Children, Churches and Daddies

The Absent/Abusive Father

Kaitlyn M. Ulmer

Up a Dirt Road

Cliff Lynn

Miracle on nothing street

Milo Redwood

Flawless

Kareene Martel

Blind

JC Lee

another long night

J. C. Lee

The town’s too small
not to know everyone’s secrets.

JC Lee

Bullets Flying

Teresa Spies Dempewolf

At thirty-eight years old, Kara wrestled with the noun ‘hero’ these days. She hadn’t been for the war against Iraq-thought it foolish to impose America’s democracy on another country. She knew plenty about laws and courts as a Peace and Justice Advocate lawyer; she had a father who was a General in the Army, so life in her later years was never smooth. Plus, she was the only one now who could give her parents grandchildren. Through two husbands, a career and volunteering, time didn’t permit it. Besides, the heartache of loosing her young brother years ago left her emotionally wasted.
She glanced around at the deep green walls of her family’s library. Stacks of beautifully bound books alphabetically shelved, many read and enjoyed. But, what always drug her eyes across the wall to the left of the river rock fireplace, were the many medals and snapshots of her father’s days at West Point. Also, snaps of his buddies who served with him in his young years, pictures of old historic flags and his promotion ceremonies. She leaned her head back on the soft leather chair; her small head strangling in wispy auburn hair as she thought about her life, kept at arms length.
Many young people go into the Marines, Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard because they don’t want to go to college and don’t know what else to do with their lives. Or they do want to go to college but can’t afford to and know the United States will pay their way. They join a service to travel and many times never have to shoot a gun. They get paid the minimal amount, but housing, food, clothing and time to grow-up are free.
Kara heard a door open then close. A voice yelled down from the second story home where she was raised.
“Ruth, is that you? It’s about time. It’s sixteen-hundred. I need a pain pill.”
Her father was still giving orders and treating them like soldiers, even though he was dying of prostate cancer.
“I’ll get it mom,” her voice loud as she jumped up and went into the kitchen.
“Hi Kara,” mom said, giving her a smile as she put the grocery sacks on the table. “Has he been awake long?”
“I didn’t hear a thing. I rested when he did. He must have just woken up or I would have heard him. How was the bridge game?”
“Oh Honey, I’m so glad you came and stayed with your father so I could leave for awhile. I enjoyed seeing my friends again and you know how much I love to play bridge.”
“No problem, mom. Oh, Mary Ellen Maffey from Hospice called and said she’d see you at ten for the in-take tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll be here.”
“Ruth, did you forget me already?” Dad yelled. “Two women in the house and I’m still forgotten.”
“Coming daddy,” Kara said, grabbing the pain medication. She poured water into a glass from the refrigerator. “Your wish is my command, general.”
Her father was hard to talk to these past years. He was the soldier, the ‘I love America right or wrong’ guy; and she, the complete opposite. They always ran away from each other when in reality there was so much to talk about, especially the war. They were miles apart in an empty cocoon. It didn’t have to be. It wasn’t always this way.
Yet, with the war she argued with herself about the two-thousand who died September-eleventh; but at what price? How many others do we kill to make up for them?
“Daddy, would you like me to give you a backrub or read this mornings paper to you?”
Gruffly, “I’m not dying today and I read the parts of the paper I like this morning.” Then he turned his back to her and she was dismissed.
“Here’s your pain pill.” She left it and the water on his bed stand. This little power play drove her up the wall, but she wouldn’t acknowledge it. She wanted to ease his life in some way, but saluted his backside and went downstairs looking for her mom.
She saw the light under the bathroom door, so went into the library and sat back down in the dark brown chair she loved and closed her eyes again, waiting. When her mom came and sat down by her she told her mother what was eating at her.
“Those of us in the private sector made our way also after graduation, mom. We went to colleges, universities and rambled through books and studies and classes. We had part time jobs and many lived at home. Luckier ones lived in dorms and made do with one or two people living in close proximity like I did. When we graduated we had to find jobs and it wasn’t always an easy task. We had to pay back our student loans. Dad never asked me if he could buy my books. I was thrown out to sea. I was his only child, then. I would think he could afford it, mom.”
Honey, I’m so sorry he wasn’t there for you like you wanted.”
“Thanks, but those who join the service never think they’ll be engaged in a war. So, if one comes up they’re told to be ready to be deployed. Dad just won’t see there’s other ways to look at this war besides his way. I’m feeling so frustrated. The day before dad was diagnosed with cancer we had one of our many arguments.”
“I know Honey, I’ve heard them before.”
“You men are all alike,” I said, steaming hot like a tea kettle. “Not going to the doctor for regular check-ups; your macho-career getting in the way of good health. Now you’re hurting and I hate it.”
“Well Kara, you’re right in one way. We don’t run to the doctor every few weeks like you women do. Besides, we run the country. Our men are in Iraq. We have heroes coming home in body bags to keep you women-folk safe. We don’t have to run to the doctor all the time. We have important work to do.”
