003. HAUNTED HOUSES.
do not fret!
Welcome to ISSUE 003: HAUNTED HOUSES 👻
Aren’t we All so Afraid? Blood and Bile, But also Blunders and Babbling. Bombs, But also Blubber and Boredom. It’s Bad, Being in a Body. Creeping, Crawling, in a Circle with your shoulder Cuddling the Crypt wall. The Circle Closes in. Doom and Death Despite your best efforts. Dread, then inevitable Depression. Envy Eats your insides out. Can’t Escape. No Exit. Forget you ever Felt a Freeing Feeling and Gnaw your guts from inside out. You Get Gnarly, Get Gangrenous. Hold your Headless Horseman ‘cause the real Horror is Henceforth, Herewith. You are the Haunted House. Ignorantly, Irritatingly, you find your own Irrationality utterly Illuminating. Jaded, Joker? Your Jaundice Jowls are Jabbering, and Junk is Jumping out. Keenly Knife your past selves; Kill the Knowledge of them. Lean into Loneliness and Lovelessness. Lethargy Lulls you and Melancholia Mollifies your Mind. Nostalgia, you Naughty Nagging Nymph—Nevermore! Odious Overzealousness is Obscene and Objectionable; Precociousness is Pretentious, you Preppy Posturing Ponce! Pity you’re so Querulous and Queer, disquiet and Questionable. Rats Reside inside your Rafters, Rummaging through and Retrieving Relics of Relationships you’d Rather Relegate. Slippery Silky Sincerity Sloughs like a Serpent recoiling from your Skeleton. Tongue-Tied every Time you go to Talk about Things That Tear you up— Ultimately, you’re Unwell, Unruly, Unalive. Void. Vile. Vulgar. Victim— When Will you finally Waste away? You Wayward Wonderer. You Wrathful Xenomorph. You Yearn for something. You Yawn and Yell and Yip and Yap to feel. You cannot let your Youthful Years elapse while feeling like a Zombie. Aren’t you Afraid?
Prepare to be made even more afraid! We’ve spooky pieces in store for you all this Hallowe’en. Whether you’re inclined toward dark and supernatural work (like the collages by Irina Tall, A Minor Irritation by Monika Repčytė, Devin Mainville’s A Crack in the Foundation, and Sloane Gray’s May the Floorboards be Ever Full of Hate) or those that present inner conflict and machinations that are lighter, though still complex (like Erika Gallion’s Dusk and Summer in Nimi, poetry from Gabriel Graham Piessens Namah Jaggi, and Vasundhara Singh’s Afternoons with Jaggery), we’re sure to have a trick and a treat for everyone this issue.
| co-editor
Global Honey Shortage by Namah Jaggi [Poetry]
A Crack in the Foundation by Devin Mainville [Fiction]
The Academic Game and A Brotherly Cure to Horrid Hiccups by Gabriel Graham Piessens [Poetry]
May the Floorboards be Ever Full of Hate by Sloane Gray [Fiction]
Mixed media by Irina Tall [Visual Art]
A Minor Irritation by Monika Repčytė [Fiction]
Dusk and Summer on The Nimi by Erika Gallion [Creative Non-Fiction]
Afternoons with Jaggery by Vasundhara Singh [Fiction]
Global Honey Shortage by Namah Jaggi | Substack | Instagram
Do Not Fret! the papers declare.
They Fill Jars with All Sorts of Things Now,
so gold the sun will seem sickly.
But only I can know the taste of my mouth
when it twists into a scowl.
No aspartame is sweet enough,
no syrup quite as sticky.
Do you remember what it was like to be young?
How we would burst the hives straight onto our tongues…
Red hands of insolence, still wet
with an antediluvian scent,
swearing forgotten fealty to even the aphids—
Old enough to know no war was fought in our names
But still,
perhaps,
for ones that sounded just like ours.
A Crack in the Foundation by Devin Mainville | Instagram
Laura woke, as she did every morning, to the sight of the popcorn ceiling with a faint crack running from one corner of the room to the center. Her eyes traced the crack again and again, trying to determine if it was growing. If this whole ceiling might one day crash down upon her while she slept. If today would be that day. She knew she should tell Todd about the crack, but also knew that if she did, he would fix it. And she liked it too much. She liked having this secret imperfection in Todd’s perfect world for her to connect with.
She finally gave up; it was impossible to tell if the crack was growing and swung her eyes to the relentless sunshine pouring in through the open curtains. The beautiful clear blue sky, just the tops of distant palm trees, the salt air forcing its way into your nostrils even with the window closed. It was a paradise. It made Laura sick. Todd opened them every morning before he left. As if that would inspire his wife to get up before noon. As if she hadn’t slept through worse.
