Two years after being hospitalized, I’m still not 100% certain if I’m bipolar or not. I mean I’ve had two different psychologists tell me that they think so. That I “exhibit” the key characteristics. They’ve said so after sessions where I’ve talked too much, but felt like I was only starting to describe how I felt every day. How it started as depressive episodes in High School when sat on the corner of my bed without moving for hours. I used to blame it on the music I listened to. Elliott Smith…Daniel Johnson. I used to think I was just a moody teenager that needed Lexapro. I was labeled as manic depressive and hurried along my merry way. The first time I recognized my mood swings was through the daily fights I engaged in with my mom. We’d both circle each other like angry bulls until something caused us both to explode. I’d lock myself in my room and punch the walls. My little brother was the first to ask if I thought I was bipolar. I took it as an insult. How would he know that about me without me knowing it myself? He hasn’t said anything to me that honest since.  The chemistry in my head darkened as I transitioned into college. While all of my friends explored and found themselves, I could only see myself make choices and act from some distant prison inside my chest. I started hearing my mouth spewing words I didn’t recognize and didn’t mean. Even as I asked my body not to scream, not to feel so panicked I couldn’t breathe, not to hurt itself, my body did as it pleased. In a way, it was like walking away from a good friend after seeing burn your bridge on purpose. The more control I lost the more impulsive I got, too. While my mood shifts were brief, their consequences stretched on like scar that refuses to forget. At least I started to learn more about myself. Then came the insomnia. Around that time my eyes started to refuse any rest.

I’ve always been able to stay up until three or four at night and wake up the next day without an alarm before the sun comes back. The truth is both sides of me need each other. That is the half that is overwhelmed with love and warmth for the people and things I care about and the other half which tries to inflict as much pain as possible onto myself and all those around me. I’ve never gotten a formal diagnosis. I’ve tried. But not really. A work schedule that required my attention twelve hours a day didn’t help and I’ve always been bad at talking to anybody about these things. At complaining. Not knowing my diagnosis all the way is like walking through a pitch-dark room and then realizing you’re standing in a tunnel instead. The goal posts running away from you.  When I told my parents about the first time the psychologists said they thought I was bipolar, they said I was just stressed. Underneath the tug of war between my mind and my body lay my being, urgently needing to be liked and loved by everybody I came into contact with. It’s more than a little pathetic. At times I feel like my personality is just a combination of performances meant to seduce and entertain while I cringe inside. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I wonder if I am actually sick or if this is just actually doing all the heavy lifting for the rest of my personality? My game of avoidance came to an end one night after my band played a show in Somerville. That night throughout our set, I drank my favorite emotional trigger. Towards the end I stopped playing some songs halfway through and fell on top of the drumset. My bandmates’ fury outweighed their concern so I snuck away after the final song to another bar next door. I don’t really remember getting home, but I know that it took multiple people to restrain me from running into my bathroom or locking my door. They thought I was a danger to myself and called for an ambulance. Am I just a piece of shit looking for an excuse not to blame myself for all the things I’ve done? Are my feelings just another easy way out? I question this and then remember there’s nothing easy about this.

Esteban Cajigas is a writer, musician, and MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles. His short stories and poems have been featured in publications such as Venture Magazine, Foliate Oak, and others. Esteban also previously wrote for The Boston Globe as a correspondent and The Suffolk Voice as Editor-in-Chief.

My father is a simple man in old age. He lives on the outskirts of Las Vegas now, in a rinky-dink apartment complex. The television blasts CNN at an alarming volume for such close quarters, but he’s outside, minding his business and squatting on the patio with a cigarette between his fingers. In between puffs, he pokes at his quaint, urban garden, a sign of his domesticated life as a retiree. He always wanted someplace warmer than the chilly, wet climate in Seattle, better for tired bones. In his heyday, he was a bell bottom-wearing playboy with dark features and a baritone voice. I always thought he looked like a Filipino Harrison Ford, but he is 73 years old now, his swagger tempered and grey.

My step-mother is inside, always the first to greet me whenever I visit with my children. She keeps a tidy home for my father in their tiny two-bedroom apartment. They returned to America from the Philippines with only a few belongings to send my little brother to college. Now, it’s neatly cluttered with nautical trinkets and various furnishings they’ve collected over the years. Amidst the sea blues, anchors and seashells is a massive subwoofer, now a makeshift side table. The coffee table is slightly askew from the living room futon to make room for my father’s prized possession, an 88-key Yamaha digital piano. He plays it on the futon whenever I visit, but not for entertainment. He plays it because it’s part of his routine, and the sound of him playing is so normal that I don’t recognize he’s playing unless I bring someone over that appreciates his talent.

Aside from his “real job” at Boeing, my first memories were running around bars or venues while he danced his fingers along the keyboard. My siblings and I grew up to synthesized disco beats and strobe lights. Our family lived and breathed music: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, A Taste of Honey, Mouth to Mouth, and every cover song from the 60s and 70s.

As a teenager, I would find him downstairs in the dimly lit garage studio, sitting down next to a lamp, riffing off a song, enveloped in a cloud of nicotine. We didn’t talk to each other most of the time because I didn’t know what to say to my reserved father. Connecting with him was tough when my parents divorced, and I grew more distant during adolescent growing pains. The only time I had a conversation about his music was when I was sixteen after I handed him a sheet of music and asked him to play. He handed it right back to me.

“No,” he laughed, “I can’t read music.” So, he asked if he could listen to the song, some millennial pop ballad, and he played it, improvising with his signature keyboard sound along the way. Anyway, the studio wasn’t a place for bonding. The music slowed everything down. I drifted away in his melodies, further away from anyone, but close to his sound.

The smoky garage studio burnt down years ago in Seattle. (A case of a cigarette thrown in a receptacle. Go figure.) His studio has now been relegated to the center of the living room where he sits down to play a song. Except I don’t drift away this time. This time, I want to know why he plays every day and will for the rest of his life. I do because I’m in my MFA program, and I’m hungry for art and music. I wonder about my creative process, and if it was born out of my upbringing. Now I wonder if it was born out of his. Maybe his hunger is hereditary?

When I sit down to ask him questions, he lights up and tells me stories I’ve never heard and can’t quite picture. My father was the oldest brother of five siblings and cared for the family as the “man of the house” when their father, my grandfather, left our grandmother, the family matriarch. Maybe this is how he obtained his survivor sensibilities, qualities I mistook to be too blunt and hurtful. 

My grandmother gifted his first guitar at fifteen and he played every morning after studying others play at clubs. He chaperoned my then teenage aunt when she worked as a restaurant crooner, realizing music was a passion during this time. My father was so good, in fact, that one of the restaurant band members asked him to form a band and tour Japan. He believed he would only be away from his responsibilities at home for six months, but soon he was a college drop-out, leaving his studies in Business Accounting.

I balked at the earlier prospect—my father bookkeeping in a dimly lit garage. It didn’t equate. But he didn’t choose that path. He stayed in Japan for six years and learned how to play the piano in one month after breaking his finger in karate. My late grandmother proudly showed me a black-and-white photograph of my dad with his band, dressed like an Asian Beatle.

The Japan tour lasted through the 70s near the end of the disco era. My father would have traveled to Singapore had my grandmother not petitioned for him to immigrate to Seattle, Washington, where he met my mother. She reluctantly supported his musician lifestyle for the better part of their marriage, waiting up at night or on the sidelines while my father stayed out for gigs. I watched as his musical endeavors tore at his relationships or mended them, depending on which story I heard. Either way, my father’s keyboard was always the center of his universe and now it was literally center of his living room.

My step-mother tells me he plays the piano every morning, as soon as he wakes up. My father, the simple man, but gosh—did he have glorious adventures. Some might call it foolish or risky the number of times he put music first, but he played because he couldn’t keep his hands off of it. The hunger was always there as soon as he found music in his hands.

When I asked him if he ever sought a record deal, he replied, “No.” He had his heyday, and now he spends days drifting off in chords. “I play to get away from negative thoughts,” he says.

That’s when I realize our creative lives are similar. I didn’t quite inherit the music family trait. I can’t even sing karaoke. No, my fingers drift over a different type of keyboard, the kind that allows me to write about my father and reminisce about disco balls and bell bottoms. I found the hunger in different ways, but there’s the same impulse, the same desire to channel a baritone voice chalked up in smoke, a riff, a melody, then poetry. And maybe I won’t get to live the rock star life in Japan, but I have my center of the living room in me and at my fingertips. I return to it day after day and make it sing, baby.

Cristina Van Orden lives in South Los Angeles with her family and Chorkie. She is currently an MFA Candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles and Poetry Editor for Lunch Ticket. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in Chaleur Magazine, Gordon Square Review, HOOT Review, and Silverneedle Press.

I notice small details. Hairline cracks in a wall, misspellings and incorrect grammar, the moment a person lies. There’s no inquiry involved, no attempt to gather evidence. I’ve always been this way.

It still stings my mom. She wonders what I’m even talking about when I point out the fret on her nurse’s face. People bring their worries to work, I tell her. They can’t just shut it down. But Mom waves me off as she always did while Dad listened intently. He was the same way and valued my perception.

Where we come from it’s called touched and not something to boast about. Some consider it second sight—of the Devil. Others: a spiritual gift. Whatever its source, this inclination has barbs. People don’t take well feeling seen through.

I’ve learned to hold my tongue. Even lost friends. When you see a thing and know a thing can crush someone you love, you feel conscripted to warn against the thing. Age and sages have taught me: you have to let people fall. There exists one exception to this platitude: if a person asks me for advice, then let thee be warned: I go full hog.

A person introduces me to a new man she likes. Let’s call him Jack. We work through the small talk. I cover my reactions like a smiling ventriloquist. The visit finishes and later the woman contacts me with such hope.

So, what’d you think?

If Jack calls you or comes to see you: Kindly give your regrets.

How do I know this?

It’s in the eyebrows. Small face muscles. How Jack rubs the back of his neck. Honestly, it’s a feeling I get. Something otherworldly that just…tells.

When I was eight, my parents took me out to dinner. The server wore a pale pink cotton dress. My father remarked how pretty her hands were. She thanked him, took our order, and left.

Daddy. She’s in a fight with her boyfriend.

What on earth, child? My mother sucked in air and turned away.

Daddy nodded, yes. He believed me. Something was weighing our server down, a burden pushing on her chest. To me, it was as visible as the slender fingers that held her pen and notepad.

Those who notice small details, who closely observe others, notice fellow observers. We find each other usually in silent acknowledgement. These are my people. No secrets are hidden, no heavy blankets laid over top. I don’t have to hold back what I know. They don’t deny what they already accept.

My father was a watcher. But by the time I was nine, he missed warnings signs I’d begun flagging in front of him. What my father didn’t notice and my mother denied shaped my future. The turmoil this caused derailed how I self-expressed. A child in conflict is left with few options.

I became a liar.

I want to tell you lying started out little white-like. That I occasionally cried wolf or the fish got bigger in retold legends. But my lies were astounding fictions.

Lies built walls and closed me away, became my hiding place, and though child-lying is obvious, it emboldened me. With age, practice, and a shrewd ability to evaluate others, by high school, I was a damned good liar.

Keeping the details straight exhausted me. Compulsively shifting narratives, dodging peoples’ suspicions. To be caught in a lie struck a fear in me, yet not more frightening than having my truth exposed. I would do anything to protect it. Anything.

Off at art school, oil painting, and habitually denied sleep, the hairline cracks in my thinking began to dissemble it. Lies distracted my restless, hungry mind—the mind I thought I was starting to lose.

By the time I dropped out of my senior year in college, I had mastered lying. I lied so completely the words fooled everybody. Lies became my superego and spokeswoman. I lied when it wasn’t even needed. The compulsion was flexed and ready. If backed into a corner, a lie came out swinging.

* * *

Now a part-time department store and daycare worker, a nanny, and a full-time education student, I could sneak away one night a week for group therapy. I took the #5 bus to Salem Ave. United Way for low cost therapy. The very first bus ride— about midway—the driver stopped and picked up a mousey girl with a slight limp. Miles later, I pulled the cord, stood until the driver lurched to a stop, and I stepped forward. Down at the second bus door, I noted Mouse Girl doing the same. We exited the bus and walked wordlessly together.

* * *

The group scraped chairs into a circle. We sat in an awkward silence until a bubbly therapist burst in and introduced herself, then encouraged us to do the same. We named off counter clockwise, all fifteen of us, except for one. The therapist introduced this woman who sat, knitting, as “Ruby,” and moved on to the business of how we would honor confidentiality. For the next six months of Wednesdays, Ruby knitted without looking up, come whatever #MeToo share swirled around her.

During this momentous first group therapy, fifteen minutes into the session, a tiny knock interrupted one woman’s confession. The therapist looked rattled, and quickly met a colleague at the door. Whispers passed between the huddle. Someone had arrived late. When the therapist turned and offered the new member a seat, it was Mouse Girl standing there more bent and looking feeble with a pained face. The therapist patted and fawned the newcomer as they walked into our circle.