“It was just like him, mom, to put women down. He hated the idea of my being a feminist. ‘If I wanted two boys I would have had them.’ He yelled. I was devastated by the comment, mom. He made my blood pressure quicken. Here I worked my butt off to get through law school and do you think he ever gave me thumbs up? Hell no.”
I yelled back, “Yea, daddy,” my voice steaming like dry ice. “The next thing you know one is killed. The young man or woman is now a hero. They gave their life for their country. But who says just because they’re doing their job-the job they signed up for, they are Americas heroes?”
“Kara, watch what you say, here. Your uncle Karl gave his life in the Korean War for you and all other Americans. His blood poured out on the battle field. You bet he was a hero. Sometimes you disgrace me with your words. You went wrong somewhere, Kara-terribly wrong.”
“No, daddy, teachers, students, firemen, actors, parents and just plain others working in their line of work aren’t called heroes if they’re killed by a robber during a bank heist or by a drunken driver. But, we turn those in the service into heroes just for showing up. Not because they begged to fight, but because they had nowhere else to go; no skills, no nothing, but hoped life would be easy and it was a chance to get away on one’s own and see the world. I just don’t get it, dad!”
Her mom patted her hand, but got up from the couch. “I need to put the groceries away, Honey.”
Kara was agitated. Her thoughts hurled like wind, swooping in the cold dampness of life. Daddy wasn’t always like that to her. He was a sweetheart in her young years and she had him eating out of her hand. He read to her and played finger puppets at night when she was scared someone was in her room. He made hotcakes in the shapes of animals and made her laugh. It took him forever to get the food ready, but she didn’t care. After all, he was her dad.
Then when she turned thirteen and began developing he did a complete turnaround. Mom said it wasn’t about her. It was the same time her brother Josh died in a swimming pool accident at age nine. He had sneaked into the city pool two blocks from their house on a hot night, climbed over the fence and drowned. We never knew why, since he was a good swimmer. Her daddy closed up and slapped her from his fun loving ways. It seemed they turned into enemies. She missed their wonderful relationship.
There was so much grief in the house after that, she made herself invisible. She got good grades in school and sang in the church choir even though she hated it. She babysat the neighbor’s kids just to hear laughter. She had to admit she stopped being lovable, too.
She remembered coming home for the weekend once in college. Her mom and dad were relaxing after dinner, so she asked him to talk about her brother, Josh.
“What in the hell for, he’s dead. Leave it alone, Kara.” Then he knocked his chair down trying to hurry away from us. She looked at her mother, but her eyes begged Kara to understand.
“Mom, it’s been almost twenty years now. Why can’t we talk about what happened to Josh? Doesn’t he realize I hurt and miss him, too?”
Her eyes sprang a leak and she pulled me close. “We all do, Honey. I miss my son terribly. Sometimes I feel like I’ll break into little pieces if I speak his name. It’s not fair to you, but it just hurts us so much not to have him in our life any more.”
Then Kara realized how fractured the family had been since her brothers death. Love doesn’t always smooth the seam of life and hearts do break.
Each time they argued she’d leave and slam the door. They both got fired up, but now she wished she would have...could have...just stayed and met him head on. But she never did. She always chickened out. She let him take her power away. He never talked to her as an adult, so they stayed child to adult. She blamed herself as she was a red hot ember that never cooled, so she was more like her dad than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t a shrinking violet in court or on the job though. Her temper kept her sharp, but she couldn’t argue with her own father.
The night of his death his wife of forty-four years and daughter stayed close by his side, gently wiping his face with a cool cloth and holding his hand. They spoke softly with remembrances of old times. Only once his eyes opened. He stared longingly at his wife and slowly his head turned to Kara. Haltinly, laboring with whispered breath he said. “Give ‘em hell, honey,” and his eyes closed for the last time. The sobbing daughter fell apart.
Major General Ross Edward Morrisy died last Friday. He had a four star funeral attended by many hash marked individuals with impeccable uniforms and highly polished boots. His wife and daughter sat front and center at his funeral. As Kara watched the sad, stark ceremony she heard a close friend of her fathers talk about his beginnings.
“Over forty years he spent in the Army. Not because he had to, but because he loved the rules and traditions and American spirit and the democratic way of life. He was apple pie and all it meant growing up on a homestead in Wyoming as the oldest of six boys. From poverty he excelled to be a major general and we’ll deeply miss him.”
Yes, she thought through shimmering tears, he was one who went in the service to be taken care of and for him it worked. It really did. She lost it though, when the bugle played taps. She was proud of her father, but her blue tears only wanted the one thing he stopped giving her. She just needed-no, wanted back-more of his sweet loving heart.