The alarm clock next to her head glowed red. 12:35. Not as late as she’d hoped but not bad. She closed her eyes, willing herself a few more minutes of sleep that perhaps she could turn into a few hours. Laura loved to sleep in a way she loved little else. When she was asleep time passed like silk on silk; quickly, effortlessly. When she was awake the minutes dragged on endlessly and each minute, she must fill with something. Do something to try and pass the time quicker and even then, time seemed to slow until it ceased to pass at all. Often Laura would find herself in the middle of a dinner party or in a store convinced that time had stopped but she alone had noticed. Everyone else going about their day as if the minutes were passing, as if any of it mattered and only she could see it did not.
Truthfully, Laura had become quite skilled at killing time. She dragged herself into a steaming hot shower, standing under the jet so long it turned cold. Her blonde hair clinging to her goose pimpled back. She stood in front of the mirror for nearly an hour, massaging various serums and creams into her skin, plucking at her hairs, examining her pores.
Over the years, as Laura proved herself to be an inept housewife, Todd had outsourced her duties to professionals. Now, a cleaning lady came three times a week to keep the condo spotless and a meal service dropped off frozen versions of five-star dinners once a week. All Laura had to do was heat them up once Todd came home. She did it correctly about half the time.
Now, the only wifely duty left to Laura was maintenance. She was expected to look good on Todd’s arm when he needed her for client meetings or just to show off to his friends. It didn’t take a lot of time to make Laura look beautiful, but since it was the only job she had, she dedicated a significant portion of her day to the task.
As her hands slid over her body, her eyes skillfully avoided seeing the crescent moon scars dotting her left wrist, mostly healed over, but still visible if you wanted to look. As she blew out her buttery blonde hair, her eyes skimmed right over the faint bruises at the side of her neck, yet even without looking she could tell they’d already started to go yellow. Soon they’d be gone and she wouldn’t have to take the time to ignore them. She’d have even more time.
It was just after 2pm by the time Laura made it to the kitchen. Her stomach rumbled, but as she eyed the yogurt in the fridge–her usual breakfast/lunch/dinner, her only form of sustenance–her stomach turned. She didn’t want yogurt, but what did she want? She could feel the panic start to rise in the back of her throat. She could usually turn her yogurt eating into an easy 30 minutes, standing at the kitchen counter and staring out the window at the ocean view, methodically licking the spoon until every drop was gone and that portion of time was sufficiently dead. What would she do with the extra time, should she…? no. She shouldn’t.
She hurried to the living room, clicking on the TV, and sinking into the couch. She would just add the time to the TV watching portion of her day. Laura had really come to love daytime television. She loved the juicy drama of the TV courtrooms, the mindless banality of the game shows, even the comfort of old Law and Orders she’d already seen a dozen times. Soon she was laid out across the couch, her cheek pressed into the cool white leather, letting the drone of the TV wash over her. Part of her could fall back asleep, but another part, a more persistent part, kept glancing at her phone, a dead black screen begging her to pick it up and check the time. She wouldn’t. She would sleep. Sleep would pass the time quicker, would be safer and yet her hand was already reaching out, touching the screen.
2:45.
If she was going to do it, it would have to be soon. Todd usually worked late, didn’t get home until around 7pm, but she could never know when he’d be home at five; ready for dinner and upset because she hadn’t told him she was running to the store, getting her nails done, going for a walk.
Her rational mind told her to stay on the couch. It wasn’t worth the risk. But her feet were already swinging down, already walking back toward the bedroom. She was already digging at the back of her closet, already pulling out the Ferragamo boots she hardly wore–that Todd probably forgot he’d bought her–and reaching into the toe. She was already calming down feeling the weight of the roll of cash in her hands.
Most of the money Laura got from Todd came through her credit card. It was easier for Todd to track that way – to see where she was shopping, where she had been. But for every trip to the salon - for her hair, her nails, her massages, her facial – Todd would take out the wad of cash he used to pay for his own needs – untraceable, mysterious cash – and give her money for a tip. A very generous tip. And even though it made Laura feel guilty. Even though she knew the tip was generous because Todd felt very strongly about maintaining a certain image with the people’s whose services they used, Laura only tipped half the amount (sometimes less) and kept the rest for herself. For her stash.
At first it was enough just to know it was there, stuffed into the tip of her pointy leather boot. When she would start to feel the panic rise, she would picture the little roll tucked away and the moment would ease. But then it stopped working and Laura found she needed to sneak into the closet, actually hold the roll in her hands, feel its weight, count the bills and picture how far that amount could take her.
