Rudolf’s Diner

Mariana Xavier was born and raised in Brazil. She lives in Oakland, works with children and has been taking photographs for most of her life.

Technology is just technology. You make it work for you or you get out. Either way you need to get out, wiggle your toes in the grass, sit on a rock, find a stream, a creek, a dribble of hope. It is summer time.

I give you Rudolf’s Diner, Issue 22, the long awaited Soup Issue. As I have mentioned before, we had the digital rug pulled out from under us, briefly, as our host, Weblogger, jumped ship to WordPress, whatever that means. What it meant to us, here, behind the counter, was that some of our heavyduty cooking equipment began to wobble, groan and then flat-out died. We’ve got a new stove in there and all, and we’re learning how to use it, but you know it’s just never the same. They don’t make ‘em like they used to and your hand still reaches for where the griddle used to be, but you can’t fry an egg on the plane of a memory.

So, I give you a Diner in transition. Hopefully we’ll get a new paint job this year and build a sign (did you see the sign fell off?!). Meanwhile, the food is actually better than ever. I guess we’re being more deliberate (to deliver it). We’ve got insanity, tenderness, humor, love, the usual works. It’s good stuff, Maynard. Read, watch, listen and enjoy!

And then let’s get out there and write, draw, paint, snap and create, people! The time is now, or at least first thing in the morning (get up early tomorrow).

Your Loving Uncle,

Rudolf

If the ocean sees you…

When darkness falls, when the sky plays its farthest blues, my pleasure is to walk on past the bright yellow sign ~ END ~ and step off asphalt onto old-fashioned dirt. The place I enter has many names—Ellwood Shores, Goleta Wetlands Preserve, Mathilda Swale, Monarch Grove—as well as many graces

For more than 30 years in Santa Barbara County, these swales, vernal pools, beaches, cypress stands, and untamed fields, have inspired me more than I can sing or say.

North, behind me, the blue jagged heartline of Santa Ynez Mountains. Ravines and cordilleras give way to soft brown foothills unfolding into the valley below, where earth flattens out into cityscape and pavement.

West lies the Monarch Butterfly Reserve where fall through winter, tens of thousands of black and fire-orange butterflies cluster twilight to dawn, layers and layers of wings high in eucalyptus branches. As sunlight touches them they drop into swirling flight. I’ve spent hours lying under these slow-motion blizzards. They will eat nothing during this stop off on their long migration up from Mexico. They are urged by two imperatives—find a mate and rest. Can you do both

East beyond the wind-break trees, lie flat eroded fields and the Ocean Meadows golf range. The owners of the course have agreed to allow a reedy channel of “wetland” to wind through the center of the long greens, interrupted by no more than a few simple wood-plank footbridges. This small branch of a once enormous slough, irrigated with municipal water, helps thirsty Redwing Blackbirds, Great Egrets, Mallards, Marsh Wrens, Yellow-throats, and many others, to survive Southern California drought years.

South, directly in front of me, a rutted dirt path slopes up toward the sea where a stretch of Ellwood seashore is cordoned off for the protection of nesting plovers. From nearly a mile away it shakes you, the boom of surf.

If the ocean, when you are alone at night, speaks to you…

Streetlight and barbeque smoke left behind, I enter the sway of eucalyptus and oak , following the lay of the land into oncoming dark. Moon or no moon, I’m forced to let go of day-brain noise, make my way less by eye, more by tilt and slide, down through lakes of dense cold air, sulphur and mudbrown odors

Combustion engines, television-talk undetectable here, the slightest tick and flutter in bulrush or dockweed—raccoon, opossum, skunk, mouse?—triggers a burst of pure awareness, curiosity, wonder

Walking’s not just tonic for the body, but the spirit too. A steady rolling amble, one leg in front of the other, mind floating free—a slow-dance rhythm that attracts the muses

Little Brown Bats peel off branches into loopy flight. A Barn Owl streaks by less than a foot above me—I whirl and follow with my eye

Somewhere down in the grove where the owl vanishes, a pair of American Kestrels bicker like teenagers. Just off the footpath a Black-tailed Jackrabbit freezes at the sight of me—I freeze too and we play who’s going to disappear first.

At the top of the trail, trees give way to a wide-open mesa, a few sparse fountains of pampas grass, squat bush olive, poison oak. I drink in the sweep of land criss-crossed by animal and human foot-trails, and the sky where Orion’s three-starred belt appears…

…startled by uncanny voices —the whinny of horses?! They turn me in circles, trying to locate the source. Wild, joyful, shaking the darkness. I prick up my ears and listen harder. Mystified. Suddenly those neighing ponies metamorphose into a troupe of comic-opera tenors—falsetto, vibrato, tremolo, swoop…

…and night falls silent around me. A waning moon scuds over my shoulder, a two-legged shadow vibrates from the soles of my boots, ripples over the ground

The mystery-choir breaks up into yaps and yodels—a band of coyotes! I laugh out loud. They really had me going.

Coyotes are feared, even loathed, for their habit of moving into suburban neighborhoods, picking off cats and small dogs for their dinners. To some their cackling yips resemble taunts. Others hear threat or gloat in that night-music. As more and more of their habitat is taken over by human projects, they refuse to go quietly. Instead, like crows and raccoons and a few other hardy species, they’ve figured out how to thrive in our unwelcoming proximity. But long before showing up in suburban fields and devouring pets, Coyote carried the shadow of night and death. Like wolves, their canine cousins, coyotes have been relentlessly hunted, trapped and poisoned since the arrival of Europeans

A field mouse or vole is Coyote’s favorite meal —though like us they are capable of enjoying almost anything, including a little junkfood – a rotting berry, a half-eaten bagel, a snail. As I listen to their morphing chorus, the echoing silence of their departure, a disorienting reversal strikes me. I hear with coyote-ears— a handful of young people coming down from the beach, shouting into cell phones, gossiping through the trees swinging flashlights, blaring rap— and in my bones I know an animal dread

Something similar happened to me another evening, listening to “Borders”, an album by Lila Downs who usually sings in Spanish. Suddenly she switched into West Coast-English, and for a few instants I could actually hear my own native tongue as a foreign language— weird staccato sing-song, incomprehensible rattle

I savor such altering moments that like Ventura’s bi-directional senses—like night itself—reveal the alien inside the familiar

The familiar also hides heartbreak

I cross the mesa to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific and the Channel Islands, and stand among the old California Fan Palms guarding the edge. From yards above the breakers, the tumbling seascape at night is breathtaking. Even those oil platforms floating on inky seawater, rigging strung with lights, resemble fairy boats. But only my eye is fooled. And only for a moment.