everything was alive and dying

Copyright © 2004 Janet Kuypers

and she spoke to me,
she said, thank you
thank you for not buying furs,
I know you humans are pretty smart,
you have to be able to figure out a way
to keep yourselves warm
without killing me

and I said, you know they don’t
do it for warmth,
they do it for fashion, they do it
for power. And she said I know.
But thank you anyway.



II

Then I walked a little further
and there was a stray cat
she still had her little neon collar on
with a little bell
and she walked a few feet,
stretched her front paws,
oh, she looked so darling
and then she walked right up to me
and she said thank you
and I said for what?
And she just looked at me for a moment,
her little ears were standing straight up,
and then she said, you know,
in some countries I’m considered
a delicacy. And I said how
do you know of these things?
And she said
when somebody eats one of you
word gets around
and then she looked up at me again
and said, and in some countries
the cow is sacred. Wouldn’t they
love to see how you humans
prepare them for slaughter, how you
hang them upside-down
and slit their throats
so their still beating hearts
will drain out all the blood for you
and she said isn’t it funny
how arbitrary your decision
to eat meat is?
and I said, don’t put me
in that category, I don’t eat meat
and she said I know



III

And I walked deeper in to the forest
managed to get away from the
picnic tables and the outhouses
that lined the forest edges
the roaring cars gave way to the
rustling of tree branches
crackling of fallen leaves
under my step

when the wind tunneled through
the wind whistled and sang
as it flew past the bark

and leaves



I walked
listened to the crack of dead branches
under my feet
and I felt a branch against my shoulder
I looked up and I could hear
the trees speak to me,
and they said
thank you for letting the
endangered animals live here amongst us
we do think they’re so pretty
and it would be a shame to see them go
and thank you for recycling paper
because you’re saving us
for just a little while longer



we’ve been on this planet for so long
embedded in the earth
we do have souls, you know
you can hear it in our songs
we cling with our roots
we don’t want to let go

and I said, but I don’t do much,
I don’t do enough
and they said we know
but we’ll take what we can get



IV

and I woke up in a sweat

V

so tell me, Bob Dole
so tell me, Newt Gingrich
so tell me, Pat Bucannan
so tell me, Jesse Helms
if you woke up from that dream
would you be in a sweat, too?

VI

Do you even know why
we should save the rain forest?
Oh preserve the delicate balance,
just tear the whole forest down,
what difference does it make?
Put in some orange groves
so our concentrate orange juice
can be a little cheaper

did you know that medical researchers
have a very, very hard time
trying to come up with synthetic
cures for diseases on their own?
It helps them out a little if they can first
find the substance in nature.
A tree that appears in the rain forest
may be the only one of its species.
Or one like it may be two miles away,
instead of right next to it. I wonder
how many cures we’ve destroyed
to plant more orange groves.
Serves us right.

