new flash fiction by joyanna priest

It’s early evening and you’re walking home from the check cashing place. You’ve been working a temp job at a factory that packages computer software. Your shift ended a few hours ago, but you had to get a ride from the factory to the temp agency to pick up your paycheck and then catch the bus across town. You’ve been thinking stomachachey thoughts, doing the math of your bills over and over, trying to make the little bit of cash in your pocket stretch to cover what it needs to. Now it’s getting dark and you have a fifteen minute walk and you don’t have a jacket and your arms are bumpy with gooseflesh. Feeling sorry for yourself, you step into the only brightly lit warm looking store on this block of gas stations and parking lots: a Gap.

Two chirpy women pull themselves away from their conversation in the empty store and come over to offer you help. You decline, then, since one of them is standing right underneath a sign that says “PLEASE LEAVE ALL BAGS AT THE COUNTER,” you shrug off your stitched up canvas backpack and set it next to the cash register.

You’re hungry and you should just go home, but you have a vague idea about checking the clearance rack for something warm. This makes no sense—you barely have money for food, and it’s not like you don’t have clothes back in your room. But you move from a place of longing, not thinking. You’re trying to escape the gnawing worries that just won’t stay still inside you.

You shuffle through the clothes in the clearance section in the back of the store, but when you look at the price tags you realize you don’t want anything. Rather, you want EVERYTHING. Nothing that you want is here though, and you won’t be able to get it anyway.

The clerks are chatting, discussing their birthdays. You drift toward them, idly pawing the clothes you pass, letting your fingers enjoy the fabrics, rough or smooth, denim, cotton, softer things you don’t recognize.

You are steeling yourself for the rest of your walk in the chilly night, for going back to your bare little room in the boarding house that smells like an ashtray, for washing one of the greasy pots in the kitchen to boil some water for ramen.

Then you see the shirt. Why does it enchant you? The promise of comfort? It is a plain, off white hoodie. That’s it. Soft cotton with a drawstring hood and a single low pocket in the front. You stroke it and it feels warm from within, like something alive. One of the clerks shakes her head, “Yeah, well, all my stupid parents gave me for my birthday was a gift card. I was like, duh, what is Kohls anyway? Why would I shop there?”

You’re looking at them in a mirror on the front of the dressing rooms across the room, your hands rolling the white sweatshirt into a tight narrow burrito of cloth. You slip it under your shirt, to the side that is facing away from the clerks, and head abruptly for the door with a cheery, “Good night!” and a wave. They smile and wave back. One of them looks at the clock as the door closes behind you. You rush down the street, and when you get to the empty parking lot next door, you pull the sweatshirt out from under your clothes and pull it over your head. Its softness envelopes you, and you feel instantly protected from the chill and the falling darkness.

Then a different kind of chill hits you. Your backpack! It would be a good scam if you had thought of it and done it on purpose. Plan to steal something, leave a decoy bag at the counter to put the clerks at ease, then grab the goodies and head out the door. But it was an accident—the bag has everything that’s important to you in the world. Your journal, your house keys, your birth certificate, and the library book you were reading. Your journal. The thought of the giggly clerks opening your bag and finding your journal makes you icy.

You have no choice: you have to go get it. You take the hoodie off and tuck it under some bushes in the parking lot. Then you walk back to the Gap, rehearsing innocent expressions for when they accuse you of shoplifting.

That doesn’t happen though. You will pay later, in other ways.

When you push open the glass door of the Gap, the shorter clerk’s face lights up. “Are you back for this?” she asks, holding up your bag. For a minute, you think she is smirking, you think she has read your journal, you think this is an elaborate trap to extract justice for stealing the sweatshirt. But then she hands you the bag and says, “We were about to lock up, I’m glad you made it. I was just debating running out after you.” You cannot say thank you emphatically or fast enough, as you take the bag and leave again, grateful and relieved.

The sweatshirt is still in the bushes where you left it. Somehow, it doesn’t feel as warm as it did when you put it on before. You hurry home, backpack thunking against your back as you walk.

It takes a while for you to figure out that the sweatshirt is cursed. If someone asked you, you would say that you love it, that it’s so soft and warm. The off white color is a little bit of a problem, frankly, because you try to stretch out the time between trips to the Laundromat as much as possible, but you check yourself out in the mirror with the lights off and you look pretty good. At least it’s off white and not white, you tell yourself. Nobody will think it’s supposed to be white.