“The sea is in almost every culture a realm belonging to the divine because it is absolutely beyond our power to predict or control.”

But not to harm

As I gaze down on the fanning tideline, I know the sea everywhere is groaning with losses—90% of large fish like tuna and cod gone. Three-quarters of kelp forests gone, along with most of the world’s pristine coral reefs. Almost half of all albatross chicks die from a belly-full of plastic trash. Fed by sewage, by chemical-runoff from lawns and farms, the fastest growing ocean-creatures now are the simple, angry forms—pathogenic bacteria, jelly fish, toxic “fireweed” and poisonous blooms of “algae”..

“Off the coast of Sweden each summer, blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea into a stinking, yellow-brown slush that locals call “rhubarb soup.” Dead fish bob in the surf. If people get too close, their eyes burn and they have trouble breathing.” *

I sit and brood a long time on the sea ruffling back and forth below. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales admired water as the mothering element giving rise to all the others because water has the power to exist in all phases at once, the power to turn the wheel of biological existence. Round and round she goes

Here in these salty waves, as far as anyone knows, Life first arose, spread out onto land and flourished—ginkgo, bonobo, pomegranate, honeybee, cougar, snake—until now— when the youngest of all, the ironically self-named homo sapiens, we ourselves, are rapidly, ungratefully, ruining this very sea

A Tibetan Buddhist teacher I know likes to say that when you are Awake, when you are fully present to a place, a being, a world, you don’t get to choose what you experience.

You get to choose how you respond

* from The Impossibility Of Dolphins, William Bryant Logan, in OAK: The Frame Of Civilizatio

** from the LA Times, Pulitzer Prize winning series, Altered Oceans, by Kenneth Weiss

Preview of Night, Part Three: I’ve been roaming fields and foothills alone since I was seven, but my night-studies began in earnest about twelve years ago, when I made a vow to sleep outside one or more nights of every month for an entire calendar year…

©Maia, 2008

text

I still remember the smell.

I was visiting my friends from college, helping with last minute organizing for a holiday party they were putting together. They lived in Brooklyn, and I was living in San Francisco and making a pit-stop on my way home to Vermont for the holidays. We were all one year out of college and hadn’t seen each other for months. We had started our jobs, gone to our corners. Now we were back together, for Christmas time in New York (which, while cheesy, truly is a magical time to be in the City).

The plan: let’s have a holiday party, have a spread of soup and sandwiches. And egg nog. We need to have egg nog.

My best friend Ulla made the egg nog. She had recently started bartending, and wanted to try a rather involved recipe where you mixed the yolks with the rum, heated that on the stove and then separately whipped the whites to a frothy mess and put that on top of the warm yolky alcohol like a cappuccino.

It sounded delicious. Problem was, we quickly grew impatient with the electric stove in the small Brooklyn apartment and the time it was taking the heat the yolk/rum concoction. So, we decided to take a short cut and turn up the heat.

Second problem:

“Oh my god, it’s starting to scramble,” I heard Ulla remark in horror.

We now had chunky nog which didn’t fit our vision of the warm and whipped mug we intended. You can’t have chunks of egg when you swallow a holiday drink.

We turned down the heat, but the damage was done. But, like any recent college grad on a limited budget would do, we decided to not throw out our revised recipe but instead try and fix it.

And that’s when we noticed it.

While we started working on a solution to the scrambled egg nog, we noticed a smell growing in the kitchen and down the hall. It smelled like ass.

It was the only way to describe it: like someone had done some serious damage in the bathroom, hadn’t wiped carefully, and then decided to walk around the apartment with their pants down and cheeks splayed. Worse, the smell was spreading fast.

“What’s that smell?” I whispered to Ulla.

“I think it’s the soup,” she whispered back.

We looked at each other and then the large covered cookpot on the stove that had been simmering for about an hour.

An early party-goer hanging in the kitchen drinking and watching us strain egg nog into mugs then confirmed our fear.

“Oh, is that the soup? I thought you were boiling your underwear on the stove,” he remarked.

He could smell it too. It was real. This wasn’t some flashback from too much of something in college.

To get a head start on the party planning, Jenny, Ulla’s current roommate and our friend from college, had decided to make leek soup the day before the event. She chopped and sautéed and pureed green stuff for hours and let it simmer. We now feared that that same green pot of liquid had turned into something else. We weren’t sure, as Jenny had been occasionally stirring and tasting the soup over the last hour while we scrambled the drinks.

Just then, Jenny put down her spoon and ran down the hall. We heard the bathroom door slam.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

Then our friend and the other roommate Paulo (the biochemist) said: “I think Jenny left the soup out overnight on the stove. She basically created a giant Petri dish and then heated it up and has been eating it the last hour.”

With less then 30 minutes before the guests were set to arrive, we needed a plan, and fast. My brain was fuzzy with visions of rum flavored eggs and pea-green ass soup.

What to serve?

The sandwiches. The New York deli around the corner had saved the day with platters of pre-made clubs that I had forgotten about until Paulo pulled them out of the fridge in desperation.

The rest of the evening the guests munched on layers of bacon and turkey, sipped their now-less-than-chunky-due-to-lots-of-straining cups of egg nog and mingled while occasionally catching faint wafts of what they kept wondering was a toilet overflowing, in between stronger scents of vanilla candles and lemon Lysol.

Jenny spent most of the night in the bathroom, but recovered.

©Kimberly Larson-Edwards, 2008

Kimberly Larson-Edwards lives in Seattle with her husband Scott and son Miles. In addition to writing and chasing her son, she spends her time organizing with Environment America and U.S. PIRG, growing cukes and killing slugs in the garden, and other many forms of mischief and outdoor play.

©Linda Hughes, 2008

A Bay Area native, and modern dancer at heart, Linda revels in finding new creative outlets. Having just completed the Developmental Teacher Education program at UC Berkeley, she will start her teaching career this fall with a 5th grade class in San Leandro.

Mariana Xavier was born and raised in Brazil. She lives in Oakland, works with children and has been taking photographs for most of her life. marianax@gmail.com

Comfort food for the soul,
medicine of mothers and grandmothers,
solace of sick children and weary
workers everywhere: Soup.
Flood the kitchen with color—
peppers red and green, celery and sage,
heirloom tomatoes, all the rage,
savory flavors bless the air.