VII

You know my motives aren’t selfless
I know that these things are worthwhile in my life

I’d like to find a cure to these diseases
before I die of them
and I’m not just a vegetarian
because I think it’s wrong to kill an animal
unless I have to
I also know the excess protein
pulls the calcium away from my bones
and gives me osteoporosis
and the excess fat gives me heart attacks
and I also know that we could be feeding
ten times more people
with the same resources used for meat production

You know, I know you’re looking at me
and calling me an extremist
but I’m sitting here, looking around me
looking at the destruction caused by family values
and thinking the right, moral, non-violent decisions
are also those extreme ones

VIII

everything is linked here
we destroy our animals
so we can be wasteful and violent
we destroy our plants
we destroy our earth


we’re even destroying our air
we wreak havoc on the soil, on the atmosphere
we dump our wastes into our lakes
we pump aerosol cans and exhaust pipes

and you tell me I’m extreme

and these animals and forests keep calling out to me
the oceans, the wind

and I’m beginning to think
that we just keep doing it
because we don’t know how to stop
and deep inside we feel the pain of
all that we’ve killed
and we try to control it by
popping a chemical-filled pain-killer



we live through the guilt
by taking caffeine, nicotine, morphine
and we keep ourselves thin with saccharin
and we keep ourselves sane with our alcohol poisoning
and when that’s not enough
maybe a line of coke



maybe shoot ourselves in the head
in front of the mirror in the master bedroom
or maybe just take some pills
walk into the garage, turn on the car
and just
fall asleep

in the wild
you have no power over anyone else

now that we’re civilized
we create our own wild

maybe when we have all this power
the only choice we have
is to destroy ourselves

and so we do

Untitled

Britt Suzanne Posmer

Untitled

Britt Suzanne Posmer

WHO’S COUNTING THE PETALS?

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004

Pinioned

Brandi S. Henderson

Please let me go...