Ladies, this is Penny.

Hi Penny.

Penny missed her bus and had to walk over a half an hour just to get here!

The group sighed. Poor thing. How awful.

Penny limped large, arduous steps to an empty chair, ladies praising her efforts.

Her dress was maroon, closely formed to her shape. Skin, the color of limestone. Brown hair, frizzing in the August haze cupped her small shoulders. As she turned to ease down into the chair, she spotted me. Her eyes narrowed. Gold, like my brother’s and nervous. I stared at my caught mouse.

* * *

That’s the night I changed my life.

Riding home on the bus, without Penny accompanying me, I realized how much we were alike. She lied and made people sympathize with her. She needed their immediate affection just to be able to join in a circle, because being herself was too frightening. When I saw my reflection behaved back at me, I swore this oath:

I will never lie again.

I’ve stuck to it. Okay, okay. Saying Santa is real to a three-year-old, yes. I’m feeling great today when I’m not, those little fibs, they happen. But otherwise, I speak the truth.

When I committed to truth, I stuck to group therapy and waited for the day Penny would return or Ruby would dare speak. Ruby only shared once. She’d grown up in a farm house with all brothers. I kept my eyes focused on the nubby yarn, pulling through her fingers in even strokes. Knitting needles scraped with each word.

I’d been so kind, so entertaining to this group, smiling no matter how much emotional pain I incurred. Ruby’s share began to crack the casing that housed me. Tears lifted over and pooled into my smile, but I choked them back and kept smiling. Rage wouldn’t knock loose for many years.

Penny never came back.

* * *

Student teaching back at my prestigious high school, I was daunted to face all those teachers. They wanted me to call them by their first names! How would I escape the ridiculous, lying fool I was back then? I kept reminding myself that my teachers had been saviors during those terrible days. There were truths, there were facts. Learning was real. Even the tragic loss of my close friend was real. Truth showed up in other ways. My singing voice had filled the theatre. My art had decked the walls.

But one hard truth hounded me. Still does. In my two-mile town, schooled with the same people K-12, not one teacher, principal, guidance counselor, coach, not even one mother asked me the question I would have answered.

Is somebody hurting you?

When my teachers introduced me to Tom Auten one Friday lunch in mid-May, I was struck in love at first sight. I had a smudge of art charcoal on my nose. Our first date—after the movie—we drove down to the river, sat with the top down by the Carillon Bells, and talked. When bugs started biting, we retreated to his little house, sprawled out on his carpet, and told each other all our shit. We both had loads.

A few months after our confessional, Tom and I were engaged.

I’ve spent my life with the one person who knows all my truth and he loves every part of it. I want to tell you Tom’s love restores all ails. That faith heals. Time is a balm. But I don’t lie.

Restoration is tiring work, gathering the broken pieces and overcoming the damage I endured.

Some days, I wonder who I’d be if I hadn’t needed to protect myself, if I hadn’t been The Liar. What body of art I would’ve created, where my stage career would have taken me? These reflections aren’t grand schemes to diffuse the dull ache of a well-educated wannabe. I remember what it felt like before I lost me.

I take comfort in the small details: how I can stop a baby from crying with one smile, how I can finally hug, how dogs adore me. I’m great at jury selection, keenly aware of the out-of-tune, able to closely match colors. I can smoke out schemes, sleuth plots, solve them, feel when change is coming, sense evil.

When teaching, my classroom is a safe place. I’ll protect every child. Protection is of great importance to me. Mess with my sons, regardless of the consequences, I’ll take you down. And there’s more. I’m a forever friend. My ability to spot trouble helps me know who to keep at a distance. And, yes, pay attention to the men I keep close to me. They are quality.

Learning to trust women hasn’t come as easily.

* * *

Recently, I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Portland. At the loving suggestion of a writing mentor, I attended a panel discussion titled: “Writing the Mother Wound.” Close friend and CNF writer, Mireya S. Vela and I entered the large presentation room already filled. Women spilled to the sides, lined the walls, and bunched in the corners.

Mothers are in trouble.

Mireya and I slid to the floor and listened. The presenters shared raw words, exposing their mother rage. These women voiced the forbidden, complex expressions never allowed. I stared at the rungs of a chair. My body, still, breath even. I closed my eyes and listened as poets and essayists spoke for me.

Why didn’t you help me?

Then I heard it. Weeping. Beside me, above, reverberating against the walls, with breath and heat: rows of women emoting and heaving. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. But these women moved me.

Somedays I wonder who I’d be had I not grown up with secrets and shame. Would I be a person who scoffs at the hyper-vigilant-touched, who turns her head away and waves people off?

* * *

I am the daughter of a man with deep sight. Combined with my own hyper-vigilance, not much slips past my view. But my wrecked childhood slipped past his. My father was devastated to learn he hadn’t protected me. The news diminished him.

I wanted to rewind, get back to the moment before he knew, when I didn’t feel dirty and used. This was the man who respected my opinions, valued my thinking, whose face lit up when I entered a room. I just wanted my Daddy back.

I wanted to lie.

Need help? R.A.I.N.N. says, “Visit online.rainn.org to chat one-on-one with a trained RAINN support specialist, any time 24/7.”

Andrea Auten is a writer and a visual | performing artist. A writing specialist for Antioch University Los Angeles, she is an Associate Managing Editor for Lunch Ticket Literary and Art Journal. She lives with her husband, sons, and beloved writing partner, Dusky, the family cat, where she is currently working on a collection of short stories. @AndreaAutenArts | andreaauten.com |

Sometime in the past week or so, I hit a funk. I decided to catch a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning and it quickly became a few extra hours. It can easily be dismissed as having a lazy day. Or a lazy week. Or a month. It doesn’t bother me that much, at first at least. It only bothers me when it gets out of hand.

The reasons behind the funks can vary, but the feeling is always the same: Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Tired. Frustrated. In summary, not giving a fuck. I stopped giving a fuck years ago, but the feeling is more aggressive nowadays. When you can go without taking a quick shower for three days, you know you’ve reached peak apathy. It’s also the time when you know that you need to take a goddamn bath.

It’s clear at this point that the funks need to be addressed, but they always take a backseat to everything else. It didn’t seem like too much of an issue. It can be worked around, or helped out with other things. It’s no big deal.

And then I couldn’t write a damn thing.

*  *  *

It’s hard enough to find the time to write. It’s even worse when you can’t find the motivation. The funk muddles the process, makes it excruciating to get through. It’s a miracle to concentrate on anything for more than a minute. I stare at the screen, willing the words to arrive before I give up and move on to something else. Anything else. Even then, the breaks turn into a distraction from getting anything done, then to an excuse to not do anything at all.

Part of it is the perfectionist in me. I get so caught up in the idea of what I want to write that I get nothing done. The other part is that I live in a house that is never quiet. Calm has no place in this house when family is in it. I’m used to chaos, but this chaos has no order. It shows no mercy and for what I know, there’s no end to it. After a while, despite my struggles, the chaos seeps into my calm and warps it into something disgusting. Something toxic. Writing becomes the last thing I want to do.

* * *

It doesn’t take long for the funk to manifest itself. My bedroom serves as an indicator of what I’m going through. When it gets bad—when I can’t walk the two feet from my bed to my door without tripping over whatever the hell my cat knocked over this time—that’s the sign that I’m in a bad place.

I was scrolling aimlessly through my Facebook feed two summers ago when I came to this realization. A friend who was probably going through her own funk mentioned how the state of your room usually represents the state of your mind. It spoke to me for obvious reasons; my bedroom was currently a biohazard and I was behind on my writing. Before I came across the post, I never fully considered that my lack of motivation could be something else.

It was in the comments of that post that I found the solution to that problem. A minor solution, at least.

*  *  *

Once you get past the title of the website, Unfuck Your Habitat is a helpful kick in the ass.  Browse long enough and you’ll come across a section titled “The Depression/Messy House Cycle”.  I don’t recall finding the page on my first visit; I remember looking it up on Tumblr and finding post after post of before and after photos of bedrooms, kitchens, closets. I came across a challenge that sounded like a good place to start: make your bed as soon as you wake up.

The morning after, I started making my bed. The first attempt was sloppy; the bedsheet was hanging off my mattress haphazardly, the pillows were lumpy and in need of pillowcases, and an eighth of it was taken up by books and clothes I haven’t bothered to put away yet. But it was still an attempt.

Over time, I started putting in more of an effort. I tucked in the sheets. I removed the large pile of books from the foot of my bed to its proper place on my desk. Eventually, I began making efforts to keep my desk organized, put my clothes away properly, vacuum the floor. The room was still messy, but I could at least see the bottom of my floor now.

* * *

On the worst day of my current funk, I spent the better part of my morning staring aimlessly into space under the guise of watching terrible movies. Maybe it was the movie itself or I got tired of doing nothing, but whatever the reason I reached for my phone, set the timer for twenty minutes, and began clearing the floor. I set the timer a few more times, cleaning up the room until I got tired of setting the timer.

Obviously, tidying up your space doesn’t solve everything. It helps me get out of my funk, but it doesn’t keep it from returning. I’m still in that funk from last week, and while I’m back to getting out of bed the moment I wake up, it’s still a struggle to focus on the important things. It’s still a process, but I’m okay with that.

Lily Caraballo is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles and a figure model. She is a staff member of Lunch Ticket, a former contributor for Black Girl Nerds, and is featured in the anthology My Body, My Words: A Collection of Bodies. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat.

I was 14 when my mom told me she was pregnant. Right away, I knew it would be a little brother. On the bus one day, Mom called and broke the news: “I know you’ll be disappointed, but it’s a girl.” Bella is still figuring out which is more accurate and has decided to try out “they” pronouns (a gender-neutral alternative to “he” or “she”).

Bella is now the same age I was when they were born. At 14, they are several inches taller than me. These days, they wear their hair short, somewhere between the ears and chin. It’s usually messy, and sometimes dyed a weird color. They’re a fashionable kid, taking inspiration for their clothes and makeup from the world of K-Pop. They’re a deft hand with eyeliner—it’s always on point.

When they were a baby, I didn’t really want anything to do with them. I didn’t know what changes a baby would bring to our household, which was already tense with years of problems between my parents. I’d proven myself to be more of a troublemaker than my two older siblings, who had both recently left home. I earned myself a place in the police academy program at a nearby public high school because I “needed discipline.” Just a couple of days before the baby was born, I met my first long-term boyfriend, who would be part of my life, and the baby’s, for the next few years. He was three years older than me. My mom and I fought for days before she relented and allowed me to see him.

During her pregnancy and for a while after, my mom spent her life in fear. She was almost forty when she had the baby, and she had high blood pressure. Born six weeks early, Bella was tiny and had to spend two weeks in the NICU before being cleared by the doctors to come home. The first night in our apartment, Mom laid Bella in the bassinet that dominated the living room. They fussed so much that, before the sun rose, they were in bed with Mom. The two slept in the same bed until Bella was a teenager.

Welcoming a new baby brought relatives to our door. First, my mom’s favorite sister Suzi visited when Bella was about six months old. Later, Bella’s grandma and uncle on their dad’s side came. Pictures were taken, hugs exchanged, gifts received. I only have a few memories about this time. I was immersed in my own struggles, aching to spend every waking moment with my boyfriend. In a typical teenage fashion, I was completely egocentric and petulant, dealing with the depression that came with puberty while struggling to discover my own identity. Bella had sinus problems and was often sick. My mom and I still fought, but she focused her real energy on the baby, on the never-ending problems with my stepfather, on her own struggle with addiction.

Just before Bella turned one, I left the police academy, where I’d been miserable and short of breath all year. I went into independent study to finish high school, which was a much better fit for me. I spent several years in a nocturnal state, writing at night, sleeping in the mornings, and babysitting in the afternoons. During this time, I dabbled in prescription and over-the-counter pills, tried smoking a cigarette, and learned about sex. My boyfriend and I would babysit together, cuddling and kissing on the couch, Bella fixated on the TV. Whenever we went out, people assumed I was a teenage mother, which never really bothered me.

I remember Bella’s first big smile up at me as I sat in front of the computer, looking down at them in their little bouncy chair. I made squished eggs in the morning and plain pasta in the afternoons, annoyed at being the one to have to complete these chores. When my mom asked me to, I brushed Bella’s rat’s nest of hair, making sure their favorite show was turned on and they had a snack to get through it. I tried to be gentle. As a kid, I also had unga-bunga hair, so I understood the pain. Bella looked just like me when I was little.

Bella and I were together with our parents in a situation that was often stressful and sometimes violent. Our mom and Bella’s dad fought often and hard. When this happened, I became the caretaker. My teenage angst was sidelined by these crises. I would take Bella into the bedroom, into my lap, and we would watch the Powerpuff Girls, or play Legos, trying to ignore the shouting from the other room. I was beyond fear by this point, used to the screaming matches that had been going on as long as I could remember, but Bella would whimper and cry and ask questions. I tried not to be too harsh with my answers, tried to remember that they wouldn’t understand the complicated reasoning behind my almost grown-up emotions and opinions. When I would occasionally interfere in these domestic disturbances, I felt puffed up, empowered—but also helpless. I was still a kid, older boyfriend or not. I tried to shield Bella as best I could. I tried to shield myself.