Vegetable soup; eclectic, down-to-earth
as the streets we walk, people we meet.
Dice with your knife through stringy, tangy stalks,
add their pungent odor to the mix.
In the bubbling stock, round green peas trip and pop
like teenagers, while carrot sticks
in bright uniforms poke their way between
old men potato chunks and curling slices
of onion, pert cloves of garlic, to whack the peas
in a stovetop sport.

Some vegetables and fruits, bright to the eye
but acidic to the tongue, may be tempered in the blender,
transformed with cream,
into satin-smooth elixirs that glide
slickly over tongue and throat. Fresh herbs:
parsley, basil, rosemary and thyme,
mint, tarragon, oregano—and spices, too:
cumin and coriander, peppercorns and turmeric,
breathed through the steam of simmering pots,
heal by their very inhalation.

Seasonal soups, aware of the weather:
Gazpacho in summer, or cool Vichyssoise;
potato for winter, hearty green pea;
onion broth steaming, with grated cheese melting
on slices of French bread floated on top.

The sick and the poor and people of means,
princes and paupers, housemaid and queen—
all raise grateful spoons in honor of soup,
be it watercress, purslane, mushroom or bean.

©Vivienne Rowe, 2008

Vivienne Rowe lives and writes in San Francisco, and what more could anyone ask?

©Mariana Xavier, 2008

First, refuse all recipes.
Next, fetch a deep pot from the clutter of mismatched lids in the cupboard below.

Finally, take this empty pot out back to the dark lush grass. Find the power spot and lay pot upside down. Walk around it three times, singing Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up”.

Finally finally, lay down next to the pot, expecting nothing. Fall asleep to clothespins falling off the line.

When the sun has baked you fragrant and full, stand up and pray namaste over the pot until it rumbles and shakes. Continue with your prayers. The pot, when the timing is perfect, rolls over like a playful puppy and sits upright. Inside is a thick full orange soup made from singing bells and slow-rising suns.

You bend down. The fragrance knocks you backward.

©Judith Clarke, 2008

©Peg Gruenberg, 2008

They call it the soup. It can be thick or thin, grainy as sandpaper or soft and slushy as a snow cone. You wouldn’t want to eat this soup; though some of the jockeys I know have certainly swallowed a good deal of it. It is, quite simply, mud: thick, oozy, viscous mud.

When the racetrack turns to soup an entire range of possibilities rains down. Of course, some horses run well in the mud, and some don’t handle it at all. Most traditional dirt racing surfaces have a strong, solid cushion underneath, so running on a sloppy track is fairly safe. If the track is “sealed,” that is, compressed the night before an expected storm, then the water sits on the surface. That’s how it becomes soup.

Some horses love the soup. It really is in the blood. That’s why pedigree researchers know the good mud runners. A few trainers will tell you it has to do with the size of the individual’s feet. The bigger the feet, the better they come splashing home. Most students of horse breeding get a rush of adrenaline on rainy days. They crack open the Daily Racing Form and look for those pedigrees with off track sires and dams. (Moms and dads) If you can find one with “top and bottom” (mother’s and father’s pedigree) the heart beats a little faster. A few sires worthy of mention would be Staff Writer, Temperance Hill, and Silver Buck. If I see those names in the pedigree, it’s a slam-dunk.

When Jumron won the 1995 edition of the El Camino Real Derby, a major Kentucky Derby prep race, at Bay Meadows, his pedigree said it all. His sire and grandsire traced to Bold Ruler, a classic off track runner. The mud-stained goggles worn by jockey Goncalino Almeida are among my fondest turf writer’s mementos. Sitting on my bookshelf, the mud has turned to a dusty crust. Like any good soup though, just add water; instant soup.

If you want to get all mystical, however, go to the racetrack on a rainy day. Some of these mud lovers will come out of the clouds to win races at very long odds. In the soup, they seem to find new life. They glide over the gooey surface like speed skaters. Still, as in any horse race, wet or dry, there is danger and a horse or human life can change in a heartbeat. Given the right combination of variables, a run in the soup can produce once in a lifetime experiences.

When apprentice jockey Nate Hubbard climbed aboard a filly named Sweetwater Oak at Golden Gate Fields on February 3, 1989, I’m sure trainer Lavar Larsen wished him luck. For most people, that would mean, I hope you win. For thoroughbred trainers, it means have a safe trip. Racing luck to those who ride or train is always about welfare. Come back safe and sound. Sometimes they say, “get the money,” but that always follows “good luck.” Sweetwater Oak was doing fine in the 6 furlong dash and was actually in a position to win in the final eighth of a mile. When Current Lady took the lead in deep stretch, it looked as if Hubbard’s filly would at least run second. Then destiny struck. Sweetwater Oak momentarily stumbled when another filly, slipping a bit in the slop, bumped into her. Just as jockey Hubbard was about to go head over riding boots, his instincts kicked in. He lunged back toward the stumbling filly and grabbed on to her neck. There he dangled like a Christmas ornament on a tree for the last hundred yards of the race. I remember jockey Ron Warren, on fifth place finisher Lystra easing his mount after the finish and turning around to see Hubbard’s display of strength and balance. Being the excellent horseman that he is, Warren helped slow Sweetwater Oak down so that Hubbard could let go and land safely in the comfort of the soft mud. “I pulled my filly up in front to try and help him,” said Warren, “ I galloped by and then back ed up to make her pull up.” Sweetwater Oak was unhurt, if not a little bemused by her jockey’s lengthy hug. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said veteran jockey Tom Chapman, who rode the winner. “I stood up and looked back and there he was hanging on. Most of us would just try and fall off if that happened.”

Nate Hubbard saw it a little differently. “When she fell, I grabbed a handful of mane and held on. I was afraid I would get run over.”

Immediately the INQUIRY light flashed red. When jockeys are unseated during a race, the horse is still declared an official starter and everyone connected to that horse from owner to bettor is out of luck. This was different. Hubbard never came all the way off until the race was over. Consulting the exact language in the rulebook, the three Golden Gate Fields stewards, after viewing he head-on replay of the race and much deliberation, declared Sweetwater Oak the second place finisher in the race. Track announcer Larry Collmus explained the ruling. “Sweetwater Oak carried her assigned weight across the finish line and is therefore legally the second place finisher.” Nate Hubbard’s feet never touched the ground. Nowhere in the rules does it say the jockey must be seated at all times.

