, feel the softness of her skin, play with her father’s hair, combing and decorating it with colorful ribbons and clips.

“Order whatever you want, don’t be shy.”

She doesn’t get most of what he says, only gathering snatches of it from context and his body language, though she knows he means well. She wants to thank him, tell him how much this means to her, but cannot bring herself to find the words. Instead, she stares at the menu with words that hold no meaning for her. She copies the way he’s holding it, the side with the gold lettering to the right, still, it’s all the same, she does not know to read or write. When the man asks what she would like, she points at the picture of a dish she likes. “Those puffy things?” the man asks, jutting his chin at the adjoining table and inflating his cheeks. Pinki nods, smiling.

After placing their orders, the man asks, “How do you know the city so well?”

“My father show me.”

“Ah. Is he also a guide?”

“Died,” she says, pointing to the sky and sticking her tongue out to a side.

“I’m so sorry. How did it happen?”

“He cough blood. Mother, also same, die.”

He shakes his head and looks down at his hands. “I can’t imagine what you are going through. You must miss them terribly,” he says, head tilted in sympathy. “Do you have any other family?”

“Small sister and grandma.”

The server brings their food, grinning excessively. Pinki stares at it with amazement, the steam drifting off the swollen puris, the glossy potatoes sprinkled with thinly chopped, fresh coriander. She’s afraid to begin, imagining that someone will slap her hand away when she reaches for it. The foreigner gestures for her to start, and she imitates him, picking up a fork and a knife. When he sees her struggling, he drops his cutlery. “Ugh, what was I thinking? Will you please teach me how to eat with my hands?”

She finds his clumsiness funny as he drops the crumbs and gravy on his shirt and chin. The waiter returns with the bill and a plastic bag with food, which he places on the table, waiting coyly for his tip. Pinki pops some sugar-coated fennel, storing some in her pocket for later. She looks around the restaurant again to memorize it so she can describe the place to her grandma and baby sister when she returns.

“This is some biryani for your family,” the foreigner says, handing her the heavy bag. There must be enough food for six people, she guesses. She’s reminded of the things she can’t forget, people giving her dry rotis, moldy bread or spoilt curries, proud of their charity.

“Thankoo,” she says, though she wants to say a lot more. She holds the still warm bag by its ears as they ride along the busy, crowded streets of Budhwar Peth. The last time she was here, it was with her father on a Sunday. He’d brought her to the Ganesh Temple and after the prayers, they went to the sabzi mandi, where the narrow walkways smelled of damp gunnysacks and coriander. Afterwards, they stood in a long line to eat misal pav at the famous stall near the market. Everything held for her embedded images of her father walking the lanes with her riding on his back.

When they approach the Ganesh temple, Pinki says, “Long nose God.”

“An elephant.”

“Elephant head only, body man. Big God. Ask anything you get.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Pinki folds her hands, the man does the same. She closes her eyes and thinks of her father; how she used to climb on his shoulders to get above the heads of the other devotees for a better view of the idol. She felt safe when she was up there like nothing could touch her. She longs for him now.

***

Back at the hotel, a different guard is on duty. He’s also about to drive her away, but he notices the white man beside her and returns to the attention position. The foreigner parks the motorcycle, leans his body against it. There’s a look of hesitation in his eyes, like he wants to say something but is debating. "Look, I know it’s a difficult time for you,” he says. “But if you can, please enroll yourself in a school. You are a smart girl, you must.” A bus bursting with passengers hurtles past them, leaving behind a plume of black smoke. "I can send you the money you need for your fee, books, uniforms, whatever. I’ll leave my details with the hotel for you to get in touch." He takes one quick breath after the other, his words knocking into each other. “We’ll figure something out.” He waits for her response but she’s too confused to understand anything and too shy to ask questions. He sighs, gives her an empathetic smile. “Today was great,” he says, thanking her with such sincerity, she feels deeply moved. And even though she’s only known him for less than a day, she experiences sadness knowing that she may never see him again after today, that he is not someone who will be in her life. “I’ll tell my friends about you when they visit Pune,” he says. The loud revving of a motorcycle interrupts them. It’s Billu, who leaves his vehicle on the side stand in the middle of the driveway, despite the guard whistling angrily, demanding he move it elsewhere. Red-faced, big, and barrel-bodied, with a hard, hungry look, Billu shoves the guard aside and approaches them threateningly.