*     *     *

Besides being sick all the time, Bella was always an accident-prone child. Once, they slipped while climbing on the back of the couch and smashed their chin into the windowsill, biting through their bottom lip. I was babysitting at the time, and I was wracked with guilt. For once, my mom didn’t react with anger, instead understanding that kids sometimes get hurt. I was relieved she wasn’t mad at me for my negligence. Another time, Bella reached up and touched the electric stove while it was on, receiving massive blistery burns on three fingers. Just before I went away to college, a kid pushed Bella off the playground slide. When they hit the ground, their glasses sliced open their eyebrow. My mom sped to the hospital, then turned the keys over to me for the first time so I could park as she rushed Bella inside. Bella will always have that scar above their left eye. They never try to cover it with makeup, embracing the uniqueness it brings to their face. Their right thigh is a mass of huge scars from the time our big sister’s cat decided they were a threat and tore into their exposed leg. Bella is no stranger to physical pain.

I knew some things about Bella years ago. I knew they would be a dancer. Through all of the illnesses and injuries, they always had a mastery over their own body that I couldn’t really relate to. I knew they would question everything, empowered to explore the opportunities life placed before them. I knew they would experience many of the same things I did as a kid, like mental illness. No one could have convinced me, though, that we would be so much alike.

*     *     *

Bella’s father left when they were barely five. At that time, I was a college student with my own life and concerns. Our mom moved into a new apartment across the street from the old one, where rent was a constant worry. When I came home from school to visit, Bella and I would spend hours coloring or playing in front of the TV. We sang our souls out to The Backyardigans, and I introduced them to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It may have been inappropriate for a kid, but we had a blast singing along to each subversive song. Music was everything to us, necessary in our TV shows and games. Early one Sunday morning, Bella and I lounged in bed and sang “opera” until the neighbors started yelling at us to shut up. We laughed for hours.

When the power was shut off due to nonpayment, our big brother came over. As night fell, we armed ourselves with Nerf guns, jump ropes, and sticks. Then, we divided the apartment into kingdoms: The Kingdom of Kitchen, Bedroomlandia, The Plains of Livingroom, Bathroom Swamp. Finally, we declared war on each other. Peeking around doorways, hiding underneath tables, and charging each other head on, we play-fought for dominance of the darkened rooms. Bella and I were both thrilled and enthralled that our big brother had decided to join us in this flight of fancy—and I was grateful, because Bella’s laughter echoed through the apartment, their fear of the power outage lost in the great fun of the impromptu session of imagination. We never had occasion to play Apartment Kingdoms again, but Bella asked us to for ages afterward.

*     *     *

After college, I moved away for a couple of years. When I came back to Los Angeles, Bella was a preteen. They had grown even taller and looked much older. They were deep into their own life, just as I was at that age. It was different for Bella, though. I had been introverted and inactive, obsessed with my boyfriend to the exclusion of other friends, while Bella was dedicated to dance and seemed to have a new best friend every week. They were always going out to concerts or events, surrounded by a gaggle of dressed up teens.

Now that we live in the same part of town, we see each other more often. Bella is older, which makes our relationship different, more balanced. They’ve developed quite an irksome and entertaining personality. We’ve been able to spend time together one-on-one, reminiscent of the long days spent playing and singing when they were a toddler.

Last summer, Bella came over a couple of times a week so we could go swimming together. In my backyard surrounded by plants, statues, deck chairs, and the palpable presence of the sun, we would languish in the water. We cranked the radio, tuning in to our favorite alt rock stations, belting out the lyrics when Twenty-One Pilots came on. We played nonsense games reminiscent of Apartment Kingdoms, creating a plot worthy of publication. We sprayed each other with the hose as we took turns zooming down the big yellow slide into the deep end. When the time came to get out, we were equally reluctant, wishing we could stay in the cool safety of the water forever, living like mermaids. Even as I tried to act the grown-up and make Bella get out, all I could see in them was myself. Staying in the pool too long was my favorite act of defiance as a kid. I love the little things like this that tie us together, the little quirks that say we have a common history and family.

I remember the indifference and occasional resentment I felt toward Bella when I was a teenager, and I can’t connect to those feelings at all anymore. As different as we are, I can see those things in Bella now, the same emotions I battled as a kid. Depression and anxiety have set in, right on schedule. They’ve even enrolled in independent study, just like I did. My mom and I talk often about how frustrated and helpless we feel when we know Bella is in pain and there’s nothing we can do about it. I wish I could take away all the bad parts of their life, but I can barely keep swimming myself.

*     *     *

I guess if I want you to know one thing, it’s this: When life gets too hard to bear, when it seems like it’s all spiraling down to hell and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, I will be there, and I will rescue you. That’s a promise.

Adrien Kade Sdao writes young adult fiction and works in a children’s bookstore in Los Angeles. They are an MFA candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and they are the lead editor for the Young Adult genre at Lunch Ticket. Their work has appeared in Lunch Ticket and Womanpause. They live in North Hollywood with their cat, Shelly.

My husband and I married in Madison, Wisconsin four years ago and moved to his rural childhood home to lead and grow his family’s farm. Before moving here, my husband and I made a list of pros and cons of leaving to live in a rural place, where the nearest town is politically scarlet. The pros won, and we left the state’s progressive capital city for a place where many vehicles have “We Still Stand with Scott Walker” bumper stickers.

For the first few years, living in our rural area in an isolated subdivision, I commuted fifty-five miles one way to work for a communications job in the nearest city. My peer coworkers were, predictably, all male and white. They enthused over online-based video games, their favorite shows on Netflix, and Fantasy Football. They asked what I did for fun, living way out there.

Hike, I told them.

Pro: The rolling hills of the Kettle Moraine State Forest – Northern Unit are a quick drive from my home, allowing access to the epic and well-maintained Ice Age Trail and scores of other beautiful hiking, swimming, and biking spots.

*     *     *

I also decorate our house, I told my bro-workers. We don’t have Internet, I said.

They stared at me as if I’d confessed I couldn’t read or write.

Con: My husband and I live in a rural and faraway enough part of our Wisconsin county that no fiber optic cable for high-speed broadband Internet has been dug. We’re not in view of the line-of-sight Internet tower. Painfully slow, uber-expensive satellite Internet is our only option, a contract we signed for two years and then quit, never to use again. Now, I am enrolled as a full-time graduate student, and any work that requires the Internet—email, weekly check-ins, literary journal blog and content management—I do via the hotspot I create with my iPhone, with an unlimited data plan that still seems too limited.

One of the “pros” on our original list—the list that justified us leaving Madison—was the possibility of a tighter-knit community in a rural area. As Lunch Ticket bloggers have stated in such eloquent terms this issue, community is essential to strong mental health and survival.

Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine State Forest – Northern Unit features superb hiking trails and autumn colors.

*     *     *

Pro: The lack of fast Internet encourages me to write more, enables me to be a graduate student in a low-residency MFA program, work on art and our house projects, run or bike outside for miles without seeing a single car, and get more work done for my job at the farm. There is solitude here—room to breathe.

Con: The best place to get high-speed Internet is the Starbucks nearest the well-stocked if sterile 24-hour grocery store. Most of my Internet-using time is spent in this same strip mall, a pandering line of shops with a hectic parking lot. I dislike the coffee; the dark-roasted grounds are burnt and over-extracted. I prefer the brighter, berry flavors of a single origin light roast. All those years we lived in pampered, foodie Madison made me soft and snobby, unable to withstand bad coffee. Anyway, I sit there, hour after hour, working on critical paper research using the university’s online libraries system, managing online submissions queues for the literary journal, blog posts, and weekly content. I need the Internet to be a writer—to submit to journals, apply for editorial positions, and share my work via social media. To work.

Nobody ever asks my name. Nobody memorizes my drink. I never see anyone I know at this coffee shop, which defies all previous coffee shop culture conventions—warm, conversational—I’ve ever known.

*     *     *

In November 2016, a little over a year after moving to our home, Trump became president of the United States. The urban-rural divide became national fodder, with some reductive voters blaming rural areas for the proliferation of “Make America Great Again” devotees. Community building here seemed bleaker by the day. 2017 and, in particular, 2018, proved atrocious for human rights. The nation stands by, mouths covered in horrified half-laughter, as this presidential administration train-wrecks itself, turns laws and morality upside-down, and persecutes immigrant families.

Pro: I can isolate myself with good reason—productivity—from booze-soaked happy hours while I work on my novel, personal essays, and short stories instead. While I’m inspired by the bustling of big cities, I need solitude to create, to find those seeds of concentration I never sowed during all those years of corporate jobs and happy hours in my late twenties.

Con: I feel like a bird on a wire, the gigabytes pulsing beneath my feet. A wide world to which I don’t have access.

Pro: Life in a lower-cost, low-density area means more money to travel, a recognized privilege I try not to take for granted.

Con: When I do have high-speed Internet—at hotels, at my Los Angeles AirBnBs when I stay during residency, in line at the ice cream stand drive-through—I glut on it. Watch five episodes in a row of “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Look up ex-boyfriends’ new girlfriends’ new and different boyfriends on Facebook. Scroll, scroll, scroll, feed, feed, feed.

I rarely drive through at Starbucks, but when I do, pup gets a treat!

*     *     *

Pro: I get some “me” time—decompress, self-care, whatever.

Con: It’s all so lonely.

Pro: I never have to worry about parking or the neighbors’ sewage problems, or stolen Internet causing slow Hulu streaming.

Con: There is no Internet to steal.

When the management team named me blog editor and weekly content manager for Issue 15 of Lunch Ticket, I hesitated, knowing how much the position would rely on ample Internet access. The hesitation only lasted a second. I’m so honored to edit and publish personal essays about “What now?” questions, combating medical misconceptions, the ache of missing love, and the need for intersectional feminism. Social media—supplied by the omnipresent Internet—is just one way I share these works.

As much as I can, I take the opportunity to talk about these essays, in person, via text, or over the phone, to permeate a culture around me that may not be too knowledgeable of LGBTQ issues or aware of the plights of urban homelessness.

Pro: I built a community, though it’s far away.

Con: Fostering this community requires the Internet. In warm weather, when semester is in session and deadlines bear down, I have to move from room to room in my house with iPhone in tow, searching for a hotspot signal. Denser summer foliage means frequent data interruptions for those far from cellular data pinging towers.

*     *     *

Pro: After a string of corporate jobs in which I was told I had a strange personality to operate in a big company (Female? Youthful? Ambitious? Still not sure.), and during which I overheard catty remarks about my outfits over low cubicle walls, I vowed never to set foot in a corporate office again. I now do most of my work for the farm from home.

Con: My day job at the farm, as the compliance, communications, and HR director, is much harder than it should be. Handwritten tasks take longer and result in more human errors—I still remember the time I wrote a five instead of a four on a spreadsheet and couldn’t figure out why the books did not balance at the end of the month. Thirty-nine percent of people in rural areas still do not have access to high-speed Internet, which is considered a vital tool to run a business. Emailing invoices and vendor payments are no longer futuristic automations. They’re here to stay, and farms that cannot keep up will suffer the economic consequences.

Pro: Electric cooperatives may come to our area soon to bridge the urban-rural digital divide.

Con: It’s unlikely those cooperatives will be able to achieve the 25 megabytes per second requirement the Federal Communications Commission sets to define high-speed broadband access.

*     *     *

On snowy days, I follow deer paths in our backyard woods.

This is my last blog for Lunch Ticket, though I’ll edit and manage our team of bloggers through June. It’s bittersweet. I’ll miss my bloggers and connections to those in far-flung places—bigger cities and more rural places alike.

Point: Only four percent of people in urban areas don’t have access to high-speed Internet. We should all just move to big cities.

Counterpoint: Who will grow all of our food, organic, conventional, or otherwise? Crops and livestock require space and land, and farmers to grow, nurture, and oversee them. The demand for produce continues to increase, despite the proliferation of technologies and automation.

In the end, four years ago, the “pros” won. We know it will be a challenging road to run a farm, but the list doesn’t lie.

Pros: We are close to our family, our most supportive and important allies. I watch my nephews grow up. We have enough space to adopt a puppy. I see a supermoon illuminate our backyard woods. I witness 27 wild turkeys peck around in the field by our home. I try and fail to video herds of deer stampeding through our subdivision.

By helping to grow produce, we serve as an edifying counterpoint to the struggling farms that pump antibiotics into their Big Dairy cows or raise many, many cattle for beef, one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change.

We can feed the world.

Con: Due to limited data, I can’t live stream the whole thing.