I could go to every racetrack in the country or watch hundreds of races televised daily for the rest of my life and never see a ride like Nate Hubbard’s cling on again. Most race trackers know that. In fact, it was just that knowledge that put a young photographer, Peg Gruenberg, in the right place to capture that improbable finish. Peg had learned from Golden Gate Fields photographer Steve de Vol, who learned from his father that track photographers must always carry two cameras. If one should run out of film or fail, another must be instantly ready. Peg was prepared and the image of Nate Hubbard’s wild ride circled the globe that night. The photo that resulted was the kind that wins awards. I’m sure it was runner-up for something that year.

Every thoroughbred gets a bath after every race. Unlike the jockeys, if they run in the soup, they get washed and walked and dried off and fed when the race is over. The riders usually have three to six mounts on a racing day. Their baths must wait until the day ends. On a stormy day they go through scores of goggles and maybe even a few pair of riding pants. Their silks change with each new mount, but each multicolored shirt will need a thorough washing before it returns to competition. When the sky opens on a race day, the jocks are thinking soup. They may not always eat it, but they certainly will wear it.

©Bruce Greene, 2008

Bruce Greene taught English and Social Science at El Cerrito High School in the Bay Area for 33 years.  He recently retired from full time teaching to devote more time to fly fishing, teacher mentoring, and writing a memoir of the late 1960s.  He is an active member of Leora, a writing group he adores in his new hometown, Portland, Oregon.

I lived down the street from the Soup Nazi “restaurant” in NYC, that beloved Seinfeld icon that actually does exist. It was more like a 3-sided kitchen open to the street when the gate went up. Savory smells drifted past the long line that formed every day at 11:00. A tall, dark, man from a country far away ran the joint, and he was somewhat of a terror. On a rainy day I was banished because I held an umbrella under his awning. Unlike the character in Seinfeld, I had no pride and kissed his ass. I put down my umbrella obediently. But I wasn’t a complete loser. “I’ll never come back!” I yelled while reaching for my bowl of bisque and chunk of challah. I tried to stay away; it lasted for 2 weeks. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize me and I got my split pea and bacon.

I loved NYC, food of all cultures – good food, soul food, spicy food, weird food, affordable food, and much of it vegetarian. Moving to Boulder, I aspired to turn the Boulderites on to the wonders of soup. In November, I bought a muffin cart from a depressed muffin maker. I furnished it with a steam oven, hosted a soup tasting with my new friends and, voila! I was cooking soup! Mostly organic, tasty as can be, and totally vegetarian, I waited for my soup line to form. In the meantime, I’d keep the cart spic and span, wiping down the counters ad nauseum only to have a sheet of ice form. By and by, I started to sell out of soup, but it was hard work pulling that cart on over patches of ice, snow banks, returning to the kitchen to pound out another 3 flavors every night.

Thank Goodness for the backup plan: shave ice. That’s right, the antithesis of organic vegetarian soup in every way. Artificle reds, blues and yellows, processed white sugar and frozen water. Boy, did it sell.

©Vicki Kurzban, 2008

Mateo Burtch, Mariko Yoshida, Ibrahim Adwallah, Milton Edwinger, F. Martin Krepske, et al.

Abstract

The exact origins of life on Earth remain a mystery. Although many theories, including those of an extra-terrestrial source for organic life, have been proposed, none has proven to answer all questions. For this experiment, a “primordial soup” of likely early-origin molecules was “reverse engineered” from existing organic substances–primarily a ham sandwich ordered by Professor Edwinger–and the resulting components studied and classified. Preliminary studies indicate that the early Earth (c. 4.2 billion years B.C.E.) consisted of an “organic plasma” made up of large amounts of methane, ammonia, carbon, and ham.

Hypothesis

According to Aldman (1998), the first organic particles appeared shortly after the emergence of continental shelves, around 10:30 AM, 4.2 billion years ago. These shelves provided a substrate onto which simple organic molecules could bind with each other, forming more complex molecules, and then even more complex molecules, and then, finally, about 100 years ago, cars. The early Earth would have been rich in argon, phosphorous, selenium, niobium, and ham (Williams, 2004).

Since ham is now present in significant amounts, it stands to reason that it would have been present in the early atmosphere. Indeed, Hoskins (2000) has speculated that the early atmosphere, like that of present-day Venus, was mostly ham and carbon dioxide, with trace elements of wool.

Methodology

A ham sandwich was procured by one of the researchers (Dr. Edwinger), who proposed using it for his lunch. However, his colleagues prevailed upon him to use the sandwich for research. This was achieved by throwing a coat over Dr. Edwinger’s head and stealing the sandwich. The coat was a beige camel’s hair knee-length garment bought in London, England.

A Phlemston chamber, consisting of six curved-glass sides measuring approximately 1.3 meters on each side, with one side open to a Thompson magnetic particle flux capacitor and another to a semi-darkened room full of ladies, was set up. A current of 58 volts was run through a wire. Two beavers were put in a box. A man stood on a bench, yelling.

Suddenly, a shot rang out. To the Phlemston chamber, a mix of argon, phosphorous, candy, molybdenum, and iridium was added at one end, and the ham sandwich to the other. The various elements were mixed together using a Barnsmith 3.8 Cathode Displacement Flange Diopter, and the results studied using a Wimkack 8-mm. Sponge Refractory Vibrating Table G-String Deflector.

Results

Repeated sampling showed a Ham Density (HD) of over 38 ppm, indicating that lots of ham was in there.

Adjusting for inflation, and rats, an average of 4.3 Ham Parts per square inch was observed. This works out to more than 4.2 Ham Parts per square inch.

Analysis

Those ham parts couldn’t have gotten in there by themselves. Either someone put them in there, or they were there all along.

The possibility that the ham parts could have been artificially (and intentionally) introduced into the Phlemston chamber was discounted for two reasons:

It’s extremely unlikely.

Ham reacts violently with anti-ham, which would have been present in the chamber in minute quantities, since the Plemston chamber had not been cleaned since the last experiment, which tested whether pigs explode at the speed of light. Had someone attempted to introduce ham into the Phlemston chamber (either by putting it in through the Bernoulli Hole, a 4×6″ hexagonal opening designed for very tiny, skiing mice, or by infusing it into the chamber by rubbing it on his or her breasts and then lying on top of the chamber), a highly explosive reaction would have followed, destroying everything.

Therefore, the likely conclusion is that the ham pre-existed the sampling.