Joyanna Priest lives with her family in Maryland where she quests for truth in all its disguises. She has been doing things the hard way since 1973 and has only recently started writing under her own name.

Women’s Work

by Susan Pierce

I got up at 4:45 in the morning to write. The kids were asleep, the husband asleep. The house was quiet and peacefully shrouded in shadows. My mind had been spinning with ideas since I crawled into bed and I really wanted the chance to flesh them out.

Afraid I’d wake someone if I turned on the lights, I crept down the dark staircase to the shadowy solitude of the dining room—an alcove used as a makeshift office. I winced as I stepped on a renegade Lego left out by one of the children and cursed under my breath so no one would hear me and wake up.

Dare I start the coffee maker?

Unable to resist, I turned on the laptop and then headed toward the kitchen to brew a cup. As I passed the bathroom, I thought I smelled pot. The sixteen year old steptwirp must be up for his daily addiction. Loser.  I tip-toed by so he wouldn’t hear me and then silently filled Mr. Coffee.

“Hey, Mom.”

Heart leaping out of my chest, I spun around and saw my twelve year old standing in a pair of boxer briefs and shivering.

“What are you doing up so early?” I said pulling out my favorite skull and cross bones mug from the cupboard.

He shrugged. “Thought I heard something. Sure is cold.”

“Then put on some clothes, you dork. Before you freeze to death.”

“Okay. Wanna watch some TV or something?”

I glanced out of the kitchen toward the dining room longingly at my Laptop, the screen aglow now, ready for my words…

A smaller set of padded feet waddled into the kitchen. My four year old rubbed his eyes. “Juice, please.”

My shoulders dropped. There would be no writing today.

I pulled out a glass and filled it with apple juice, turned on the TV “Spongebob?”

“Yeah,” the kids jumped on the couch.  Just as the other four year old made his way down the stairs.  “Good morning, Mom.”

“Morning, sweetheart.” Out the kitchen window the sun had yet to rise.

Dystopia

Andrea is her name. She’s fifteen and sitting beside me at a computer in a windowless room, at least for now. I’m only a volunteer and will have to leave her in an hour and go to my real job as a middle school secretary.

Andrea has gotten into trouble one too many times for fist fighting at her high school, so she’s been here in the “Achieve Program” for the last few months.

I’ve been trying to help her to pass 10th grade Language Arts, among other subjects.  Her work is funneled from the high school building to our district’s credit recovery program room via an orange folder; we’re in a building half a mile from the high school, so no actual face-to-face contact with Andrea’s real teachers can ever take place. Thus, I’m forced to guess at what they want—their assignments sometimes vague or open to interpretation.

She needs to read Ayn Rand’s dystopian novella, Anthem, and write an essay.  That much is clear. The main character, Equality 7-2521, is a young man living in an oppressive, totalitarian society that forbids the slightest instance of individuality, even banning the use of singular pronouns.

Andrea slouches at the computer, unmotivated.  “What am I supposed to write about this? I read it and I didn’t even get it!”  She starts picking at the peeling blue polish on her nails; her eyes dart around the room at the dozen other Achieve Program students, all kids who aren’t allowed back in their regular classrooms.

I try an empathetic approach. “In the regular classroom, would Mrs. Hall have a class discussion about an assigned book?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

“I mean, go over each chapter and kick around the main ideas and stuff?”

“I guess so.”  Chips of blue polish fall onto the knees of her jeans.

“And here, it’s just you alone, with no one to talk to about the book.”

She turns and glares at me. “Yeah, and that’s dumb.”

“It makes the assignment harder, not having the benefit of a group of people to bounce ideas off of.”

“Dumb ideas from a dumb book nobody wants to even read.”

“I know, Andrea.  I get you.”

Silence. She stares at her screen, at the blank Word document with “Essay: Anthem” at the top. I take the liberty of sneaking a longer glance at her right arm. The scars are thin white lines about an inch and a half long, parallel for the most part. They begin at her wrist and go in one row all the way up.  Today she has a short-sleeved top on, and I find myself counting the razor blade scars. Andrea is left-handed like I am. I once commented on how lefties are creative. Like Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix.  Leonardo DaVinci. Her fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth cut marks are fresh, a little bit bloody still, halfway up toward her shoulder.