E.P. Floyd is blog editor and weekly content manager of Lunch Ticket, and an MFA candidate in fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Lunch Ticket, Litbreak Magazine, and Reservoir. Find her online at epfloyd.com and on Twitter at @eprofloyd.

Dear [REDACTED],

At first, I stared at your e-mail and blinked a few times, thinking that perhaps my contact lenses were blurry. It said, “Thank you for your interest in employment with [REDACTED]. Your application was received and carefully reviewed. However, based on the information you submitted, it was determined you did not meet the minimum training and experience required.”

“Your resume is so impressive!”

No, I was reading it correctly, but it still didn’t make any sense. See, my last employer was five times your size, and I held a nearly identical position to the one for which I applied. What kind of new math are you using? If this weren’t the eleventh time that I’d received such a reply—or no response at all—I would call the HR office directly and contest your rejection.

But I’m tired of this whole charade. Tired of the backhanded compliments where you tell me how “impressive” my resume is and then proceed to explain that I’m also “too confident” or “too intimidating” or “not the right fit.” I’m tired of jumping through hoops, tired of tap dancing. Tired of being the “First Black This” or the “Youngest Female That.” Tired of having to fight you just to get paid what I’m worth. Tired of collecting degrees and experience, only to be told that I’m Still. Not. Enough.

And you always have reasons. So many reasons. The ones you state out loud are perfectly plausible: I’m underqualified, or I’m overqualified; we’re in a recession, or we just got out of a recession; you’re going in a different direction, or you decided not to fill the position at all. But it is the reasons you don’t say that tell the rest of the story. The reasons I can’t say aloud either, lest I be labeled “bitter” or “angry” like the last black woman you hired. And we all know how uncomfortable you get when black women are angry.

This was your recruitment poster. I feel duped.

But did you know that black women are the most educated people in this country? We attain advanced degrees at far higher rates than any other group. That’s become a very popular statistic, shared with pride and awe at our hard work and achievements, but that’s what black women have always done: work hard and overcome obstacles. So that doesn’t impress or surprise me. Not because it isn’t impressive, mind you, but because I know what it’s really about. See, what they don’t share alongside that data about black women’s educational attainment, is the degree to which we aspire to positions of leadership—at almost three times the rate of our white female peers, and yet we’re perpetually underrepresented in C-suites, boardrooms and halls of power. Lean In wasn’t written for black women. Hell, black women invented leaning in and then turned it into a dance. But still we think, “Maybe if I get one more degree, take on one more project, achieve one more milestone, maybe…it will finally…be enough.”

Lean In wasn’t written for black women. Hell, black women invented leaning in and then turned it into a dance.

It can eat away at you if you let it, that feeling of knowing you’re capable but not being acknowledged for it. It’s like being invisible. I imagine that’s how Katherine Johnson and her NASA coworkers felt. Did you see that movie, Hidden Figures? Katherine Johnson was a mathematical genius who, along with other black women, were hired as human computers to do calculations for the male engineers trying to put a man on the moon. They worked in an area that was segregated from the rest of the Langley Research Center, until they had to step up and save the mission. Everyone kept saying it was the “feel good movie of the year,” but it just irritated me. What is so inspiring about watching a bunch of white men shoot themselves in the foot while the black women with all the answers aren’t even allowed in the room? John Glenn almost died and the United States nearly lost the Space Race before these women were allowed just to do their jobs.

The Invisible Woman (Image by © Beau Lark/Corbis)

If you haven’t even seen Hidden Figures, then I’m sure you’ve never heard of Charlotte Ray. She was the first black female attorney in the United States. She graduated from Howard Law School at 22 years old and was admitted to the D.C. Bar the same year. Then she became the first woman, of any race, admitted to argue before the Supreme Court of D.C. Her legal intelligence was undisputed, but do you know what she got for all her accomplishments? She had to close her law firm because no one would hire a black woman to represent them. Instead, the first black woman attorney in America moved back home to New York and taught public school.

And don’t dare tell me it’s gotten better since then, as if Katherine and Charlotte don’t have a debt to be paid. I don’t know how they kept their souls from shriveling up like a raisin in the sun. Some days, I don’t know how I do. It’s maddening to be dismissed in spite of your abilities, to be ignored to the point where you doubt your own existence. Did they recite the same futile affirmations as me in their mirrors, I wonder, steeling themselves against a world indifferent to their brilliance? They say a person’s value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see their worth…but their paycheck certainly does. No amount of affirmations, self-love or leaning in can make up for more than $713,000 in lost income. That was the average amount a college-educated woman could expect to lose over a 40-year career. In 2017. I dare say Katherine and Charlotte would be disappointed.

What’s ironic is that you have problems that black women can solve, but you look right through us. We are the descendants of miracle workers, refined in the fires of oppression. Black women gave birth to this world. Why would it surprise you that we know how to heal it? How much untapped human potential is wasting away before your eyes? How many technological breakthroughs, medical miracles, diplomatic victories and social advancements are we missing out on because this world refuses to see black women’s greatness? Because you don’t see our greatness.

Black women gave birth to this world. Why would it surprise you that we know how to heal it?

Thank God for Bessie Coleman who, after being rejected by every flight school in the United States, moved to France instead to become the first black woman to earn a pilot’s license. Thank God for Raven Wilkinson, who persisted even when racism nearly sidelined her dance career. Thank God for Audre Lorde, who didn’t let discrimination or cancer silence her. Because of them, I will persist. Because God blesses the child that’s got her own.

This #blackgirlmagic isn’t free.

You’re probably wondering why I’m unloading on you like this. You might be thinking this is unfair, uncalled for. After all, your e-mail to me was three measly sentences. I mean, you hardly even know me. But you are a symbol, a proxy for those whose hubris and fragility render black women invisible. For those whose identity is rooted in our subjugation. Because you want our ideas, our labor and our magic, but you don’t want us. Because you could stand before me, and with a straight face, tell me I don’t exist.

So I reject your rejection. I reject whatever calculations you make that lead you to believe that I’m not enough, that we’re not enough. I reject your new math, because it’s just as backward as your old math, because it doesn’t add up.

While you may choose not to see what is right in front of you, I demand to be seen. I don’t need your permission to be great; I have no choice but to be great. My ancestors will accept nothing less. I will serve, and I will speak, and I will write, and I will live, and I will win. Because I. Am. Enough.

Sincerely,

A.D. Lowman

A.D. Lowman is a management professional, consultant and community leader. Her leadership and career advice has been featured in Essence, Money and Diversity Woman magazines. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles where she serves as a blogger, interviewer and assistant web team manager for Lunch Ticket.

Over the weekend, I watched Gaycation for the first time. This investigative series follows Ellen Page and her best friend Ian as they examine LGBTQ+ culture and laws in different places around the world—something that interests me as a queer woman in the United States. While watching and hearing the varied views on the implications of being gay, realizations started churning within me of my own struggles with self-acceptance, inwardly and outwardly, past and present.

Then my phone rang—my girlfriend in Kansas. What are you doing? she asked, always eager to know what I’m up to 1,568 miles away. I told her what I was watching and asked if she ever saw it. Um, no, I think that show is similar to Gay Pride parades for me. Me, head-scratching, as confused as I was about my crush on Avril Lavigne when I was thirteen-years-old: Oh, okay.

I let it go, but after we hung up, I kept thinking of her tone when she compared it to Gay Pride, so I sent a text.

Me: Wait… What’s wrong with Gay Pride parades?

Her: Lol idk… it’s like being expected to drink tequila on Cinco de Mayo because I’m Mexican.

Again, I let it go, but I kept thinking of the Stonewall riots, the 1969 uprising that essentially turned the wheels on LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S., and of all the injustices committed throughout the years against members of the LGBTQ+ community. I thought about how my gay brother hates going to “straight bars,” because you never know what discrimination you’ll face outside of safe spaces, and I thought of all the enraging reasons safe spaces exist in the first place. I thought about growing up in the stifling state of Kansas and how I’d never been to a Gay Pride parade until I was twenty-eight years old and living in California. I wondered if she thought about any of this or if, to her, Gay Pride celebrations were just an excuse to party.

At that moment, I decided, and declared on Facebook:

“I WANT TO WRITE THE MOST ELOQUENT, ACCESSIBLE QUEER SHIT I CAN WRITE TO HELP OTHER QUEER PEOPLE KNOW IT’S OKAY TO BE QUEER.

And, yes, that needed to be in all caps.”

It needed to be in all caps because I was trying to convince myself it was okay just as much as I wanted others to know it was okay.

*     *    *

Growing up in a small town in Kansas, raised by a Mexican father and a German mother, identity was a tricky thing to navigate even without the “queer.”

When I was twelve, my brother asked me to his room, telling me he’d like to talk to me, to tell me something important. I was hesitant—I loved my brother, but we weren’t exactly best friends at that age, so I wasn’t sure what he’d want to tell me.

I stood at the side of his bed, near the door, as he sat at his desk, then turned to me and said, “I’m gay.” Without needing to process, I just said over and over, while smiling, “I knew it, I knew it!” He laughed and asked, in disbelief, how I could possibly have known, causing me to think about all the times he pretended to be Britney Spears, flipping his fake long hair as often as he mirrored her choreography. In hindsight, this wasn’t actually a good indicator of his sexuality, but it happened to be the connection my young mind made. We talked about his experiences up to that point and everything seemed fine. I mean, I knew he was going to deal with hardship with our family and school and the world in general, but everything between us was fine.

I didn’t understand at that point how it could or would affect me, but it became a huge hindrance for my own acceptance of self.

*      *    *

You can’t be gay—your brother’s gay. One gay per family. What I’d tell myself.

You just haven’t slept with the right man yet. What others told me.

I spent the next sixteen years conflicted about my sexuality. I had a couple girlfriends in high school—mostly only “out” because that’s what they wanted, though it made me uncomfortable to walk the halls holding their hand with all those eyes staring.

My first adolescent long-term relationship ended when I was fifteen. After a year and a half, she cheated on me with a guy from work, and then left me for a boy from school. When she was breaking up with me, she asked in an accusatory tone, “How do you know you’re really gay if you haven’t even slept with a guy?”

The overthinker that I am, I thought about this for weeks. And then I found an opportunity with a male classmate, a guy I thought was cute but who I was otherwise disinterested in. He picked me up in his truck one evening and we drove to a park near my house where he turned off the engine and leaned over to kiss me. As he climbed over the middle console, unbuttoning his jeans and then mine, and then positioning himself on top of me, I panicked briefly, wondering what I was getting myself into. I tried not to let my apprehension show as he brought his body down to meet mine, and then I instantly got lost in thoughts of a girl I admired, picturing her sitting on the steps in front of the school where I always saw her reading by herself. I thought about her and then it was over—I’d successfully had sex with a male. And then I thought, Okay, well, now I know.

But I didn’t know, because then the more predatory conversations came, the ones that went: He probably just wasn’t any good. You need to sleep with me to find out.

Again, the overthinker that I am, I thought about that for years. Thus began a pattern of getting blackout drunk and giving myself to men—a pattern that lasted eleven years, starting when I was seventeen, fresh out of high school with no plan for the future. I didn’t question whether I was interested in women; I knew that I was, but I questioned whether I could actually not be into men, because society made it really fucking hard to believe that was possible. I wanted so badly to be interested in men—to fall in love with a man, to marry a man, to have children with a man, to give my parents and society what they wanted because everything would be so much easier that way.

But that never happened.

*      *    *

Society, along with many personal demons, had really warped my sense of self.

At twenty-eight, I’d find myself on Tinder, changing the settings from “Women Only” to “Men and Women,” but taking notice that any interest I’d have in men at that point had more to do with self-deprecation. I’d get into these moods of wanting to be used, of wanting to be treated as lowly as I felt about myself, and so I’d swipe right on an influx of men, and I’d read the mostly disgusting messages objectifying me, and I’d respond to a handful and tell them I was only interested in hooking up—but I could never bring myself to follow through.

*      *    *

And so, on episode one of Gaycation (“Japan”), when Ellen Page said how important it was for her to no longer be in hiding and how the level of toxicity of it was just so extreme and wanting to be in love and to love someone openly was far more important to her than being in movies or having someone dislike her for her sexuality, it resonated with me. I was tired of going to family reunions and having to play the game of being heterosexual with my dad’s straight-laced Christian family. I was tired of introducing girlfriends as just friends. But mostly, I was tired of hating myself for not being what made others comfortable, as if their comfort was more important than my self-worth.

I thought of the gay culture I’d experienced since moving to southern California and I thought of how my most recent love interests would ask me how I felt about public displays of affection. I thought of how I’d tell them I’m only sometimes okay with it, and then how sad it made me when they’d later ask, “Am I allowed to hold your hand here?” How they’d follow with, “Are you sure?” when I’d say, “Yes,” because they loved me enough to not want to make me uncomfortable, when all I really wanted was to love them and to be loved by them, regardless of the world around us.