Conclusion

This experiment conclusively proves that ham was most likely present in the “primordial soup” of the early Earth, although it may have been bound up in complex molecules with other elements, such as dirt or string. If ham exists now (as it does), then it follows that ham had to exist earlier and had to have been created by the will of an Intelligent Designer (Smith, 2005). Therefore, God exists, and God is ham.

©Mateo Burtch, 2008

Mateo Burtch recently received a Pulitzer Prize for Best American Novel.  Police later returned the prize to its rightful owner.
———–

Aldman, J. & Rex Tidbit. “Party at My House!” Journal of Applied Material Physics, June 1998, p. 212-224.

Hoskins, J., and R. Erdmann. “Notational Reflexology in Bi-Cubit Analysis,” Proceedings Nat. Soc. Amer. Jargon, Nov. 2000, p. 13-17.

Smith, J. “Because I Say So,” in More Tales of Creationist Idiocy, Retrograde Press, 2005.

Williams, J. “It’s All Right Now. Don’t Worry. The Monsters Have Gone Away. Okay? Don’t Cry,” Mathematics Today, April 2004, p. 101.

Last night I made my wife and kids chicken soup
I do this about once a week
Never the same as before
Never a recipe
Adding different starches to the aromatic browned onion-garlic broth
Sometimes noodles
Sometimes freshly cooked brown rice
Sometime old left-over take out
Toss in some just-cut chard from the backyard garden
Chard that was planted last fall and proudly pushed on through dark winter storms
And they love it
I love them
Sometimes it is just gobbled down with little notice
Sustaining life – pure and simple
Sometimes it is almost ritual
Consumed with wine and candles
Regardless, it makes us warm inside
And makes me wonder at times
What is happening, at that very moment, in another part of the world, or under an overpass, or in prison in Port-au-Prince
And then, the fleeting wonder passes and I return to the smile of my son and daughter and wife

And know for the grace of god

©Thomas S. Geiger, 2008

Thomas lives in Seattle with his wonderful wife Aiko and their children Isaiah and Naomi. Since his youth in northern NH and all the travels since, he has been involved in taking action for a better world – on issues of peace, environment, race and international relations. Schaefer-geiger@msn.com

I can see myself, sitting in the kitchen. Light is streaming in, kissing my back, filling the already yellow kitchen with buttery waves of heat. The big vinyl daisies on the wall are popping out of the paper. I believe that the linoleum is squishy. I do not touch it. My feet are tucked under me; they are falling asleep in their Keds, and my knees are almost touching my tummy, which is poking out from my t-shirt and pressing against the cool wood table.

This table is massive. It will never be moved, it is where all of the important things happen, like beer drinking and occasional cursing and my mother giving my dad looks to remind him that I am there and that his friends should watch their language. My little brother and I use this table as a hideout; underneath is safe, particularly with a tablecloth on top. We like the way it smells––like lemon floor cleaner and old wood and spilled spaghetti sauce and shoes.

Today my brother is nowhere in sight, which is good, because I am doing important things, grown-up things. Everything around me is melting. Blonde twists of hair press against my forehead, sticking with dampness. My crayons are deliciously soft; the wax is leaking through the ragged wrappers. The sourgrass bouquet in front of me, a gift to my mom, sags slightly. This near-drippiness, the uncertainty, somehow makes what I am doing even more urgent. I can’t hear a thing, not my dad singing in the hall, not the neighbor’s scary biting German shepherd, not the lawnmower across the street. I am working.

I press the pencil folded into my hand around and around, letting it glide across the paper. Because I am working so intently, am so sure of my purpose, I can see everything. My K’s are the edges of the tiny marigold butterflies I sometimes catch with my short fingers, the L’s are the bent branches of the cherry tree I climb. There are O’s like the moon and S’s like the trails left by the snails in the yard. I write miniature teepee A’s, my favorite, over and over and over and over until they parade, like a line of inchworms, right off the page. This startles me. I rub my eyes, unsuccessfully push my hair off my face, look straight up, take a breath, and then begin something new. I have decided on a funny-looking man. No arms, no legs, no clothes. Just a head. And as I begin this–P P P P P P P P–my mother walks up.

“What are you doing?” she says, curious. Can’t she tell?

“Words! See? I made them! Read!” I lean back, careful not to tip my chair over, because she doesn’t like that.

“What do you…hmmm. Let’s see. Well. These aren’t words,” she announces, after far too little consideration.

“How? Yes they are, mommy…like this. See?” I point frantically. It’s so obvious. I can’t let her leave just yet; she needs to understand this.

“I’m trying to think. Do you have enough letters…well, the S’s are backwards…oh, here’s one. You can spell ‘pal.’ Look,” she says, as she begins to write on my page, “P-A-L. PAL.”

This is very interesting. I stop and consider this option. Can’t I write anything else? PAL doesn’t seem like something I want to write.

“I like writing my name. Look!” I say, pointing again.

“You know what? Your name is very long. You have a hard name to spell! But you can write ‘pal’…look!” My mother is clearly pleased with this chance to improve me, make me do something the right way, the adult way, the way that involves a language I don’t even want to understand.

“Okay.” I take a deep breath, I choose a tiny corner of my paper. P-A-L. P-A-L. Go away, Mom. P-A-L. P-A-L.

“Look at you! Good job, pal! PAL! See?” my mother says. “Keep practicing!” She pats me on the head and then heads to the counter. She liberates a jar of peanut butter from the overstuffed cupboard, deftly avoiding an avalanche of crackers and tea, and begins to make my lunch.

While my mother chops carrots into perfect wedges, I examine my page, turning it sideways, then upside down. I hold it very close to my face, which tickles my nose, then as far away as my arms will allow. My mother is wrong, she seems a million miles away. My letters dance and sing and talk; they love the sun. As I watch my lines push up off the paper, the words keep growing, just slightly more slowly, towards places I have yet to imagine.

©Nathalie Parsons, 2008

Nathalie Parsons is a child of the 70s but thinks she might have been happier if she had been born 100 years earlier. Lamentably, her current kitchen does not have vinyl wallpaper. She would not mind hiding under a table every so often. She still likes to play with words.

My name is Kate Minogue—the first plucked off the tree for me by my father, Aidan Daniel, the second by my mother, Eileen Minogue Ahearn. O’Sullivan, the family name, translating to Eye of God and adding an inch to my father’s height, was trimmed to Sullivan when we came over in “48—too late for Mr. Roosevelt—on a little tide of a few thousand Irish. Da would have said when we came over the water. Over the sea, for which he had no affection. It stole a brother from him. Maybe two, he said. The rough grey beast. Over the sea to this country in love with tomorrow and getting there fast as possible. The O in our name disappeared because it took too long to pronounce in America.