“You pay other half,” he tells the foreigner, almost growling.

The foreigner, a little puzzled, says, “Yes, I’m going to, but to her, not you because you made me wait on the road for an hour.”

Billu suddenly starts screaming, calling Pinki names, and grabbing her by the collar, but the foreigner gives him a shove, putting himself between her and Billu. “What’s the matter with you? She’s a child,” he says, drawing a sharp cackle from Billu.

“She liar. No guide, she beggar.” Billu raises his hand at her again.

“You don’t leave this minute, I’m calling the police,” the foreigner warns. Billu narrows his eyes, chews his lip as if to gauge whether it’s a bluff.

“I’ll get you later,” he threatens Pinki before driving away.

“Are you okay?” the foreigner asks.

Pinki nods as a sob rises in her throat, and breaks from her lips into a trembling, sharp cry. “I lie, sorry,” she admits. “I no guide.”

The man places a hand on her shoulder gently. “But you are. You showed me your city, that’s what guides do.” He reaches into his wallet and takes out three crisp five-hundred-rupee notes for her. “Take care of yourself and your family,” he says softly.” Her fingers tremble taking the money from him, which is way more than she expected.

She walks home with the three Gandhis weighing heavily on her. Can this be her way out of poverty? Maybe she can stop begging altogether; become a full-time guide. She’ll call herself Pinki Guide. She’ll need one of those cards she’s seen people give, with their name and job printed on one side. With the money she makes, she’ll send her sister to a good school. Perhaps she can go to school herself. She’ll forbid grandma from begging for food and money. There’s still a way perhaps, for the three of them to live a life of dignity.

But first, she needs a few things. She stops at a grocery store on the way. The man behind the counter wears studs in his ears. He slides her way the items she asks for: three candles, a box of matchsticks, half a cake of detergent soap, hundred grams of tea powder and a quart of milk. When another customer arrives, the already doubtful shopkeeper slyly nods toward Pinki. She’s aware of this exchange and begins to feel uneasy. The small shop smells like old rice; the blue shelves stacked with bottles of shampoo, talcum powder, and hair oil. “Please also small bottle of hair oil. Grandma’s hair rough,” she says. “How much?” she asks, trying to be discreet about taking the money out.

“Seventy,” he says brusquely, then whistles when he sees the crisp, unsoiled notes. “Give change. You buy for seventy, give five hundred?”

“You shopkeeper and have no change?” says Pinki, immediately realizing she shouldn’t have.

Angry at the remark, he snatches all her money. “I’ll get you change,” he says, nodding significantly at the other customer. Pinki senses trouble and tells him she’s had a change of mind and needs to be home, her sister is sick.

“What’s the rush?” he says, grabbing her wrists. “Just tell me where did you get the money?”

“Foreigner gave.”

“Foreigner? What foreigner?”

“From the hotel. Orchid.”

“I look like a chutiya to you?” the shopkeeper says to her, then directs the question to the customer. “Does it read ass on my face?”

The customer shakes his head.

“I earned,” she repeats.

“She looks suspicious, doesn’t she?”

The argument draws the other shop-owners, passersby, forming a circle like titillated monkeys.

Pinki’s legs wobble beneath her, she’s anything but a thief. “Not steal. I guide.”