So when I declared “loudly” on Facebook that I want to write the most eloquent, accessible queer shit I can to help others know it’s okay to be queer, I was making a declaration to myself. I was declaring to write shamelessly about my truth and the truth of so many others, of being a woman who loves women and of learning to love myself by accepting that and sharing it with the world. I was promising myself to stop letting society dictate who I am, and who I have sex with, and who I love, and when and where I hold hands with or kiss or even hug the person I love.

Because if I write about it, if my goal is to help other queer individuals shed the shame, I most certainly have to come out of hiding and be about it.

Alisha Escobedo is a marketing coordinator and an MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles. She also works as proof edit assistant manager for Lunch Ticket. Her work can be found in Desolate Country: We the Poets, United, Against Trump and Prompts!: A Spontaneous Anthology. Originally from Kansas, she currently resides in Long Beach, CA.

Being a stepmother is different from being a mother. And maybe that is a good thing.

I date a man with a daughter. I don’t see much of Kate in the beginning, which I understand is intentional. She is only two-and-a-half, and single parents can have rules about these things, not wanting their kids to bond with people they are casually dating, not wanting their children to see strangers affectionately ruffling their parents’ hair, sleeping in their bed.

But after a couple months, I visit the boyfriend and his daughter for a long weekend in Maine. It takes me a plane ride and a taxi and a ferry to get there. I am flattered and excited to have entered the-meet-the-kid-stage. I am also nervous as hell. Kids don’t lie, especially little ones. What if she just hates me?

I come to breakfast our first morning with a turquoise kikoi tied around my head that Boyfriend says makes me look like Keith Richards. Since I’m not used to being upright and conscious on a weekend morning before eight a.m., I’m also incapable of worrying whether I’ve blown it already with the odd headgear. This is good. Instead, I blithely choose to take my new Rolling Stones persona and Boyfriend’s toddler for a morning swim. A little grey stony cove waits for us where the lawn ends. What good is a rented house on the water, if you don’t go in?

Now there is cold water and there is water so cold, it stabs and curls the toes. This is the latter. Stubborn pebbles punch the undersides of my feet as I shuffle in. Such are the joys of coastal Maine in June. The only thing blessedly missing is a thick blanket of fog.

Still, I’m a big girl and the little girl feels good on my hip, thin arms circling my neck, soft belly pressed against my side, thighs locked around my waist. Her father waves to us from the shore, his hair spiky with bedhead, his jeans rolled up to below his knees. We wave, we look at one another, smile, she giggles. I walk in deep enough for the water to catch her toes. She squeals.

“You want to go under?” I say. She nods. “It’s cold,” I warn her. The last thing I need is a wet, crying two-and-a-half-year-old. Maine is lonely without friends.

But something in her expression, a mixture of courage and trust and mischief, convinces me that it’s going to be okay.

One, two, three. I make her count it with me. We’re in this together after all.

One, two, three! And I drop us into the bone-chilling, heart-stopping water.

Are we gasping when we emerge? Yes. Are we screaming? Does Kate’s dripping, stunned face have a look of pure terror? Only for an instant. Is Boyfriend whooping on the shore impressed? Most certainly. But that hardly matters. What matters is Kate.

We shriek, we hug each other tight, we grin from ear to ear, and I hurry us back to dry towels and Boyfriend on the shore. As I place her carefully down at the lip of the water to run into her father’s outstretched, towel holding arms, she looks up at me, shiny, shivering, but radiant. When I smile at her I feel an easy peace come over me. We have had our first adventure, our first experience of complicity, and just like that, I know we are in love.

Her father? I’m not so sure how I feel about Boyfriend yet. But he does look so tender bundling Kate up in the faded striped towel. Rubbing her sides, laughing, telling her she is so brave.

Eight months later I’m walking out of a church, ring on my finger. Boyfriend is Husband and his right arm encircles mine. In his left he holds Kate. The three of us descend the steps to a waiting car and pile in.

Kate sits between us, a flower crown circling her head, black Mary Janes on her feet. She looks like a mini Snow White and it dawns on me that with a simple “I do,” I’ve become the villianess of all her favorite fairy tales. Will she make the connection?

Kate curls into her father, sleepy. She must wish, somewhere in her young heart, that her father had married her mother instead of me. But she’s a kid, so she rolls with it. We all do.

Now stepmothers get a bad rap. We’re evil and conniving. We’re jealous and petty. We’re unloving and unlovable. So bad are the tropes, near strangers used to corner me at kids’ birthday parties after seeing me and Kate hug, me tie her shoelaces, her rush up to tell me one thing or another, things so unremarkable between a mother and daughter you’d cut them from a movie script.

So, these mothers, because it was almost always mothers, would rush up and say, “You’re so close!” And it was like, yes, we are. But the gushing would continue, and I’d add how I got along with Kate’s mother, that I’d been in Kate’s life since as long as she could remember, that Kate’s parents were never married. I’d add all this by way of explanation, because I believe it does, in part, explain things, but you’d be surprised at how many people would still shake their heads in wonder at our bond before they drifted away with the drained looks of real parents trying to parent their real children.

These parents, they tear their hearts up over every conflict. They try to hide it, but they bleed. They speak in measured tones. They are patient. They are trying to be grown-ups, but it’s not easy. These kids, their kids, unwittingly hold up funhouse mirrors and trigger old wounds, activate frustration and shame in the most unpredictable ways. I know this because I am a real parent too. Kate has a younger half-sister. Her name is Madelyn.

I think I might’ve been a better parent to my step-daughter than I am to my daughter.

With Madelyn, if there is too much feeling I start to adopt it, embody it, like the umbilical cord was never cut. I claw my way toward steady ground, toward some kind of healthy emotional distance from which I can parent, from which I can be a mature adult, from which I can be wise and be a guide. But often I lose. I can be reactive, sarcastic, vindictive, withholding. I can be childish.

If Kate was scared, I made her feel less so. If she was unhappy, I cheered her up. If she was angry at me, I didn’t feel angry back. I fixed it. We talked things out. There was something rational going on. Usually.

*    *    *

“You’d never have married me, if it wasn’t for Kate,” my husband likes to say. He’s right. We laugh. What I say less often, but also know to be true is, “If it wasn’t for Kate, you wouldn’t have married me either.”

*     *    *

Now, Kate is sixteen and going to boarding school. I blame it on Harry Potter and Dead Poets Society, but then I think too the girl is tired of shuffling from one house to another. She wants a place to call her own.

We throw her a party. It is impossibly hot. Our A.C. is broken and we drape ourselves over chaises on the lawn. Her friends sweat in front of hastily purchased fans and eat caramel popcorn and Chinese chicken salad that practically wilts on the fork. But they seem to be having fun. I fret about the hole Kate will leave in our family when she goes.

For ten years she’s been living here one week on, one week at her mom’s.

One week on.

One week off.

Now it’s just going to be off…

Forever?

As the party winds down, and we lower the music so as not to annoy the neighbors, Kate leaves with her mom and two besties for a sleepover.

Me and my friend Jen, we wave at them and blow kisses as they leave.

“Thank you, Liz, for the party!” Kate says. She looks happy standing on the path, her face rosy and glowing, thick brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. It is dark finally, though not much cooler. The outdoor lights spook up the eucalyptus trees behind her and the wall of bamboo that edges the trampoline.

I feel this immense gratitude welling up inside me, looking at her, this person I’ve known and loved and helped raise since she was a toddler.

I think of getting up from the lounge chair, wading through the water feature that separates us, carpeted with dead leaves, and wrapping my arms around her, but we are so sweaty and really this isn’t goodbyegoodbye. Instead, I continue to grin at her, hoping she can feel the love radiating from my chest.

“Thank YOU,” I shout, my voice cracking like a teenage boy’s. “Thank you for everything.”

I almost starting bawling, right there, but Jen shouts, “For everything! Everything! We love Kate!” like a football chant and Kate shouts, “I love you. I love all of you guys,” and scoots down the steps to the curb.

“She looked really happy,” Jen says, once Kate is gone.

“Yeah,” I say. “She looked loved.”

Liz Tynes Netto is a lapsed journalist, TV producer, and current MFA candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is the flash prose editor for Lunch Ticket and she is writing a novel.

They say that as much as the human mind can remember experiences of excitement, pleasure, or boredom, it is incapable of similarly remembering pain. Once well again, we can’t put back together the pieces of agony that ruled our days during illness or after an injury. Scientists think this is an evolutionary necessity—if we remembered how bad pain felt, we’d never do anything physically perilous, never give birth to a second child, never get our vaccine boosters.

I know that this is true not only for physical but also for mental pain because I keep traveling abroad even though if I could ever properly remember the pain of international travel I might never leave the U.S. again.

A few weeks ago I had cause to remember this, during a long drive home. My partner was behind the wheel when we started talking about how excited we were to go to the Dominican Republic with her sister and parents. Our flight was due to leave in three days.

“Hey, do you mind checking in my purse to make sure my passport’s there?” she said.

I grabbed her purse from the back seat and fished around. “Here it is,” I said. I flipped through its stamps and visas. Then I stopped, feeling a little dizzy. I said, “When we pull over again we should check my passport, too.”

“Why? Are you worried it’s missing?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s in my backpack,” I said.

“Then what could be wrong?”

I sighed. “I’m a little worried it might be expired.”

When we stopped on the side of the road in Santa Nella to swap seats, I found my passport and flipped it open. Reader, it was expired. It had expired three months earlier. When I told my partner, she didn’t say anything. I sat back in the car and then got out so I could scream into the Central Valley night. I felt so bad, so stupid.

You see, this vacation meant a lot to my partner and her family: it was their first real vacation since her mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer and her dad had finished selling her childhood home. It had been a tumultuous few years, but for months we had been looking forward to Christmas with them in the tropics. And it had seemed especially important after a health crisis with my partner’s father had forced them to scuttle their plans to visit us over Thanksgiving. Further, my partner and I were hoping to spend Christmas together for the first time. There was a lot riding on the fact that we were going to have a relaxing week together.

I screamed into the dark night remembering all of this and feeling the anguish of having ruined everything. I felt so ashamed.

Done screaming, we had to keep driving. We were still five hours from home. At first I could only shake my head and laugh ruefully. It seemed a singular screw-up I had committed. But as I settled into my mental anguish, the pain, which at first felt singular, did what pain always does. It reminded me of other, similar pains.

Slowly—one memory at a time—I pieced together that, basically every time I’ve tried to leave the country, through some screw-up or another, my travel plans have almost come to naught.

There was the time I took the subway from my friend’s apartment in Williamsburg out to JFK International Airport in Queens. I hadn’t looked up the travel time and was surprised to find that it took almost two hours to take the subway to the airport. And then when I got there, I realized that I didn’t know what airline my flight was on—all I had written in my notebook were the call numbers: AF158. (I didn’t have a smartphone then.) I guessed that it was Aeroflot, the Russian state airline and so got off at Terminal 2. A kind bookings agent there informed me that AF stood instead for Air France, which left from Terminal 1. “Run,” she said, and I did. I was the last person on the flight.

Probably the worst was the time when I went to India. I thought leaving three weeks to get a visa would be long enough, but I was wrong. The Indian Consulate in San Francisco had recently decided to outsource visa processing to a private company. The only way to get a visa was to mail your passport, two headshots, and a check to the address listed online. I did so and then didn’t hear anything back. As the date of my departure got closer and closer, I spent longer and longer lengths of time on hold with this company’s customer support line. I had a ridiculous clamshell cell phone at the time, and after two hours on hold I would have to plug it in. Usually after about three hours someone would pick up, but they couldn’t promise very much. Finally they told me it would be ready for pick-up at 4:30 p.m. on the day of my flight, which left at 11 p.m. I remember my feeling of wonder when I had the passport in my hands, with the visa pasted in. We went straight to the airport.

Or maybe the worst time is when I had an eleven-hour layover in Moscow and tried to stay awake the whole time, only to fall asleep in front of my gate an hour before departure. I awoke with a start and was surprised to find that nobody was boarding the flight: it had been moved to a gate on the other side of the airport. I sprinted there but was too late. The airline refused to rebook me. I was distraught, almost crying, until I realized that for about $20 USD I could take a sleeper train to St. Petersburg and skip paying a night’s rent at a hostel.

I could go on, of course. I’ve been blessed to make four extended trips out of the U.S.A. and two shorter ones—by grace of grants to study abroad, a deep devotion to living cheaply, and the blind faith that one of my parents would buy me a plane ticket home when the money ran out. My travel has also been enabled by a fair amount of dumb luck in those situations when a lack of forethought seemed headed for disaster.

But just as often, those in charge have taken an interest in my case and helped me out. The folks in charge of granting Indian Visas eventually agreed to speed up my application in time for my trip. A Public Security Bureau agent in Urumqi, China, once granted me a special 30-day visa so I could continue backpacking around Xinjiang and Tibet. And when I went to the wrong terminal at the last minute at JFK, someone from the airline escorted me to the front of the security line and made sure I made it on my flight.