“I hate this,” she mutters.  “I just hate it.”

“Yeah, studying literature is no picnic, but it’s just what you have to do.  You know, it doesn’t have to be complicated.  I mean, you can think about this guy, this Equality 7-2521.  His life.  How hard it is to be him.”

“It’s not even a real story.  It didn’t even happen.”

“No, it didn’t.  But what if it did?  What if there were a world like that, and you were Equality 7-2521?  Would you resist the oppression?  What would you do in his shoes?”

“I wouldn’t BE in his shoes!”

I pause then, bite my lower lip as I breathe.  Calm.  Remain calm.

“Andrea.  You have to write a personal essay to respond to this story.  It’s your homework for Mrs. Hall, to get credit.  You’re just going to have to try to relate to the characters in Anthem and come up with some discussion—”

“You’re as bad as Mrs. Hall!” she shouts, rising up from her chair and staring me down.  “You’re all trying to make me do stuff I don’t want to do!  Why do they give me this bullshit work?  Why do you sit here every day with your dumb secretary outfits trying to tutor me?  You’re not even a real teacher!”

She’s right.  I’m not a real teacher. But from the notes I’ve taken in each and every principals’ meeting these past two years, I’ve typed the following words into the minutes:  The Achieve Program lacks resources, volunteers especially.  Not able to find community members able to handle the kids’ issues.

Andrea is now on the other side of the room, fetaled-up on a bench, clenching her sweatshirt. Fighting the system, only not with Equality 7-2521’s righteousness.

I walk over to where she’s curled up. “Come on, Andrea. Get up from there. We have to try to write something for Mrs. Hall.”

“I hate this fucking place!”

I have a three-year-old son at the daycare center down the road from here. He’s there all day because I work. He sometimes curls up like this in his little bed when he doesn’t want to have to get up and go to the center. I have to get stern with him, or else I won’t make it to this building in time to tutor the Achieve students.

“Come on, Andrea.  I still have forty minutes.  I can help, but you have to help, too.”

She doesn’t get up. I return to my chair by her computer and look at the blank document on the screen, wishing Andrea could instead write her right arm’s story.

Her anthem.

Bonnie Ditlevsen is a foreign-language enthusiast who lives in the Pacific Northwest, her base for homeschooling/roadschooling with her two children. The founding editor of Penduline, she’s currently at work on a sequel to her beach read, an expatriate-themed Costa Rican noir mystery The Wasp’s Nest Piñata.

Aloo Saag

by Jill Elliott

We work together well, my son and I, moving around each other in the kitchen. He finds the recipe for Aloo Saag, pulls spices from the rack and cupboard, places them next the stove. He chops onions until he has to rinse his eyes, dry them with a paper towel, and get back to his chopping. I start the rice cooking, cover the saucepan and set the timer. He pours a glass of wine for me and opens a beer for himself.

We began cooking together when he was twelve, the year after my divorce. That’s not strictly true; I have photos of both my kids ‘helping’ me in the kitchen from when they were toddlers, sticky-fingered, flour-splattered with huge smiles. But it was after the divorce, after the kids and I had moved to a house with a kitchen large enough to cook in, that he really helped. His teenage years were not easy. He was often angry, rebellious and moody, but he gentled while he was measuring, sautéing and stirring ingredients. We created calm while we cooked.

Today, conversation floats between my son and me while I wash and chop spinach. Nothing profound is said, but his relaxed presence fills me with ease. I like him being in the house. He doesn’t have to be in the same room, he can even be sleeping but I have a sense that all is right with the world when he visits. Even though he’ll be twenty-seven next week, this morning I checked that his shoes were by the front door; a habit begun when he a teen and driving. If I woke in the early hours, I’d go downstairs and check for his shoes. If they were there, I could go back to sleep. If not, I’d make myself a mug of peppermint tea and settle in to wait and worry, clenching at the sound of every siren. My mood immediately changing from worry to anger when I heard his Jeep pull into the drive.

Jill Elliott resides, writes and gardens in Portland, Oregon. After she completes her first book, she plans to learn to play the harp, study Latin, continue to write and nurture her organic garden. Solitude is her best friend. Her work has appeared in Poet in the House, VoiceCatcher, The Ink-Filled Page’s Charcoal Anthology and The Sun.