“Someone gave you so much money for being a guide?” He gives a sleazy smile, and the crowd agrees with what he’s alluding to. He looks at them and makes an obscene gesture with his hand and mouth. Pinki scratches a red line across his arm and the man screams in pain, yanking her by the hair and slapping her across the face, hard. Pinki falls to the ground, the air knocked out of her. The bag with all the food explodes, spilling onto the dirt. He stomps on it with the heel of his shoe and when she attacks him again, he pushes a knee into her stomach. 

“Wild for her age, no wonder this one’s popular,” the shopkeeper says.

“Guide? Bikhari saali, bloody beggar,” says someone.

“Correct, I’ve seen her at the Apollo signal,” someone else confirms.

The shopkeeper picks Pinki up by her collar and twists her hands behind her back. “Tell me where you got the money!”

Her arms start hurting, then throbbing. She’s close to crying but doesn’t want to let the tears fall. Her breath hitches. “My money.”

An onlooker suggests checking her pockets to find out if she’s hiding more money. Hands linger on her chest, between her thighs, while she struggles to free herself. Someone speaks in a steady, deep voice, edging through the crowd to the centre.

“Let her go. Now.”

“Sir, she thief, or a...”

“You saw her steal?”

“No, but from where she got fifteen hundred rupees, tell?”

“Is it yours?” the man asks Pinki.

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course, she’ll say that,” says the shopkeeper.

"This shop behind you, is it yours?”

Immediately, the vendor’s face darkens as if he’s been tricked into something. “Why you interfering? She your sister, your daughter?” he asks.

Instead of answering him, the man faces the group. “A grown man is beating and groping a helpless child and rather than saving her, you’re watching all this like you’re at a circus? Shame on all of you.”

“Sir, we only want to know where she got money from?” the shopkeeper adds.

“Is it your money? How does it matter where she got it from?”

The owner looks flustered and lowers his eyes.

“Clear out before I call the police.”

“This is what we deserve for trying to do good,” the merchant mumbles nervously, returning to his shop. The remaining people also reluctantly disperse. Pinki gathers the crushed notes and stares dejectedly at the mud-covered food, a feeling of dismalness spreading over her like a large cloth. It’s a cloudy, stormy evening: high wind blows, and the branches of the trees above her head groan and creak.

“Go home, girl,” says the kind man.

***

Pinki limps past a group of children performing tricks at the signal, contorting their bodies to fit through tiny brass rings, doing somersaults. It’s a good spot to make money, she thinks. A wave of pain moves through her and she imagines away the pounding in her arms and stomach from where the man struck her. She lets out a breath. “Ma,” she whispers, it brings her comfort. “Ma,” she says again.

Free pucca homes for the poor.

Free education.

Free rice and sugar, politicians promise every year.

Outside a small temple, a woman begs the bare-chested priest for food. She calls his attention to the undernourished child in her arms.

“There’s nothing. Go, go,” the priest says dismissively. “This is a temple, not charity.”

“Something, please, anything.” The woman is desperate. “My child hasn’t eaten all day.”

When he notices Pinki, he says, “Ah, one more. What a surprise!” He stands with his hands on his hips, the skin on his fat belly gleams like butter.

There’s a heap of money on a plate near Ganesha’s pink idol. His kind eyes seem to understand their plight, yet he doesn’t do anything. The street is deserted. The priest looks impatiently under the pile of marigold flowers atop the brass plates and finds two overripe bananas doubling as incense-stick holders. He pulls out the half-burnt sticks leaving deep, dark holes on the soft yellow skin of the fruit.

“Take these, get out.” He holds the bananas in his hands, their skin peeling at the tips, flies hovering around them. Careful of not letting any part of her touch him, he almost drops them in her palms through the narrow bars in the door.

“Thank you, thank you,” she says, touching the fruits to her head like a blessing. The woman squats on the wet pavement, a few paces from the temple and little by little feeds her baby.