So much of this must be due simply to me being a white American man. I am always getting a second chance, some help at the finish line, or a special dispensation. This is what people mean when they talk about privilege: the way that the systems that undergird our world can really be looking out for you if you look like me. I have tried this privilege, and I can report that it is an unbelievable relief to land on your feet after doing something idiotic.

Unfortunately, not everyone is experiencing the world the same way I am. Some people reading this miss their flights even after doing everything right, showing up early, checking every box—because of their name, their nationality, or the color of their skin. Maybe you can’t pick a visa up in person because you live far from a consulate. Some of you can’t afford to take time off and travel at all. And some of you are nervous in your own country that a police officer could stop you for having a tail light out and thereby set into motion your ejection from the U.S.A. into a country you have not been to since you were two years old. I feel blessed not to face these problems—and at the same time furious that others do.

This feels particularly pertinent now, when the current administration is hell-bent on keeping out people who look certain ways, speak certain languages, and worship in certain traditions. Over one thousand children seeking to live in our country have been separated from their parents and kept in cages. The inept government agency that tore them from their parents’ arms didn’t even keep enough records to reunite many of the children with their families after the policy of family separation was putatively cancelled. And as I write this essay, the government is shut down, its workers furloughed or forced to work without pay, because the president demands money to build a physical embodiment of the urge to reject others. The fight to extend privilege to all human beings is a project that has rarely felt so embattled.

But there in the deepening Saturday evening, driving up I-5 and looking out for the off-ramp onto 580, it seemed like even the privileges accorded to 21st-century white American men weren’t going to be enough to get me a passport in time for our Tuesday flight. Sketchy agencies with names like “Fastport Passport” and “Swift Passport Services” promised to overnight your photo to a nearby passport agency—for $569. We called a listed 1-800 number to see if someone on the other end could talk us down from our state of terror, but the number rang a dozen times and a dozen more before we hung up.

We sat in silent in our bucket seats, half-blinded by oncoming headlights, thinking about what Christmas apart would mean.  My partner dived into her phone, and I drove. The cruise control carried us at a steady 80.

“Hey, listen to this,” she said. “I’m reading Yelp reviews of the San Francisco Passport Agency. Did you ever hear of a government agency with almost five stars? This is crazy. Here, let me read you one: ‘So impressed with this government agency! They were so organized, and helpful. I didn’t realize I needed a passport for my infant and wasn’t able to get on my 7 a.m. flight. So I headed to the passport agency and had a passport by 3:30 same day, and was able to make an evening flight! Seriously, so amazing.’”

We both laughed nervously, and then I begged her to read more. Then I begged her to read even more. There were so many happy stories here. So many tales of people in the same situation I had put us in. Over and over again, people said that they knew it was their own fault, but that the passport agents had been kind, professional, and efficient. We laughed and kept our fingers crossed, feeling that our doom might jam after all, that Christmas might in fact not be canceled. Five hours later we made it home, feeling wrung-out and utterly exhausted.

Monday morning we drove to the city, parked the car in a garage, and by 10:30 a.m. we were through security at the San Francisco Federal Building. The passport office is on the third floor. You can only go there if you have travel plans within the next two weeks. I waited in line for an officer to check that I had the correct documents. I didn’t have an appointment, so I had to wait in a special zone for the line to die down.

This gave me an opportunity to look around the room. There were Americans of every race, age, and religion in that room. Hijabis with strollers sat next to old white guys in Vietnam vet hats. In the “no appointment” section a young Hispanic woman there with her partner and two kids tried to calm down a solo white woman who claimed to have been waiting since seven in the morning. An electronically generated woman’s voice kept announcing variations on, “Ticket C-127 will be seen at Window 17.”

I once spent four days in a row waiting six hours in front of the Chinese embassy in Moscow only to give up on ever getting an appointment, so I was ready for a long wait. But within half an hour I was put in a different queue, and soon my documents were accepted by a nice Chinese-American woman who commented on my Hong Kong immigration slip and convinced me to check the box requesting a passport with extra pages in it. By 1 p.m. we were eating a giant feast of hot pot over in Chinatown, and at 4 p.m. I received my brand new passport. Christmas was saved.

In the elevator down to show my partner the new passport, I met an older Latino father and his handsome son. We quickly showed off our fresh passports to each other, and the old man beamingly told me that his son was about to graduate from college and was going on an international trip. The three of us felt so light, so relieved, that we shook hands when I got off on the second floor. I felt so happy in that moment to think that not only had my passport nightmare been resolved but the passport nightmares of every eligible citizen—regardless of skin color, language, or religion—are daily being resolved by these hardworking federal employees. Thank you, San Francisco Passport Agency.

And that would be the end of the story, but I have to tell you: in celebration of our success, my partner paid for a barber named Vega to give me the hairstyle I had when I was four and ever since have dreamed of having again: a glorious mullet, so short in the front and far past my shoulders in back.

Jasper Henderson is a writer and teacher from the Mendocino Coast. His work has appeared in Joyland, Juked, 7×7, Permasummer, Your Impossible Voice, and an anthology of California writing, Golden State 2017. As a poet-teacher, he works with over four hundred students every year, from third-graders to high school seniors. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University L.A. His cat is named Sybil, after the sibilant, favorite sound of cats across the galaxy.

Dear Dad,

I’m writing to you for help. Weeks now, I’ve attempted to find a song or an image that best summarizes this holiday season. From harvest to final ball drop, I can’t seem to choose. I’m under a deadline, but the noise, Dad. Honking cars, helicopters, the news. Too much to integrate. Deafening tinnitus ringing louder than sweet silver bells. What am I to do?

Santa never meant that much to me. True, I helped set out home bakes and spent eves pressed against a cold window straining to spot his sleigh. Sleep won out every time. Your old dress sock greeted us each Christmas morning filled with Wrigley’s gum, playing cards, lip balm, and other oddities. We’d run to each other’s rooms and share our begotten loads with such excitement. Your belly laugh and the mystery of your sneakiness made Santa a chump.

“Away in a Manger” isn’t quite the right tune. Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus made less impact on me than the Gospel intended. Yes, I still put out Grandma’s nativity scene each year—even with the superglued goat’s head and the cracked manger. Some items are sacrosanct, though setting up the crèche is merely habitual.

Maybe I should write my own dedication?

An Ode in extreme brief to the year 2018:

“Oh, Hallelujah Chorus and get the Hell out.”

Um…You’re a George Frideric Handel singing fan. My apologies.
Let me try again.

An Ode in brief to the year 2018 (revised):

“As ornaments nestle all snug in their bins, menorahs lay tightly wrapped and tucked in. The cards are all stacked and handled with care. Lights, candles, wraps, and tape hide away there. Dazed children buzz on new screen time highs. The rest of us burp our collective sighs. Let us raise a toast to attempt good cheer. Clink glasses, my friends. Adieu 2018, what a terrible year.”

While this may have been a good twelve months for the shortlist, 2018 broke records in sucking the rotted tooth goo from an evil-eyed goat. Checking the news, reading blogs, personal essays, op-eds, and interacting online affirms my assessment. (Sorry Dad, I forgot you’re fond of goats.)

Sure, peppered among les misérables are those freshly married, graduated, babied, newly housed. But mon père, bad times have smacked the world. Puerto Rico had no electric power for 11 months. Brexit stalled. Russia, Cambridge Analytica—those were investigated— while our president and the newest Supreme Court appointee slid on by without consequence. We watch them all playing Jeux Sans Frontières like little children’s games. Rules aren’t rules when they change mid-play.

This negativity spans the whole year (and you know I’m nauseatingly positive). Our Congress marches closer toward leasing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: a 1.6 million-acre leasing plan. Oil for SUVs. Fat checks to our oil kings. Griming the atmosphere as the administration rolls back clean air regulations.

Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to step down when her term ends. Germans are pushing back against her immigrant hospitality.

…That couple over 2000 years ago. They are forced to travel on foot and must stop to give birth in unclean conditions. Times are dreadful for these displaced people seeking refuge.

*          *          *

See my struggle, Daddy? How do I find the musical score or icon to help recount compounding suffering? There is no arc, no Act I, Act II, or Act III. New Year’s is almost nigh and I’m running out of time. What heavenly image speaks to me?

Recently and in a concentrated dose, the firmament opened up and rained dévasté upon the Southland. We didn’t need chaos, though rain would’ve been divine.

November’s election besieged Los Angeles. Infernal, violent, with chilling irony, stories glutted the news. On November 7^th, a Ventura County bar, filled with college students, hosted a line dancing competition that ended in slaughter. Some of these young brights survived the Las Vegas shootings only to die a few miles up the 101 freeway. This assault that killed 12 was the 307^th mass U.S. shooting in 2018. But within hours, grieving families and friends no longer had the country’s outstretched arms. Gunfire was upstaged by real fire. Celebrity, high-profile fire. Malibu Style.

Not everyone had private fire rescue teams.

In the Woolsey firestorm while a close family’s home burned down, our son was called to Malibu.

FRIDAY, NOV. 8^th 5:00 am
GET HERE
SHELTER IN PLACE
KEEP WATCH

We didn’t know how he’d survive. Do you remember that moment in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds when Tom Cruise lets loose the tight grip on his son’s jacket? The valiant youth pushes away to join forces against the intelligent invaders. We watched our son go. Four days later, he made his way home.

Just hours before leaving, Nathan had barely processed the Ventura bar attack. He’d faced a tragic mass shooting at his university. The close family lost everything: a double-wide in a hidden paradise of overgrown hills dried out from human-influenced climate change. They’d lived together bringing love and peace to everyone who met them. Their one-month-old baby wasn’t hurt. Thankful, his parents grieve the quiet, healthy land he would’ve played on where toys, blankets, books, and clothes burned.

Dad…just days before the fire, I couldn’t sleep. The 6^th sense vigil had begun. 4 am and staring, electric and tense. When the text came, I didn’t shudder. Mom. Her brilliant brain filling with water. She’s left with confusion, paranoia, fear.

Now she has entered that long goodbye. There’s no rescuing her.

I strain to hear her voice but no longer can.

Once, we sang the duet, “He Shall Feed His Flock Like A Shepherd” from Handel’s Messiah. I don’t remember where. Do you remember? Our voices were the same bells. Mine higher than hers. The message echoes the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming the Messiah would be lowly born and exalted a king.

He would grant his believers rest. Do you rest from your labors?

Well— Mother Mary couldn’t rest from hers! Travail is the French word for labor pain. This might be the right descriptor for our year, 2018.

I question why a story was written describing a birth where the mother and father were cast out, facing hardship and suffering, and were met with one person’s kindness. Not much of a kindness, but when there was no room at the inn—when all denied them—he gave shelter.

You taught me to fact check:

The family had to travel due to King Herod’s persecution, according to The Book of Matthew. It was the Roman census, some theologians add. Historians state that people were conscripted to physically announce themselves to the nearest city’s census center, but there was no hardship laid upon Joseph and his expectant fiancé to arrive in Bethlehem. Jesus’s holy birth doesn’t match the Roman census inception dates.

Whether this is a child’s story or sacred text lauding the King of Kings, Christ’s mom and dad could use a little fine-smelling frankincense and gold. And how about this year’s crop of medicinal myrrh?

We could all use three star-gazers looking beyond, following a sign, reading omens.

This image grabs my attention.

The three wise men may have spotted a heliacal rising; a planet hoisting sail before the sun fully lit. Added to this marvel, the planet could have managed to hover. Greek astrologers called this epano when a planet pauses then changes direction from east to west. In such remarkable skies I can see why they may have considered this baby royalty.

But the lowly barn…born in poverty…crossing unknown lands…

I realize for weeks I’ve been replaying the same musical measures in my mind.

Closing my eyes, I see the Memorial Hall stage. Chatter hushes as the house lights fade. The Maestro enters. Adagio strings wake the night sky. They dance behind a dimly lit scrim. The silken film illumines a ballerina wrapped in opalescent fabric unfurling in chainé turns: The Eastern Star. My young body barely sits, anticipating your entrance. From stage left, appears each wise man: King Melchior, King Balthazar, and finally you, the tenor, singing the role of King Caspar.

Gian Carlo Minotti’s Amahl and The Night Visitors remains the last great performance you offered after putting your opera career aside to conduct music and instruct. Later, our opera company employed People of Color to portray the Kings, a decision you applauded.

Christ’s iconic origin story is rendered for a deeper reason, as a relatable symbol who would grow up to wash feet, pray with outcasts, and minister to sick and bereaved. Enslaved people, the misunderstood, those judged and unheard, they would relate to such a leader.

People have been crossing lands to escape persecution, tyranny, poverty, and torture for centuries. Currently, over 625,000 Muslim and Hindu Rohingya were forced out of Myanmar. An estimated 5 million Syrians have sought refuge. Yemenis claim no country will take them. The few who make it out—even the doctors who stay and help who cannot feed their families—describe cholera, diphtheria, starvation, and violence. A human catastrophe.

Horace Mann, the great educator said I’m supposed to be ashamed to die until I’ve won a victory for humanity. You taught me these words first.