Da was the youngest of 9—6 boys, 4 girls—the oldest boy drowned and the last one stillborn. Taken in the littlest sea— Mam’s belly. His were cheese and sausage people, with neighbors owning the herds. They sold honey too and eggs from a big coop of hens. A lucky raising, he liked to say. Mother, only half teasing, would toss back Got y’ free a the cheese and sausages, anyway! She meant going off like Uncle Terrence to train at the print house. But if Da was proud, it was of the Irish in his veins, Irish through and through, not a drop of anythin’ in the soup to dilute it.

My mother was not so pure. Her people were plain, they were crofters, she’d say. “Farmers, mother”, Da corrected, “we say farmers over here.” The Irish in her a mere three quarters. The nature of the fourth in some dispute. Her eyes went vague and I turned suspicious whenever the subject came up. Why couldn’t she come clear about the wayward ingredients or let the subject drop? Unless she harbored a spoonful of Brit? Now that would have ruined the soup in my veins as far as Da was concerned. But she held onto her secret, whatever it was. Maybe just to keep something separate from my father and me.

Da liked to set a person straight on what was what. Specially anything to do with roots. He’d brag on Irish this and Irish that. “Jail’s bulgin’ with Irishmen, Da” mother snapped once when it got too thick to bear. “An’ that’ll be drink, not poetry, got ‘em there”. He looked injured, going silent awhile. A relief to us. Tinged with guilt at his downcast face.

When mother got roiled, she’d brew up what she called her Irish Soup. Potatoes thick with greens and garlic and onions, not a fleck of pork or beef swimming in it—for Da, the savor and heart of any meal. No meat in a workin’ man’s sooper is a hurt on ‘im. At times, in his gloom, she’d take pity and fry him a cut on the side. But then he wouldn’t touch her soup at all – Leaves are for the ladies— making her madder than she started. Nor would she say what those leaves might be, we couldn’t identify them, though I was fairly sure there was a bit of the rough grey beast involved. Seaweed, I mean. Meat or no, to me it was delicious. I wheedled for it, crossing my father, especially if I was off my food.

When we came over, I was barely six . Cold wind and all of us retching , the rolling pitch of the deck beneath our feet. A stink of engine oil , wet wool, a clatter of talk I couldn’t understand. After that, queues and questions in the dockyard, and long long bus rides. We crowded in with the O’Byrnes, Da’s niece and her family. Our cousins. Who kept their O and caught us up with eccentricities of the American language until we got our own fourth-floor in Woodston, on the fraying skirt of Philadelphia. The Big War over. A lot of weedy cases after a fresh go, Da said of our neighbors from sundry parts of the globe. And fresh it was. Unless, I found out later, your tree bore the likes of Murasaki….

The why of coming over, like the wayward quarter of my mother’s soul, kept its unfinished flavor. What I remember of Ireland is running barefoot, never allowed on Lincoln Street. I remember digging in the dirt yard with the bright-eyed hens all round dusting lice from their feathers. I remember rain. Rain clinking into buckets under the roof. And my shoes that burned in the oven trying to dry them. We lived with my father’s people who didn’t get along with themselves.

Apart from my mother’s sick to death of stinginess and bickering—our sour milk poverty— there were the bloody casings, the pork-gut, washing and stuffing and tying ‘em off t’ hang in the rafters over the oakfire in the pit house. Da at his printing til dark with towny Uncle Terrence who’d got trained in Edinburgh and—how did she put it? looked me askance. Just 19, with Da nearly that many years older than she when they married. A strong young woman, too soon the workhorse in a clan of aging brothers and sisters, sons and daughters gone, one of the girls to Woodston. Mother must have yearned to separate her fate from the chicken-scratch and black sausage of the O’Sullivan place. In The States, it might be possible. She had reasons enough. But always something more I couldn’t name. What unearthly power of hers could have persuaded my father into giving up his island? Reborn a stranger, unwelcome from the beginning, and at a squinty-eyed 42, when men are going shifty about their age.

Ending in Woodston would have been Da’s part of the bargain —a twig of family there, and not far off, the Press Machine Manufacturing Company, first of its kind in the world, still going strong in Philadelphia. City Of Brootherly Love, he’d soon be quipping darkly.

Da knew his fine small presses, but the modern street shops in Philly turned him down for young bucks–yanks who knew their way round the dealers and the trends and the latest machines. In short, your father’s a hopeless case. He swallowed disappointment and went to work for the foundry at the back of Press Manufacturing.

The summer I turned ten , mother in County hospital with Scarlet Fever on quarantine, Da steered me by the cavernous shed where the Company built their presses on which whole pages of books and newsprint could be inked. Unbearable clatter pounded my brain. A blast of heat, a sour taste. One of the ear-duffed sweaty fellows lifted his face, tired eyes startled by a young girl. In the back of the yard, Da’s job was pouring moulds for type and frames, stacking the trundle. No artistry wanted. Steering to the warehouse, unloading the lot. Intact. Damages coming out of his pay. “A man’s always in dread of a docking, Kate” But that day, I understood my mother’s dread—fumes and burns and racket. A few of the best machiners hired on deaf already. “Not a word to mother ” Da said when he took me to supper at Traver’s that day, “ or it’ll be Irish Soup for a month!”