Brandi S. Henderson

Thought Process

Joseph Veronneau

Born to Break Even

Joseph Veronneau

Untitled

Simon Perchik

Chopsticks and Cordials

John Vivolo

I close my eyes and fall asleep. I dream. I wake up.
My dreams don’t seem to come in a series of flashes like they once did. Now they only occur after long breaks of wakefulness. One dream and then an hour awake, followed by another dream and another hour awake. Each time, I wake sweating and shaking as if I’d just had a nightmare, even when I don’t have a nightmare.
In the past I used to wake up not knowing where I was. Now I wake up and I know exactly where I am. I’m in China. The city of Jiujiang to be precise. Jiujiang is in the southern central area of the country, in the Jiangxi province. The people are polite and curious. They stare at me, the strange foreign. Even though I’ve been here for three years, it still sometimes seems to me as if I’ve just arrived. Yet, the wide-eyed indiscrete staring doesn’t make me uncomfortable anymore, it makes me feel welcome.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning. My room is very quiet; so quiet that all I can hear is the ringing in my own hears. It’s that muffled sound of nothing. The same one you get when you place your hands over your ears, just the sound of the inside of your head. Is this what it’s like to be deaf? Do you really hear nothing or do you hear this endless whistle of nothing, this white noise of nothingness?
Out of the corner of my eye I see the sun just peaking over the windowsill. She also seems to be taking her time getting out of bed. I follow her example. Moving my feet over the edge of the bed, I place my sweaty toes onto the old grimy industrial carpet.
“Do I have to work today?” I ask myself, trying to remember if today is a school day or not. I realize it’s Saturday. I fight the urge to lie back down into the soft white covers.
Staring across the room, I see the empty rice bowl. Sticking out of the bowl are two wooden chopsticks coated in ivory. I remember finishing my dinner last night, filling the bowl with water to let it soak, and leaving the chopsticks inside. My Waiban, who gave me the chopsticks as a gift upon my arrival to this sleepy little town three years back, said not to leave them in water. His exact words were: “Don’t leave them in water. The wood inside will crack and that will be bad.”
He likes using the word ‘bad’. At the time, I didn’t want to explain to him that sometimes ‘bad’ is slang for good. Besides, I’d spent enough time explaining to him that even though I was American, my decedents were Italian.
“You are from Italian?” He thought this was a country. “You said you are from America. That is bad!”
Ken (his real name is Jung Shuai, but in order to help him associate with the foreign teachers, he was re-assigned the name Ken or Waiban Ken) shook his head and smiled. He usually presents a wide smile when he’s confused or uncomfortable.
“Ken,” I replied, “I am American, and grew up in America, but in America many different people come from other countries to live there. My grandparents came from Italy.”
He didn’t believe me. “Americans live in America.”
After ten minutes of explaining, ten minutes of the three-hour ride from the airport to the school, I think he finally understood and accepted it. However, he wouldn’t accept the fact that a number of Chinese live in America.
“No! Chinese live in China,’ said Waiban Ken.
“Then who are all also those people in America who look Chinese?”
He smiled a wide, crooked, toothy grin and said: “They are Americans.”
In case you’re wondering, a Waiban or Waiban Assistant is a Chinese person assigned to foreign teachers to help them with the transition between the two cultures. They’re also supposed to be knowledgeable about other foreign cultures.
As I step out of bed, I reach up and stretch. I can feel the strain on my muscles from my restless sleep. After a long a satisfying piss, I return to my rice bowl. Bits of rice float around my water logged, ivory covered chopsticks. Cleaning the bowl, I try to remember if I have anything to do today. After finishing, I turn toward the front door, under which is a small package of mail (the mail from the previous day usually doesn’t come until the next morning...if at all).
Sorting through the various letters from friends and family, changes in regulations, notifications of meetings the school liked for me to attend, and other nonsense, I finally reach the bottom of the pile. There on the bottom is a small white envelope. On it’s back is a seal—a heart in gold. Inside the golden heart, and written in silver, are the letters: J & K.
I don’t need to turn it over to know what it is. For years they’ve been coming, increasing as my numerous family members started growing older, and possibly less sane. Without turning it over I place it on my desk a few feet away. I step away from it and sit on my bed, placing my chin in my cupped hands.
A thought suddenly goes through my head: “I’ll be home in a month and it’s already starting.”
I’d come to China to teach English, and was taught as many things by the people as I taught them myself. For almost three years I’ve enjoyed, and grew frustrated by a number of things in this country, but it’s been the little things that I’ve enjoyed most of all. The little things like not having to live up to family engagements, birthdays, funerals, christenings, and, of course, weddings. I was, after all, in fucking china. How could I attend a wedding or funeral? But in a month—twenty-eight days to be precise—I will return to Staten Island (the forgotten borough of New York City), where my family awaits me. That everlasting line of family members: cousins, uncles, brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents (not to mention a huge number of step-family members), await my return. Also waiting is the beginning of the end, the end of the freedom of choice that I’ve come to love over the past three years (in China of all places!) and the beginning of the great cavalry charge of family engagements.
I stare at the envelope. The J & K in silver letters looks as if they’re caged within a heart-shaped golden prison. Could this get any tackier? Either way, I know my time has come. Leaning back, I try to remember the last family wedding I’d attended. It’s impossible to simply remember one wedding, but rather they churn into a singular moment repeating itself over and over again. I’ll do my best to explain the basic plot.