Daddy, how can I make a difference?

This year has been horrible. I hear people say this in the grocery line. They’re ready for Father Time to bring down his mighty scythe and slice 2018 off into Auld Lang Syne.

Closer examination shows a historical relationship between death and new beginning. Chronos passes the great hat to the New Year’s Baby and we make our resolutions. To clean the slate and make reparations dates back hundreds even thousands of years. Looking for goodness and light—
Goodness and your favorite word to describe babies: mirthful.

Daddy, I have good news:

An Ode in extreme brief to the year 2018 (Mirth Announcement):

“Born at 3:55 am on November 7th – Our great-nephew brought families together in a moment of pure celebration, a beacon.”

Glad tidings of great joy. Behold, a baby brings us out of the darkness.

*          *          *

A month later, a child died while in border patrol custody.

I walked down Washington Blvd. with friends. Subdued, I slowed my pace, stopped and turned to my good friend André Hardy Sr.

I can’t get the news out of my mind.
It’s with me in here.

My palm ached against my breastbone.

That’s because she’s everyone’s child.
When you know it then you accept that we’re all connected.

We began walking again.

André, they don’t even know her name.

Days later, the nation learned 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin’s name.
She was our responsibility. Hungry, high-fevered, exhausted, Jakelin died at the feet of this nation.

Not the first immigrant to die. Not even the first this year. Now, another child dies on Christmas Eve.
8-year-old Guatemalan, Felipe Alonzo-Gomez. Let there be a reckoning.

Jakelin is everybody’s child. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez is everyone’s child.

I boast no promises, understanding how small a life of service registers. What I’ve done and left undone, what’s wrong all around me; there’s more to unwork than I could ever tackle, and much more suffering left unsaid. But Father, you taught me a great truth: Mercy is stronger than a wall.

If kindness is an act of sedition, then I am guilty. I will kind my way through another year. Thank you for showing me how.

Your loving daughter,

Andrea

Andrea Auten is a writer and arts teacher. At Lunch Ticket, she is the Assistant Managing Editor of Social Media | Community Outreach and Marketing. A graduate of the MFA and post-MFA programs at Antioch University Los Angeles, she is currently working on her short story collection. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons, the family cats, and just down the 101 a piece, her new grand-nephew.

You’re ten years old and your father says you’re handsome. The most handsome boy in the whole world, he says. In the same breath, he tells you no white girl will ever date you, let alone marry you. He knows this from experience, from his time at a New Jersey college before meeting your mother. Most women don’t find Asian men attractive, he says before opining that the opposite is true for your three sisters.

You stare blankly back at him…you don’t even like girls, you think to yourself. You say nothing.

A decade later, you learn it’s more complicated.

*     *     *

No fems, fats, or Asians. You read this headline in dozens of gay dating and hook-up profiles, until it is deemed socially unacceptable. You see it less and less until one day, you don’t see it anymore. You miss it. In a sea of headless torsos, the headline is a filter that expedites the process of elimination. You are efficient.

You stop initiating contact with men on websites and apps. You fear one would write the headline, if allowed. You are risk-averse.

You learn that white men will date you, maybe even marry you, but they’re a somewhat uncommon type of gay – a rare, exotic species. You also learn that the white men who desire you are often only into Asian men. You later find out these men are called “rice queens.” To this day, the term makes your skin crawl. You prefer the Latin translation, Reginae Oryza (plural) and Regina Oryza (singular). You are pretentious.

“I only find Asian boys attractive,” says the Regina Oryza, “I love that all of you have such smooth, hairless bodies.”

Once the Regina Oryza says or writes some variation on this theme, he is dead to you. You don’t return his messages or calls. You don’t even feel guilty about it. You rationalize that of the two billion Asian men on earth there is probably at least one who is stupid or desperate enough to date the Regina Oryza. In fact, you are surprised to learn there are many.

You continue to sleep with white men, but refuse to date them. When marriage equality passes, you vow not to marry one, even though you occasionally cross paths with nice white men. Smart white men. Good white men. Woke white men. If you lived in Texas, you would have certainly voted for the one with the bunny face and Mexican nickname who ran for Senate and lost. However, none of these white men are a member of the rare species, Reginae Oryza. And even if one of them was, you wouldn’t want him.

You date other Asian men and learn many do not prefer you and would rather compete for the attention of the Regina Oryza.

You date brown and black men, exclusively. Dating improves, temporarily. You learn brown and black men can be Reginae Oryza, as well.

And you remain single.

Then you do not date or sleep with anyone anymore.

*     *     *

You focus on your work since it is something you can control and you’re good at it. You take on consulting projects in areas with no discernible solution: the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, climate change in China, racial disparities in public education. You are awarded a highly-competitive, one-year fellowship to reform healthcare in the local jails.

Source: Wikipedia

You conduct research, talk to experts, make PowerPoint slides. You present recommendations to executives with MBAs and MDs and big-wigs who wear guns on their hips, even in the Board room. You learn that the ones with the guns make all of the important decisions. Everyone smiles and says they’re impressed though nothing changes.

Later, you learn no one else wanted the highly-competitive, one-year fellowship.

You continue to collect your fellowship stipend. You use this money to buy pot, which was recently legalized in your state, and smoke it, while watching the Winter Olympics. You are jealous of all of the athletes’ talent. You are even more jealous of their youth. You stumble upon the Men’s Figure Skating event, and you are mesmerized by the men’s strength and grace, a respite from the jails you’ve failed.

You root for the American gold-medal favorite who is Asian. He can do four types of quad jumps. He falters in the Short Program and places fifth. You notice he’s cute, but only eighteen, which in your rulebook is too young to incite dirty thoughts. You then notice another skater who’s Asian, a Canadian, also cute, but twenty-seven, and hence more acceptable to incite dirty thoughts. He can only do one kind of quad jump. However, you think he is a far better skater than the young one. The commentators say the Asian-Canadian’s artistry is unmatched, something about his deep edges, speed, and how he positions his head and arms as he whizzes and spins across the rink.

Soon after the Olympics, the Asian-Canadian retires.

Still, you watch the Olympic replays of the Asian-Canadian late into the night and into the weekend. You wince when he falls, which is often, but you forgive him since everything else he does on the ice is so sensual. When you grow tired of the replays, you watch his old performances on YouTube. You sob during his Free Program at the 2015 Skate Canada International competition. You watch old interviews of him and he sounds like a dopey teenager, yet you swoon at his aw shucks smile and girlish giggles that sometimes bookend his phrases. You plan a trip to visit a close friend in Vancouver, where the Asian-Canadian lives. You plan on using his Instagram feed to track his location so you can casually run into him and ask for an autograph. You realize this is very creepy. You ask your friend in Vancouver not to allow you to do this.

You read the news.

You learn the Asian-Canadian skater has a white girlfriend.

You stop smoking pot.

You sign-up for figure skating lessons. You are the only male in the Adult Beginners class and the only student over forty. You are bothered by this, which also bothers you, but not enough to keep you from showing up every week. You fall on your knees. You fall on your face. You land on your ass. You eventually skate around the rink without falling. You learn to skate backwards. You glide backwards on your skates at full-speed, the wind blowing through what’s left of your salt and pepper hair. Finally, you feel beautiful.

Tom Pyun is an essayist and novelist living in Los Angeles. He was a fellow with Vermont Studio Center, Gemini Ink, Tin House, and VONA. His work has appeared in the Rumpus, Blue Mesa Review, Eleven Eleven, and Reed and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award. He holds degrees from Vassar and Columbia and is an MFA candidate at Antioch.

Colorful, steaming bowls of dhal (lentils) and hot buttered chapatis (thin, circular bread cooked on a griddle). This is what we ate most of the time, out of necessity, growing up in provincial England in the early 1970s. My parents would comment from time to time, that the goreh (white people) surrounding us wasted so much money buying fish and chips, drinking alcohol at the pub, and smoking cigarettes. “If we did that we’d soon run out of money!” But on occasional Sundays we’d have a feast of black pudding, baked beans, and pork pie. My favorite part of the pork pie was the rich, thick, crumbly pastry. I ignored the transparent jelly between the pastry and the meat. My slice of pork pie was never big enough; Dad sliced the cylindrical pie six ways, as I had three sisters. I had no idea at the time that black pudding is a sausage made from pig’s blood and that the chewy white parts are animal fat. My mouth just knew it was on a delightful excursion. As it was on the occasional Saturday night when we had company and Mum conjured up chicken biryani. On these occasions Dad and his friend would go to the pub next door to drink beer, and we kids would watch programs like Rich Man, Poor Man on television, as we inhaled the warm, fragrant synergy emanating from the kitchen.

One morning everything changed. Mum woke me up with her hurried footsteps on the landing and her cries: “Everyone’s going to say she ran away from home! How will we ever raise our heads in public again?” Initially I was unconvinced about the gravity of the situation because every small transgression was magnified by my parents into a big drama. It turned out that they were right, for once, in their dramatic response. Dad had given us a rare choice: to continue with our education at a local university, or get married. My older sister, by about eighteen months, was not interested in academic education, so Dad had begun to arrange her marriage. But she gave herself a third option―she left home―during the night.

This was the beginning of my parents’ renunciation of the world and its concomitant pain and shame. They joined a family friend, who had five daughters and no sons, and who attended satsangs every weekend. Satsang comes from Sanskrit, and means ‘keeping company with the truth.’ The spiritual leader, or guru, went by the unlikely name of Fighting Cocks Uncle; his name derived from the pub he lived close to. The satsangs were impossible to avoid when we were hosting at our house, but when they were hosted elsewhere, I could often escape by claiming I had homework to do. Fighting Cocks Uncle would read passages from different holy books, such as the Granth Sahib (for Sikhism, the religion I was born into), The Vedas (for Hinduism), and the Bible, and then he would expand on the meanings of the texts. The essence of his teachings was that the soul and God were one, and we were all players on the stage of life. In each incarnation, the soul occupied a higher or lower form, depending upon our activities in the human form (karma). Those who could live in the world without attachments and desires would, at the end of their human lives, finally be free from the cycle of reincarnation, and their souls would be reunited with God. This was the meaning of life. Sometimes Fighting Cocks Uncle was moody and he chastised the santsangis for making insufficient progress in putting his teachings into practice in their daily lives. He even stopped attending the satsangs at one point as a protest. It was only when they collectively begged him to return did he concede, and resume his position as spiritual leader. Food was always shared at the end of each satsang, and in keeping with Fighting Cocks Uncle’s teachings, it was always vegetarian.

Mum and Dad’s renunciation meant the end of pork pies and black pudding and chicken biryani. They said we could still eat meat and fish, but they neither bought nor cooked anything that was non-vegetarian. And we did not have much money of our own. A couple of years later when I attended university, I indulged in the occasional Cornish pasty―a hearty semi-circle of pastry filled with meat and potatoes and other vegetables.

At the age of twenty-three I had an arranged marriage, as was expected of me. My mother-in-law-to-be graciously agreed to a vegetarian and teetotal lunch following the religious ceremony. She did express some concern that I would be feeding grass to her lion, but it seemed a moot point considering we were to live with her and my father-in-law after marriage; she would be in charge of the cooking, just as, I would quickly discover, she was in control of everything else. My in-laws organized a reception for us a week later, at which meat and alcohol were served.

A couple of years into my marriage, I felt some pressure to try and not be a vegetarian, as I was in a minority of one in the extended family. I ate baked potatoes with such regularity that my brother-in-law began referring to me as an alootarian (aloo means potato). But eating meat ruffled my conscience, especially as I had done some reading about factory farming.

My older daughter, Kiran, says she became a vegetarian at the age of six because I made her eat fish alongside her chips. Access to information on whether a vegetarian diet provides all the nutrients required for growing children was not as easy in the early 1990s as it is now, online. So I had erred on the side of caution when Kiran made overtures about giving up meat and fish. But she was determined, so I made her take a daily multivitamin tablet. At least I thought she was taking the tablets, until I found one at the bottom of the toilet. She said they made her feel sick.

When we moved to the US in 1999 my husband, Bob, worked in Norfolk, Virginia, where PETA is headquartered―no, not People Eating Tasty Animals, but the animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I still cooked meat and fish for Bob, and younger daughter, Priya, but Kiran and I remained vegetarian. I tried to be vegan at one point, but it did not last long, because I love dairy-based desserts. My love affair probably began with our free school lunches in England which came with jam roly-poly and custard, chocolate shortbread and white mint custard, and other heavenly afters each day. A yogi I met in Virginia Beach, where we lived, told me that macaroni and cheese had precipitated her fall from vegan grace.

I joined PETA, and began to learn about animal cruelty beyond factory farming: the fur, wool, and skin/leather industries; laboratory research; puppy mills; entertainment (such as greyhound racing, cockfighting and dogfighting―I had always known that animals did not belong in zoos or circuses).