My father’s pay was enough for the needful. To give us the extras, mother cooked. She was terrific at it, all the rich ladies said so. When I turned twelve, I went along in the afternoons to the big gloomy houses and hired out to clean for half wage. For a time we took in three livings. And still we were short.

~~~

Grimy from the foundry, Da climbed the stairs at six to a long wash-up in the tub with its black smudge never wholly erased by my mother. Red-faced and quieted, waiting for his tea, he’d read aloud from finely printed books whose bindings he petted and adored. Like sleeping cats he lifted them tenderly murmuring their names, stroking the spines.. He’d go through them hundreds of times, the same few ones. Adventurers who came to sad ends. Ghost stories. An obscure tale by Yeats, just a pamphlet really, all the man could spare us—The Wild Swans At Coole gone to MacMillan. His lips worked as he read, a finger brushing the lines. And when his stomach was filled, he’d doze off with a book across his knees, refusing bed, until my mother nudged him a sharp one in the ribs.

Patrick Conlon— known as the Irish Burns—was Da’s favorite. The liltin’ genius of the man…. I asked him “ Da why don’t you get yourself a new one, you told us there’s a dozen you never got hold of back home”, but he waved me off claiming he was satisfied with what he owned, he could quote whole paragraphs of Conlon. Like the evergreen oak, you ne’er forsook me….and on like that. A few volumes, including the Yeats, printed himself at Gilverhan’s , dragged over in their own locked trunk with a clever little key kept in his shaving kit. .

“Except for his workboots and what he had on his back, your father tossed his breeches into the ditch to make room for the paper and glue!” mother blurted once while she took down a hem on the skirt of my uniform. I was at St. Anne’s by then.

“But there’s never surprises for you, Da” I protested, “you know exactly what’s going to come.”

“You’ve tooched it, right there”, he said, “never cared for surprises.” He tapped his Conlon. “I won’t be let down.” An irritating answer. Worse than my mother’s opinion that money was for saving, not piddling away on fripperies like beaded barrettes for my hair. I was

a piddler. And a lover of surprises.

What I liked best about school was the jaw-drop of a new idea. The constant small shocks of history, biology, astronomy. When I came home with a new word, a new bit of thinking to try out on mother, it was fierce disappointment. In no time my prize would be slapped down by her laughing skepticism. On Mr. Darwin’s theory she had this say. “ Anyone with half a brain can see the man doesn’t know what he’s on about! Apes changing to men? Rubbish. A million years?! The Almighty God is an artist, not a fumbler. If He wanted a man to be made, he would not go about it in such a meandering fashion. He’d go straight to it. And I’ll be more than happy to tell your Mr. Gordon so to his face.” She studied Da’s workshirt collar just scrubbed with bleach and a toothbrush, then clapped down the iron, twisting it over the blue cloth like a fish in shallow water.

Mother and father would mutter the tongue—Gaelic—when they spoke of things I wasn’t to know. Delving into one of my balky streaks. Skipping class. Or my campaigns against Mass on Sunday and on Thursday evenings, begging to stay on my own, then running the streets with Frances Cappione . Mother blamed my defections—Church, school, her— on Frannie,

my best friend. A swarthy muscular girl, a laughing-eyed girl, an untamable Catholic who’d dropped confession before she sailed from Italia.

One day, clearing up while my mother steamed the kitchen with custard tarts for Mrs. Lem, we were blathering on. “In Salerno”, Frannie said, “the aunts and the uncles squawk if you give it a try to change a hair. In America, who cares?”

My mother cocked her ear at this, disapproval twitching her lips as she tapped and let go, tapped and let go, with just the right pressure on the rolling pin to stretch her Crisco and icewater crust shining-thin without tearing. This deftness caught Frannie’s eye and she twirled away from me close to the breadboard.

“Mrs. Sullivan? You could do this?” Frannie pointed to a cookbook ad in the Herald my father’d left behind from breakfast. Mother did not look up. “You write down your pie and your soup and your bread, you make a lot of money!” She stole a pinch of dough, rolled a moustache and stuck it to her upper lip.

I snorted. Still my mother tap-tapped. But faster. “Maybe Frannie’s got a brainstorm, do you think?”

She threw back her head a little. “Me? Books?” She frowned and slid her grey eyes, her rough grey eyes, in my direction. “You must be thinking of your father.”

~~~

That year, two weaknesses came to light in my mother. Two as far as I know. And though she was passionate on the Church, both of them went against her religion. I was to blame for the flowers, true. But the oracle. That was Frannie’s doing.

It started with the rose. The white rose for her birthday like a ruffled moon with its own light inside . When she finally pried out of me where it came from, she surprised me by asking to be lead there. Just for a glance at the rooses. Rush Park in mid-May, about-to-fly-away green. A green that made your eyes burn. And the roses, white and coral and scarlet, all lushed and jewelly from a sprinkling. Bending down to them, her hands cupped one of the white ones, angel-faces, then went to her throat. Behind her back, I snapped off a twig with tiny blue flowers and a knock-out scent. I held it under her nose. She swooned a bit on her heels, then shook herself awake, upset with me.” These’re not ours, Kate! It’s stealing…”

“Whose are they, then? That Mayor Corrigan you’re so fond of says Rush Park belongs to the people who use it.” I turned a cartwheel on the grass. “That’s us!”

“Don’t be smart” she threw me a dark look, but took the branch from my hand.

And back home the blue flowers went into a jelly jar beside her dark-wood Mary from Burren, in County Clare.

That was the start of my mother’s fall into questionable behaviors. Afterward she’d often stray to Rush Park for loooks. But like as not she’d tuck a scissors into it’s holster and come back with Sweet William, or some nameless gem, for the glass beside Our Lady.

~~~

Frannie knew nothing of my mother’s history. What I was sure of was not much more. The three of us were kneading dough for half a dozen rosemary loaves, Mrs. Langley’s favorite . Da droning Conlon in the front room. Mother caught the tail of something Frannie said that riled her. What it was I can’t recall.

“Y’ don’t look to marry then, Fran? “ She twisted on the taps and the hot water steamed up into her face. The ease of the oil furnace still pleasured her ages after it finally went in.

“Oh no not me” Frannie blurted, “ I want to love too many. Too much!” Giggling, she pulled the wavy black hair off her hot neck, covering her mouth and nose so just her eyes showed. Then she caught my mother’s back going stiff. “Did you? Want a husband? I mean, when you …”

“Now that’s a pearsonal question, Frances…” a wound in my mother’s voice.

I stood on tip-toe, shook my head, teeth showing, in Frannie’s direction, my mother missing the show.

“But weren’t you in love?” Once Frannie got going she couldn’t be stopped. That might have been the heart of what my mother feared in her.

Mother turned around then, her arms wide on the counter behind. Nettled. She made a slit-eyed study of Frannie who was pressing her lips into a round smile I didn’t recognize— trying for innocence?

“That’ll be enough….. impertinence from you. Yooong lady” The words whispered til she got to the strange one we didn’t recognize, young lady a last minute swerve away from anger.

“Impertance. Da’d like that word.” I said to mother. Just as she turned her back I sealed my lips at Frannie who was gnawing a thumbnail and blinking too fast. Out of the need to touch her, I pretended her apron wanted doing up. I came to my mother and did the same. “Likes the fancy ones, Da does.” I jerked the bow tight. “What does it mean exactly?”

“Never you mind what it means, miss, just quit. Or I’ll do to y’ what Mam did t’ me when I talked back to ‘er”

“Your mam? What’d she do?” I leaned around to catch the words, greedy for a scrap of her bringing up.

“Stuck a clothes peg on my tongue, that’s what!” Her face could not decide—was such a thing cruel or amusing?

“Outh. Oooth!” with a finger and thumb, Frannie trapped her own tongue, making a painfully hilarious face.

I rolled my eyes and waved her down.

“Well,” mother said, definite now, “ it did make gabbling when you should be kneading a bit rare, I can tell you…” She shut off the taps. The tiniest smile flashed and vanished as she murmured a handful of Irish syllables I couldn’t grasp.

Not long after that, The Mystik Fan came into my mother’s life.