The church service is a full mass. The ‘Holiday Only’ Catholics cry and whisper while the vowels are being spoken. The family spreads the word about the beauty of the ceremony and how they felt God in the air. “It’s good to be Catholic...it’s good that they got married in a church...I heard they were going to get married in City Hall...God forbid...it’s good they got married in a church.” The family members wait impatiently for the Father to finish his speech about what love is and the importance of religion in the family (not to mention a quick lecture on the ‘evils’ of abortion). I guess the Catholic Church thinks it’s important to talk about deeply political and personal issues like abortion at weddings. I can see how the two are related...definitely. Sorry, I’m rambling.
To continue...
The crowd rushes out of the church as fast as possible, hoping to get to the reception hall in time to get the newly cooked food. At the hall, rows of the, by now, redundant dishes are presented to the drooling, overdressed, and overweight crowd of uncles, cousins, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. The trays of several kinds of pasta are attacked first: baked, marinara, alfredo, pesto, and whatever other pseudo-Italian-American names the catering hall can think up. Next, the sea is drained and every type of shellfish is presented to the crowd. They start with lobster tails, baked and stuffed with spicy Italian-style breadcrumbs; a deep dish of melted butter with a tiny spoon is left on the side. By the time the crowd passes the seafood section, the butter has spilt all over the table. The butter covers the baked clams that are alongside the black shell mollusks, which are already covered in a red sauce. Next comes the fried calamari and the crowd rejoices. It’s not only the favorite but also the ultimate judge of a catering hall. As always, next to the fried calamari are the shrimps rolled in such a thick layer of fried wonder that even the tails are covered (most will admit they hate when this happens). Finally, the meat comes out: racks of lamb, roast beef, thin slices of turkey covered in gravies and marinated for hours on end. It’s glorious, but futile. The family has already filled their plates with pasta and fish; the meats will have to wait for the second round (which should only be in a few minutes).
As the wedding reception grinds on, the drinking and eating seems to flow into the large gold-plated dinning room like a river enveloping everyone in cheer and laugher. “Salute’,” someone shouts, which is Italian for ‘good health and cheer’ (or some shit like that). “We Italians know how to eat, aye!” shouts my uncle, already on his sixth glass of wine and his third plate. This is followed by both laughs and grunts of disapproval.
The music picks up and the crowd of overweight, drunken, overfed family members manages to pry themselves from their seats and begins sloshing around the dance floor, getting excited about the same dance songs they heard two months earlier at someone else’s wedding. Soon the music slows down and the Italian love songs are played. The old people, the endless line of grandmothers and grandfathers, rise like zombies from their chairs and begin to sing along. They sway slowly back and forth like dying trees in harsh winds during the winters’ of their lives. Vincent and the Esquires, the usual family band, play’s the music. I think Vincent is related to me somehow.
Among the crowd, there are people I just saw at the last wedding and some I haven’t seen in years, whose names I can’t possibly remember. Looking at these nameless people, I recall the one thing that remains constant in my family. Yes, weddings are one thing, but divorces seem just as popular. Nearly half my family is divorced and remarried, such as my father and mother. Once it was just my father, mother, sister and myself. Now, my parents are divorced and remarried to people (Italians? Of course! Catholics? Of course!) who are also divorced and have children of their own. The four of us have now transformed into two sets of parents, four sets of grandparents, three brothers, and three sisters. Of course we don’t attend the same weddings, but in a wedding in which one of the children is getting married, all family members are invited and all attend.
The growing army of family members, both by marriage and remarriage, is ever expanding. The choices of marital status in my family are ‘married’ or ‘divorced and remarried’. There is no ‘single for life’ person. There is no ‘divorced for life’ person. Sooner or later everyone expects you to ‘meet a nice Italian girl (or boy) and settle down’. At this point I usually nod and introduce my family to Yanjun, my Chinese girlfriend.
This is also about the time when the subject changes to the various occupations: “So what are you doing with yourself...did you hear your Uncle Paule was made head of the printers union in his district?” I shrug and sit down with my fourth glass of wine. Here I begin noticing the men, who are predominantly working class. They’re the printers, the firemen, the police officers, the police officers who became firemen, the firemen who became police officers, the appliance repair guys, or the leader of a wedding band who works in his father’s pizzeria during the day. The women, on the other hand, are still trapped in the old world family lifestyle with two or three kids attached to each hip. A few have defied tradition and become teachers—never doctors, never musicians, never lawyers, and never artists—only teachers. The idea of becoming a writer (I’m the only one in my family to express a desire to do so) has completely baffled my family.
“You read a lot?” asks my cousin Cecilia as she wipes sauce off the face of her second child (or is it her third?). “I hated reading in high school.”
I reply: “I’m a writer, Cecilia.”
She takes a long gulp of red wine. “You write stories? You should write for soaps. They’ve got some good stories.”
My only response is to empty my wine glass.
The party ends around two o’clock in the morning and everyone slowly marches home, passing the fabled envelope to the bride and groom. It’s filled with the same amount of money that the family members’ had received at their weddings, regardless of how long ago it was. Wedding envelopes do not have interest rates!
“Was I adopted?” I say to myself as I lie back down on my bed.