It reminds Pinki of her father, who used to feed her every night while telling her stories. He’d do the voices: the monkey, the elephant; he’d tumble, scratch his armpits, walk with his backside jutting out; how her mother would cackle, clutching her stomach. She wants those days back, when her mother’s lap and her father’s arms clasped tightly around her was all she ever needed before cancer took them away, leaving her all alone. Rain starts to fall, pelting her like the words people hurl at her.

Beggar.

Thief.

Whore.

Pinki follows the woman, wanting some company. She touches the child’s abnormally large, feverish forehead. And even though there’s hardly enough food for them, the woman offers the second banana to Pinki, a gesture that moves her. “I’ve already eaten,” she says. The child whimpers again, so the woman starts peeling the second banana.

“What about you?” Pinki asks.

The woman shrugs her shoulders like, I don’t know, and Pinki nods to signal that she understands the feeling.  

Sadness washes over her at the image of the woman wandering the city in the pouring rain with a child in her shriveled arms. Without hesitation, she pulls out a soaking five hundred rupee note and presses it into the woman’s hand with the faintest pressure. The woman grows suspicious, and with a shake of the head, refuses to take it. Pinki then tucks the note in the child’s hand, whose fingers close around it. “For baby, please.”

Clouds above clap sharply. Vehicles whizz past, disturbing the puddles reflecting the light from the streetlamps. People scramble to escape the rain that pours in sheets. The woman turns to Pinki, face wet with grateful tears. “This will last us both a while. Thank you.”

The roads and sidewalks are clogged as Pinki walks through knee-deep water past tall buildings with shimmering pockets of lights; squeals of laughter spill out of a window, through another comes sounds of someone singing happy birthday. She feels a stab of envy, she wants the lives of these people: their warm clothes, their clean faces and fragrant bathrooms, soft beds to lie on. She imagines a balcony door opening and her mother’s sweet face peeking out. Don’t be out too long, Pinki. You’ll catch a cold, Pinki. Her father’s hand is on her head. Look, your shiny, beautiful life is here, he says, and Pinki tilts her face to the sky, letting the rain rinse every inch of her.

~~~

Kailash Srinivasan is an Indian-Canadian author living in Vancouver. His narratives often highlight fractures of different kinds: personal, societal, economic, religious, and political. He also writes about injustice and inequality. His prose and poetry have appeared in several literary journals, including Handwritten & Co., Midway Journal, Snarl, Hunger, XRAY, Coachella Review, Selkie, Antilang, Oyster River Pages, Sidereal, Queen Mob's Tea House, Bad Nudes, Lunch Ticket and others. His short story "Coconut" was recently shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize. His work has also been shortlisted for Into the Void Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award. He's currently working on his first novel.

Poetry

“Geographic Anorexia Study: Eastern North Carolina” by D.L. Pravda of Norfolk, Virginia

“Mme. Curie” by Timothy McBride of Cary, North Carolina

“Saturday at the Louvre” by Catherine West of Berkeley, California

“Bad Mothers” by Lou Lipsitz of Chapel Hill, North Carolina

“Arranging Words” by Fran Abrams of Rockville, Maryland

“Unloading” by Pam Vap of Sun City, Arizona

“Sonora” by Jeffrey Kingman of Vallejo, California

“Clearing the Clutter” by Melissa Varnavas of Beverly, Massachusetts

Short Fiction

“Kentucky Unicorn” by Thomas M. Atkinson of Anderson Twp., Ohio

“Lina and Nina” by Elizabeth Brus of Brooklyn, New York

“The Girl with The Beaded Hair” by Jack Clinton of Red Lodge, Momtana 

“That Forgotten Monday” by Mark Connelly of Milwaukee, Wisconsin

“On Saturday” by Mark Lindensmith of Fort Defiance, Virginia 

“Callista” by Patricia Striar Rohner of Boca Raton, Florida

Press 53 and Prime Number Magazine thanks everyone who entered their poems and stories for these awards. Your support is greatly appreciated and we look forward to reading more of your work.