Now she found she needed more. Now she needed, as she was doing now, to take out her little Fendi baguette bag, tuck the money inside and leave the condo. She had to step into the elevator and glide down the 24 stories. She had to stride confidently across the lobby, praying the doorman didn’t notice her, didn’t try to chat. She had to step out into the sun, into the incessant paradise. She had to imagine how far her money could take her while putting one foot in front of the other. She imagined her escape while literally putting distance between herself and her cage.
It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. At every corner she worried Todd would be there, home from work early and demanding to know where she was going, who she was seeing. At first she could barely make it around the block before her fear of being caught overtook her fear of staying put. But each time–and she was afraid to admit even to herself how frequent these excursions had become–she walked further from home.
Today she made it all the way to the beach. She bought herself a fruit smoothie and settled onto a bench to watch the sunbathers and the sandcastle builders and the raucous volleyball players. She watched them and thought how nice this was. How nice to be out in the world. The sun even felt nice, warm and welcoming, not the jarring disturbance to her sleep she normally saw it as.
Today is the day, she thought. Today I will leave and I will not look back. I will start over and because I take nothing with me Todd will never find me. I will be free. And a euphoria swept through her, the release she’d been looking for.
She sat on the boardwalk for a long time, but as the sun started to shift down the sky her resolve waned. Todd would be home soon. Maybe. Did she really think she could just disappear? This wasn’t a movie. This was real life and in real life people don’t just walk out of their lives. Todd would find her anyway. He said he would and he’d never been wrong about anything before. She’d waited too long and now she had to go back. Maybe another day. She stood and left without a single glance back to the beach.
Laura was still four blocks from home when she realized something was wrong. The air was too thick. It was too loud. Sirens weren’t uncommon in the city, but this wail was incessant. She coughed on the dust suddenly coating her throat. Around the next corner a large group of people seemed to be pressing forward, trying to push their way to the end of the block. Laura fought her way through the crowd until she got to the front and saw what wasn’t there: her home.
The gleaming tower of glass and steel was gone and in its absence was a pile of rubble. Bits of other people’s homes were visible, a bedroom here, a dining room table there. Laura searched for a glimpse of her bed, of her dining room. She pushed forward but was stopped by the barricade. A uniformed police officer rushed over.
“Whoa, whoa! No one past this line.”
“But…” her voice was quiet, weak from disuse.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
She started to respond, but then stopped. This was it. This was her chance. What had moments ago felt impossible now seemed so easy. Perhaps because in a way the choice was made for her. Like every step she had taken that had led her here in the first place, the way forward had been clearly marked. All she had to do was follow the path.
“No,” her voice was already stronger. “I don’t.”
“Then you need to move along. It isn’t safe.”
She nodded and turned. She squeezed her way back through the gawkers. Her feet picked up speed as she got further from the wreckage. She walked and walked and didn’t once look back. Her roll of bills didn’t take her quite as far as she’d imagined, but it got her far enough and that was all that mattered.
The Academic Game by Gabriel Graham Piessens | Instagram
We became the best
And the brightest of all
Played the academic game
and reached the moon
Toasted Dionysus
And yelled “we won”
Passing the joint
Lit with dopamine
That we couldn’t find
Fitting it between
The lips we made
In our masks worn tight
Hiding what we believed
As we outpaced the bullet
And won the war
Planted our flags
And conquered the world
Took off the mask
And found that it all
Meant nothing compared
To a coffee in the morning
With you.
A Brotherly Cure to Horrid Hiccups by Gabriel Graham Piessens
You are not a fucking fish
My brother said to me
It helps with horrid hiccups,
Tricks them into leaving.
My brother said to me
About his so-called cure
Tricks them into leaving,
When its hollered loud and proud
About his so-called cure:
He gave it, a gift to me
Hollered loud and proud,
It’ll scare away the gulps
This brotherly advice, I’ve found
It helps with horrid hiccups
Scares them away when you say
You are not a fucking fish
May the Floorboards be Ever Full of Hate by Sloane Gray | Substack | Instagram
A woman and her house stood alone together, with so much hate packed into the floorboards that they were perpetually warm and wet and smelled of decay. She, the woman, would skulk around the perimeter of her, the house, and leak oil into the carpet and scratch her name into the flesh of the wallpaper over and over. Her brainstem travelled down the length of her spine, down her legs, and through the pipes- the veins- of her, the house.
Sometimes she, the woman, would find her nails and her hammer and go to work on the backs of her hands and the backs of her eyes and when she would scream, the house shivered. Sometimes she, the house, would sink below the ground and fill her insides with dirt and worms and viscera. The woman would cough up larvae and find animal bones in the back of her throat for weeks.