I can still feel the pulling force of the envelope all around me. Gravity is a powerful force, but it doesn’t compare to the power of family responsibility, especially responsibility that has been building up for three years.
There’s a knock on my door, but I don’t get up. A series of strange thoughts pass through my head: “Maybe it’s the wedding invitation trying to trick me into looking at it again? Or maybe it’s the mail delivery guy with another envelope. The real envelope that contains not one wedding invitation but ten or twenty; weddings, funerals, engagement parties, or any other reason for my family to stuff their faces with the same tired Italian food and cheap liquor.”
The knocks come again. There are three of them, heavy and powerful against my shoddy wooden door. I half expect the person to knock it down, but I know he won’t.
“Teacher John,” shouts a voice from behind my door, “you are awake!”
I know who it is from the knock. It’s the same knock that had come every Saturday morning during the first year I was here, until I was finally able to convince him that I liked to sleep late on Saturdays, and that waking me up was ‘bad’.
I jump up, using my left hand to block my view of the white envelope with its silver and gold seal.
Another powerful knock on the door: Knock, Knock—.
“Ken,” I open the door before he can finish the series of knocks, “it’s Saturday.”
Waiban Ken nearly falls into the room as his fist gropes toward a door that isn’t there anymore. I don’t help him, knowing that he doesn’t like being touched. After gaining his balance, he quickly fixes himself and brushes off any dust from his pants, which is strange considering he didn’t fall on the floor. He smiles a wide grin, trying to hide his embarrassment. The yellow teeth on his top jaw are just as noticeable as the white teeth on his bottom jaw.
“Teacher John, you are awake,” says Waiban Ken.
I’m not sure if this is a question or a statement. I stare at him. “It’s Saturday.”
He frowns. “Yes.”
“We talked about this.”
“Yes.” Waiban Ken steps into my apartment, without asking of course.
This visit must be important; he usually comes by with a message and is always in a hurry to leave. Before I can say another word, he steps up to the envelope on the desk and picks it up.
“Wedding invitation?” I wasn’t sure how he knew, but somehow he did. Invitations must be cross-cultural. He frowns. “You are leaving?”
This isn’t a question about whether I’m going to attend the wedding or not, but is rather a question about whether I’m going to leave China for good. For the past two months, the college officials, whenever I saw them on campus, would dance around the issue of whether I would sign another one-year contract. “Is America nice this time of year...do you miss your family?” It was the only time in the past three years when they hadn’t just come out and said what was on their minds. “You eat too much...you are getting fat!” Their comments had been very forthright thus far, and believe it or not, refreshing compared to the evasiveness of some Americans. Yet, with the pending end to my contract soon approaching, the subject of whether I was staying for another year was being treated as a taboo issue. It was as if talking about it might make both the school and myself very uncomfortable.
Waiban Ken shrugs when he realizes I’m not going to answer him. He puts the envelope down and looks at the picture on my desk of my three-year-old niece. His face softens and he touches the picture frame.
I’ve gotten used to this scene. Ever since the first day I placed the picture on my desk (and after five minutes of explaining that this was not my daughter but my niece), Ken always walks over to look at the dark haired, clubby little girl. He never admits it, but I think he misses his daughter. I’ve heard she lives with her mother somewhere in the north.
“She is very pretty,” says Ken, as he always did before changing the subject back to official business. “She will be at the wedding? You will attend?”
I sit down on the bed. “I don’t know.”
“When is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“When will you...be,” he pauses and looks nervously around the room, then smiles as he looks back at me, “when will you be coming back to China?”
I frown. “I don’t know.”
“Good!” he shouts.
You have to understand that shouting in China isn’t a sign of anger but rather a firm agreement to what has been under discussion, or just a firm agreement that he agrees to try to agree.
Ken takes one more look at the picture of my niece and then the envelope. “Goodbye, Teacher John.” He shoots his hand out like a missile, almost hitting my face in the process.
I lean back and take his hand. “I will see you later, Waiban Ken.” We shake hands for what seems like the longest handshake in history.
Waiban Ken lets go of my hand and smiles, but this one is a real smile, not one that hides his feeling of embarrassment. It’s a smile of content for the strange friendship we’ve developed over the years—strange, but still a friendship.
“Yes!” he shouts as he leaves the room and gently closes the door behind him.
My eyes trail away from the closing door and slowly focus on the envelope. Waiban Ken had placed it right next to the picture of my niece.
I stare at the picture and then at the envelope. “Three years...”
There are two opposing forces active in the universe. Yin exists in Yang and Yang exists in Yin. This is the changing combination of negative and positive, dark and light, cold and hot which keeps the world spinning and creates Chi, the giving life.
I’ve also wondered what happens when you have a choice that is equally good and bad? When you can’t tell the difference between the two? When all you have are the forces of responsibility and the forces of desire?
I open the invitation and read the first line: “You are cordially invited...”
I sit in the wooden chair in front of my desk.
“Cordially means warm and sincere; friendly. A cordial is also a stimulant, a tonic, or a liqueur.”
After explaining this definition, I once said to my class: “In my family we sometimes add cordials to coffee during weddings. Can anyone tell me if there is a similar tradition during Chinese weddings?”
A dozen hands had waved frantically in the air, blocking the bright faces of my Chinese students.
I close my eyes again and fall asleep. I dream. I wake up.

the little differences

Janet Kuypers