Three years later, after another move―this time to California―Kiran soon became a vegan, like Jen, one of her new high school friends. Jen was so strict, she did not even eat honey. Being in charge of food was already challenging with Kiran’s nut allergy, Bob’s multiple allergies―to particular fruits and vegetables and soy products―and my decision to stop cooking meat and fish when I no longer wanted to handle them while raw. I was happy to put prepared frozen food in the oven. Bob traveled a lot for work, so I felt guilty when Priya wanted to eat non-vegetarian food that required preparing. The situation improved once she learned to drive and could buy takeout for herself.

Much of the cruelty that occurs on factory farms and in laboratories has come to light through the videos and pictures released by undercover animal rights activists. But in recent years, these activists have been labeled domestic terrorists, and have been investigated by the FBI, charged, and imprisoned. Even though they have neither injured nor killed fellow humans―unlike white supremacists and anti-abortion activists, who have yet to be categorized similarly. The torture itself that has been exposed has taken a back seat to prosecution for property damage and hindering corporate profits. Even free speech activities such as protesting have been criminalized. Unsurprisingly, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose membership comprises mostly conservative state legislators and corporate lobbyists, is the incubator for the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, which has been used as a model bill in states around the country, to curb the activism of both environmental (“eco-terrorists”) and animal rights activists. ALEC is also the source of other pro-corporate legislation including: “Stand Your Ground” gun laws that allowed for the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer; prison privatization; deregulation; education privatization; voter ID laws; pro-fossil fuel proposals (along with climate change denial). So ALEC’s agenda is to curb the rights of Americans, including the right to know the horrific conditions under which animals are caged for food and research, because humane treatment will dig into profitability. Yet ALEC is registered as a nonprofit organization.

In California I joined The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to animal research and a vegan diet for disease prevention.

Alongside the ethical dilemma, the connection between animal consumption and climate change is well documented, with 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions linked to meat and dairy production. Surprisingly, this is greater than the emissions from transportation. In a welcome move away from the all-or-nothing approach, Brian Kateman’s book The Reducetarian Solution is an anthology of essays which span the multiple justifications for curbing consumption of animal products. Argued from their own areas of expertise, the authors all agree on the benefits of a reduction in the consumption of meat and dairy products.

And this is a position that allows me to have my cake and eat it too. But not every day. It also makes my return to cow’s milk in my chai an easier transition, now that I suspect the phytoestrogens in the soy milk substitute I had used for many years contributed to the hormonal havoc I experienced during menopause.

This position of compromise helps me to come to terms with some of my other incongruous behaviors, such as my inability to extend my compassion for other animals to insects, spiders, and other bugs. Especially those who make their way into my house. Occasionally I will ‘escort’ the intruder out into the garden. But my normal response is to take off my shoe and smash the cockroach, cricket, spider, silver fish, et al.. For the most part, I try not to kill anything outside, unless it is really close to the perimeter. I try to use non-toxic products to keep my home free of these unwanted ‘guests,’ because I do not want to share a ‘living’ space with them at any point―not even after cremation.

Avoiding fur has not been difficult, as it has never appealed to me. But I could definitely do a much better job of avoiding leather and wool. Through my work in the Fair Trade sector I learned about ahimsa (peace) silk which is produced without killing the silk worms responsible for creating the coveted silk fiber.

Then there is the matter of the squirrel eating the avocados on my tree. I have to admit I have even considered buying a Taser―not to cause injury, but to train it―Pavlov’s squirrel, if you will. But I know my money would probably be better spent on avocados themselves. Sometimes I dream about buying a BB gun. Maybe Bob could eat the squirrel, with an avocado salad. At least it would have been a humane killing. Free range squirrel and a lot more avocados to look forward to.

I have often had to defend my food choices when in the company of Bob’s family: “Why do you eat ‘fake’ meat as a vegetarian?” To which I have repeatedly replied that I am not rejecting meat on the grounds of taste or texture, but on ethical grounds. I cannot lie, bacon smells delicious. But I am not tempted to eat it. Here in Southern California vegetarian and vegan food is pretty easy to find. And thankfully, a lot of Indian food is vegetarian―including dhal and chapatis.

Sarita Sidhu is a nonfiction writer and an MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles. She has worked as a teacher and an advocate of Fair Trade for many years.

I’m terrified of masks.
Don’t come calling on me if you’re wearing one.

Unless you want me hands-clawing, calling out in caterwauls (what my kids call the opera-yell).

Most times, I don’t want to reveal this morbid fear, for the greater worry that it might lead to pranks. I’ve endured occasions where the clever-minded have designed schemes to scare me right out of my skin. One such event occurred after midnight, while chatting with my dear friend when her husband crawled around the corner donning a ghoul’s mask and I nearly passed out. She scolded him back down to the basement.

I’m told he didn’t come back up until the next day.
That’ll learn him.

Masked menaces in movies can set me off. I’ll turn away from a plot point just to escape their beady eyes.

The season of fright used to be once a year and something I could plan for, managing it with autumnal goodness. For every Freddy-gorrific bloodfest, I could carve the most artsy pumpkin, make homemade candy corn muffins, and hand paint oak leaves. But an onslaught of year-round horror films glutted the industry and the trend, I fear, has institutionalized. I’m having trouble hiding.

Children’s love of masks can also be problematic. Play with me, chuffs the young voice behind a Darth Vader mask, and I’m clutching at my heart, wondering if nitroglycerin comes in breath mints. I’ve also taught hundreds of students how to make plaster masks. I share their deep love for creating and bedazzling the hardened white shells.

I’ll hang masks around the art room, stand in piles of plaster dust, cutting more strips for your project. Just don’t put that mask on your face!

Ms. A, can you tell us why you’re so afraid of masks?

When you get through high school, college, or trade school, and get out into the world, pursuing who you’ve practiced to become, I will tell you.

*     *     *

I took a mask-making class while pursuing my BFA theatre degree. Lying flat, face greased, and straws up my nose, I was helpless as the instructor poured cement over my face. I’d been warned. Some people freak out. My classmates held my hands, rubbed my limbs, and assured me that I was doing fine. Their voices eventually abandoned me behind heavy mud. I was completely vulnerable: no mouth, no ears, no eyes. Only those two plastic tunnels for air. As the cement thickened, my senses were taken from me. I couldn’t read my surroundings, stay cautious, find the exits. Sweat rolled down my neck. My hands flailed in the blackness, begging for connection. I whimpered and tried to call out,

Somebody find me. I am alone–
But the hardened cement entombed my mouth.
Look for me down a long road, in the wood. Hurry!
My mind skidded wildly. Someone joined their hand with mine. This brought only small comfort. It would take a long time for the cement to fully set. I settled into a restless examination of in saecula saeculorum.

Halloween changed. We used to wear dime store demi-masks shaped like the number 8 over our eyes. The holiday looks creepier and more elaborate than when I was trick-or-treating. We’d wear a cut out sheet or a veil: a ghost, or scary bride. Boys wore their masks along with cowboy boots and hats or Dracula make-up. Pillow cases served as candy bags. Mrs. Robinson gave out cartons of orange drink. Two streets over, we’d stand in a long line watching the cotton candy-making machine until it was our turn to nibble the sugar clouds. The Zois family gave kids quarters. When I was old enough to keep up the half-mile walk, we’d get far as Greenmount Boulevard.

That’s where he grabbed her.

*     *     *

On a crisp cool Thursday morning at 7:15 am, October 20^th, a car rolled alongside a small 14-year-old girl. She walked down the sidewalk nearing our high school stadium when the car pulled up. The car stopped. A man got out to ask for directions.

He grabbed the girl. He pressed a knife to her throat. He pushed her into his car.

We didn’t know Beth was missing. The school day ended and practices began. Dinner, homework, shower, and bed by 11pm. Her mother had frantically waited for her that night. The next day, my legs shook while the police searched her locker three doors from mine. That night, the big football game played on. We weekend partied and cycled onward without candlelight vigil or teaming up to find a lost child. When they found Beth’s belongings countywide, the detectives looked grim. Our principal withered and lost his smile.

*     *     *

I noticed my drill coach’s fake smile.
Get back in line, she snapped.
What’s happened? Bile shot up into my throat.
Do you want a demerit?
My coach’s face betrayed her. I lunged forward and heaved by a car until she forced me back to practice.
This is not the place or time, she whispered.

This is how I learned my childhood friend was dead.

Beth Ann Mote

My town erased Beth. We planted a tree in a far corner of the school. The funeral was moderately attended, held downtown. Students got pizza afterward. I watched how laughter returned that same afternoon. An artist series was to be set up in Beth’s honor. It began after we graduated. Future students didn’t know who she was, how she loved her two little brothers, her cats, and playing the clarinet, or how she had a husky laugh. At our graduation four years after her death, we had no moment of silence, no picture display, no speech to honor her. Her name wasn’t even mentioned.

This is what Beth’s taker said-

He drove around the city streets while she cried and recited The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.

As I sat in my classes, lunched, and chatted, this taker kept driving, and had Beth write a ransom note on pink paper shaped like a heart. Anything to stop that crying. Wending his way toward county roads, he parked on a lonely stretch. There, in the car, he took her frail and tiny body and raped her.

He kept Beth for five hours.

Then he hid his face with a knitted mask, took her to the reserve, and tied her to a tree. Her wails forced him to untie her again and this time he made her pull her shirt over her face.

Tell my mother I’ll wait for her in heaven.

He stabbed little Beth multiple times and left her to die alone.

*     *     *

All impulse. I see a girl walking down the street – bam. That’s it*.

These 13 words rationalize a taker’s entitlement. Pulled from the Block Parole website, these are the words of Beth’s killer who remains incarcerated because—when the news hit that he might be released due to a legal loophole— we demanded state lawmakers keep him there. Law is supposed to work this way.

When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford retold the events of her taker, my solar plexus tightened. I flashed to my own high school weekends, seeing the Fair Isle sweaters again. The hometown paneled basements with plaid wall paper. Hands up shirts and down pants, beer breath kissing. Pretty girls retched in the bathroom while I held back their hair. We’d study each week for tests, raise hands and answer questions, write papers, all under intense social pressure to please our parents; successful professionals who served as awarded doctors, top attorneys, senators, CEO’s, and trophy mothers. Work dog hard, go ape shit, repeat. As long as you’re top of the class, first on the team, come highly recommended, we’re looking the other way.

To a taker, the message mutates: Have whatever you want. You deserve it.
Decades later an Olympian hopeful and rapist would emerge from my high school.

When I awoke to the foregone Supreme court judge affirmation, one beloved niece’s post claimed relief that the ‘lies hadn’t taken him down.’ She doesn’t recognize the male oppression she lives under nor the manipulation of lower income white voters. She’s a single mother, raising a dynamic, gifted girl, and as the highest court continues to politicize—which it was never intended to—I hope my grand-niece will have rights to assert power.

*     *     *

Was there a moment when you questioned why Beth didn’t fight her taker or try to flee?

Why Dr. Ford after a party and a drunk woman behind a college dumpster couldn’t free themselves from our Supreme court judge’s advances or an Olympian hopeful’s ‘twenty minutes of action’? Why were victors given the spoils after battle? Call up and get us some bitches for later tonight. This famous 17^th C painting by Rubens is entitled, The Rape of the Sabine Women. (The one where the women are “abducted” while loved ones wail.)

There are 13 letters in the word: powerlessness. It is the inability to effect change. When we the people mobilize to abolish this long train of abuses, The Threatened manage us into our grateful corners. Sexism has personal, cultural, and institutional pillars to hold it firmly in place.

There are 13 letters in this phrase: Educate to vote. If you want to grow change, then help people learn to vote locally. Teach how local representation can in turn (even if indirectly) represent every voter in the national political forum.

Hunters found Beth’s ravaged body covered in a pile of leaves.

We were raised to respect power. Add fear and confusion and the combination gives a taker all advantage.

During the trial, a local newspaper interview was unearthed which has since been lost. But, for me, it is indelible: The taker explained he used masks to cover the victims faces when he raped them. The reporter realized the serial rapist she’d interviewed was in fact my little friend, Beth’s taker. This report along with grotesque coroner statements flooded my young eyes.

*     *     *

Only one former student has come back asking for an explanation about my morbid fear of masks. He held up his end of the deal: graduated college and landed a Hollywood internship. I couldn’t back out of my promise. We sat outside a café in Yellow Springs, OH waving at familiar passersby.

When I recounted the basic facts of what happened to my friend, he looked distraught. He wished he didn’t know.
Curiosity is complicated.
We’ve remained close and see each other frequently.
He’s a grounded, good man, and a storyboard artist for an award-winning animated show starring a clever humanoid with a horse head.

Please, don’t come near me in one of those horse head masks either.

* https://www.blockparole.com

Andrea Auten is a masters graduate in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles where she is a teaching assistant in the Post Master of Fine Arts in creative writing teacher certificate program. At Lunch Ticket, she is an interviewer and blogger, Co-Lead Editor for Visual Art and Graphics, and works with the Community Outreach and Social Media Teams.  She lives with her husband, two sons, and her writing helpers, the family cats.