Grandma’s Couch
by Breezy Barcelo

I think I remember this couch from my childhood. It’s scratchy, and I used to think the color scheme was awful. Now at 19, I have an eye for “vintage” color schemes like brown, orange, and yellow plaid. Thank god it opens into a bed. That’s all I can think about right now. I’m so damn sick of sleeping in that bus with two dogs, twelve puppies, and a boyfriend that offers me farina for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m five months pregnant and I feel like shit from morning to night. We trekked across the country from Eugene, Oregon to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so I could sleep on this couch. My grandma thinks my diet is crazy. She hates that my boyfriend wears long skirts while I wear overalls.

Neither of us wears shoes.

But my grandma loves me and when I called her from a payphone in Oregon to say I was puking morning ’till night, she said to come and stay for as long as we need to.

I sit on Grandma’s couch for hours watching movies. It’s a luxury after living in the Volkswagen for a year and a half. I never just sit, though. I draw. I macrame. I make earrings. I’ve been supporting myself for a year, so my hands are always busy. My sewing machine is set up on the kitchen table, so I go back and forth—to the kitchen to sew, and back to the couch to rip out stitches that were mistakes. I make lots of mistakes.

The kitchen isn’t far from the couch in this trailer. And we’re as packed as we were in the bus, with my grandparents, my aunt and her occasional truck driving boyfriend, my six-foot-tall teenage cousin, my boyfriend, my two dogs, and pregnant me. All of us burst out laughing the other night at dinner when Grandpa said, “Today my friend said, ‘Frank, I don’t know how you can stand all those people living in your tiny house,’ and I looked at her and answered, ‘These are the best times of my life.’”

Grandpa is so nice. I’ll never be THAT nice.

Christmas is coming soon. Last year was fun; Christmas on the road. Soup kitchens serve great meals at Christmastime. This year, I’m glad to be warm and with family.

Back in June in Salt Lake City, I went into a little place that had a sign posted: “Free pregnancy tests.” An awkwardly nice woman sent me into the bathroom with the test, and she seemed almost scared when she told me it was positive—and then shocked when I was happy! My relatives around me say things I don’t understand, like, “Are you going to be ok?” and “I’m sorry you’re so young.” I don’t feel that young, or at least not too young to be a mama.

I get to sit on the couch more that anyone around here. Everyone works long hours. My boyfriend works at a pig farm for our new friend’s mom. We met the new friend at a potluck, and she heard we were looking for a place to store our school bus until the baby comes. She introduced us to her mom, and she and my boyfriend came to some agreement with storing the bus and him getting paid. But holy shit, I never knew what a pig farm smelled like. My grandma complains every day, and my boyfriend takes his clothes off outside the house every day, bags them up, and puts them straight into the wash! I try to ignore the complaints.

I just keep sewing.

I’m excited to have this baby and have my own bus again; my own space. I may not have a couch, but I’ll have a wood stove, a big bed, a table to craft on, a big stainless steel sink, and I’ll have my baby.

For now, I’m going to enjoy this couch, the movies, the time to sew, and the homemade food. My belly is getting big, and I am going to give birth in Amish country. I’ll find a midwife to help me at home or at a birth center–that’s what all these Amish women do.

I sit on my grandma’s couch and watch my belly grow. I watch the latest Cranberries music video. I watch my favorite movie, “Edward Scissorhands,” over and over.

I sit on my grandma’s couch and read Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin.

I want to travel to their farm, give birth naked in a tent, and become a midwife.

I sit on my grandma’s couch and macrame hundreds of hemp necklaces to sell at the next farmer’s market. They’re my best seller.

I sit on my grandma’s couch and write in my journal, doodle flowers, and make lists of baby names.

I sleep on my grandma’s couch like a log, whether it’s folded or opened, whether the television is on or five people are talking, cooking, laughing…

My grandma yells at me from the kitchen, “What on earth stained my counter yellow?”

I call out from the couch, “Turmeric, Grandma—so sorry.”

Months later, I lay on this couch feeling my first contractions. I’m shocked by the pain. In two days, after I’ve labored for 36 hours, after I’ve made my way to the birth center and given birth to a big baby girl with the Mennonite midwives (one speaking German the whole time), I’ll lay on this couch with my baby asleep on my chest–filled with love.

Breezy Barcelo lives with her kids and her cat in Evanston, Illinois. A writer and postpartum doula, her work has also appeared in Hip Mama.