~~~

Out of a worn bag, Frannie slid a little black roller-box. It was painted inside to look like a lady’s fan, YES NO SOON ASK-AGAIN NEVER inscribed beside 5 painted-on eyes where a steel pellet could show you your answer. “For her” Frannie said, with a flirty tilt of her head at the kitchen. “She’ll have to make up with me…”

“You don’t know my mother, she’ll hate it. It’s so….pagan, look at those beasties and wheels on that fan! Look at those sickles—“ But I was wrong.

My mother’s eyes lit up, though she said not a word as Frannie announced her offering, swirled the box and demanded a question to test its powers. All in a single go. That was Frannie for you. The little steely already rolling, rolling, its oily rattle over the smooth cardboard, excited— trying to come to rest.

Mother fished out the sponge in the sinkful of dishes and got back to scrubbing jars, but her shoulders kept twitching with the up-and-down burrrr of that ball like a Sullivan bee. Then she startled us. “STOP!” Frannie did and the ball clicked into its slot..

“The Mystik Fan has your answer! Ask your ques-tion, lad-ies and gents, ask it now!” Frannie played her voice like a barker.

“I will not” said my mother. She shot me an accusing glance, then turned away from us again.

“Then I can ask for you” Frannie soothed with her usual volume.

No, Frannie!” I warned, and my hands reached out to take the box away.

“Leave ‘er alone” said my mother, arms crossing over her chest. “I’ll ask. But not for your ears”

“You can do that.” Frannie purred. “ No peeks until you say ready.” She covered the glass with her palm and grinned at me— so I don’t know your mother, uh?

Silence. My mother’s breath blown out like dousing a candle. “All right, then. What’s it say?”

Frannie lifted her hand. “ SOON”

My mother, stricken, squeezed her eyes shut.

~~~

Wherever his death first spawned or why, it multiplied, launched free into his blood, settled firmly in his lungs. Like a clan of barnacles, the boy-faced Dr. Bryant said— half in admiration. For which I hated him. One of the ladies was marrying off her daughter that day and couldn’t spare my mother, so I went along with Da to the Company physician’s exam on orders to see they didn’t try and cheat him. Da had “the cough and liver troubles” like a few other Company men. There were dozens of papers to sign so he’d get his sick-pay.

Months later, Frannie and I climbed the stairs, unstrapped our books in the front room . There was Da asleep on the sofa, his belly humped under a fresh white sheet. Such an ordinary sight, him napping in his undershirt on a weekday, I wasn’t much alarmed. Mother was leaning out of a chair pulled up close to him, her cheek on the cushioned arm, snoring faintly. That morning we’d had words, hard words, my mother and me. About Frannie as usual. At least that’s where it started. She’d been pulling and pushing on all my free hours, accusing me of shirking, it’s Frances, Frances, Frances, ev’ry chance y’ get! And it was true, after class, before homework, I wanted nothing more than to be flying down the street with Frannie, slices of stale bread under our arms for the swans at Rush Park, maybe splitting a coke at the soda fountain. “You’re right, Ma, I don’t want to be doing nothing but scrubbing the rich ladies’ toilets or following you around the kitchen! I want a breath of freedom!” I’d yelled up at her, slamming down three flights of stairs, banging my schoolbooks against the banister.

My mother turned 32 last May. But there with my father she looked old . I dreaded so to wake her, to yank her back to the ordeal of getting my father through his illness. Up close, his eyes pouched, his chin bristles grey, we could hear the noise deep in his chest. I squeezed Frannie’s hand so I wouldn’t cry. His poor skin bronzed as a Puerto Rican. Which would have alarmed him —he was never one to admire the darkskinned races. We’d battled on that point. Now my father was a dark man himself. Face swollen smooth. Younger than my mother’s. That’s when I knew what was coming.

~~~

Mother got a tiny widow’s pension out of The Company, took on more cooking and cleaning, and insisted I finish school. Frannie spent more and more time at our place, my mother hot and cold with her, you never knew. She didn’t take losing my father like the other foundry widows—eyes filling up at their husband’s name, repeating stories, sighing how they missed the old man. For a while my mother’s calm dug at me and in revenge I picked at her—Frannie taking her side —for the frayed slip sagging below her skirtline, her coat buttons missing, her habit of saying Do you, now? It never struck me she might be too shocked to grieve him, leaving her with a trunk of books and a hard-hearted daughter.

But one day after school I came into their bedroom to find her on her knees, polishing Da’s black loafers, the ones carried him through Harry Best’s and Jay Moynihan’s funerals. I waved Frannie back into the hall and promised to meet her later at Shorgen’s . I saw for the first time she had his special books lined up on the shelf next to their bed, the one that used to hold nothing more than the little mahogany Virgin and a glass of flowers nicked from Rush Park. She was no reader of Conlon or Yeats, my mother, no lover of books, not Da’s or anybody’s. On her beside table, The Mystik Fan. I picked it up. SOON, it said.

“Set that down” She said, so sharp my hand shook the pellet out of its place.

“Sorry, Ma, I messed it up. I’ll get it back though…” I nudged the little ball going.

“Don’t be saying messed up Kate, do you get those phrases from Frances?” She spit on her rag and polished the toe of Da’s loafer.

“No, Ma, it’s the way we talk here…”

“And who would we be?” She squinted sideways at me, the huge loafers gleaming side by side on an old double page from The Herald. She followed my puzzled stare at the shoes. “They …they were going a bit dim, is all” she said, tipping them over to inspect the soles. She set the shoes back down and wiped her forehead with the back of an arm.

I waited. Out on the stairs, Taji was smacking his rubber ball against the banister.

”Did I tell you… the night before your father passed…ah I know it’s America and they can’t cross water or the custom gates but …” Her voice trailed off. She pursed her lips and blew a long sliding-down note. “ I did hear ‘em. The o