The violence within the woman and her house stained the walls red, and then brown, and then black. Faucets cried thick spit and vitriol and coated the woman so heavily that she would be stuck in the bottom of her bathtub, pulsating and breathing as it was, until the house tore off her roof and let the rain wash away her hard work. This was a moment of mercy.
They have killed each other a thousand times and will kill each other a thousand times more. The woman–so fat with malice that it has seeped into her bones–and her house, so hell-bent on watching her bleed–will never release their grip on one another, since they are in love. They have struck a perfect deal and they are happy with the arrangement. They will never be bored, and that is what a woman and what a house fears the most. In resentment they live, and in resentment they will stay. In unholy matrimony, may the floorboards be ever full of hate.
Art by Irina Tall | Instagram
A Minor Irritation by Monika Repčytė | Substack | Instagram
Marie was stepping into the airport. She was heading to London. It was the result of magic and work, solidly entwined. She was smart and flexible and fast. She had studied hard and juggled demands like an acrobat. Sitting in the last row of the university auditoriums, she wrote articles for magazines, her ears like antennas gathering scraps of information, her eyes and mind perfecting stories. After completing weekly journalistic assignments, she rushed to catch up with the other students. She digested all learning material, successfully passed exams, and wrote articles on flights home so she could submit them to competitions—all polished and all on time.
Marie was stepping into the airport and heading to London because she had won her favorite magazine's competition for young writers (by their standards, young writers are under 26). Marie was 22, and it was her fourth entry in this contest. She secured a second place—the first would have been better, but this was also great—and a ticket to the award evening in London, where she would mingle with other young writers and hopefully meet one or two of her idols. She felt proud and confident.
However, Marie was also anxious. The kind of joy she had imagined wasn’t there. There was trouble at home. She was alone. And her time at the airport was punctuated with minor irritations. She dragged her luggage full of books, clothes, and other things and was surprised to find a registration queue so long and deceptive she couldn’t make out its shape. Upon a closer look, she registered that the queue gradually split into four lines. Unsure which one to take, Marie monitored the situation to see where people moved the fastest. There was still plenty of time until her flight, and there was no reason to worry. However, Marie had specific ideas on what she should be doing when the clock struck one hour or another. She always had a plan.
Fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five minutes passed. Marie stuck with the second line. Nearing the registration counter, she noticed that an older man standing next to her exhibited sly moves. He was hovering between the two lines, ready to jump wherever he could be first. And that's what he ultimately did, putting himself before Marie, pushing her luggage away with his. Then he invited his wife, who was way behind, to join him. "Excuse me, I thought you were standing in another queue?" Marie said. He turned, but only partly, showing an apologetic half-face and muttering something about not understanding the language. His wife caught up with him and, noticing Marie's confusion, exclaimed, "This is just so badly organized." She brushed Marie off and started throwing pieces of luggage onto the weighing track.
This was a minor irritation, surely. But Marie felt her thoughts turning harsh, cheeks turning rouge. She didn’t like the idea of someone cheating. That is not how she learned to act in this world. Marie clutched at her luggage and glared at the couple. Later, at the security check, the same man banged the trays, bang bang bang, attracting attention from other passengers. Marie arranged her things in the security trays, ensuring all the liquids, her computer, phone, scarf, and sweater were put in separately. Then, she went through the metal detector and set off the alarm. Of course. She always beeps in those. The security agent instructed her to return, take off her sandals, put them into the security tray for a check, and walk through the metal detector again.
That's what Marie did, and the alarm was triggered once again. The agent was conversing with another traveler and was distracted; he just glanced at Marie and asked if she had any pins in her hair. Marie said no. Then he pointed to her ear and asked what was in it, and Marie said it was an earring. Then he told her to go back and try again. When Marie started going back, he got annoyed and told her to wait. "Stop! Just wait a minute," he shook his head. "So when am I supposed to go?" Marie asked slightly aggressively, which surprised her. But it didn’t seem like he picked up on her hostility. He simply motioned to go.
Marie repeated the steps and beeped again. Another security agent—a woman observing all this—gestured for Marie to come to her and asked if she could inspect her. Marie said yes, and it was over in seconds. She could go get her things and forget all about it. But Marie felt a rush of heat in her chest. She felt silly and petty. Was it all that the world had to do to destabilize her, to upset her, to show her she wasn’t a patient person after all?
She saw the man from the registration queue still fiddling with the security trays, putting on his belt, and issuing loud complaints about something. His wife was nowhere in sight. Marie gathered her things, put the security trays in place, and went to her gate. She sat down and took out her notebook. She wanted to let go of that heat in the form of words, to note all the irritations. She wanted to get rid of unpleasant thoughts as she didn’t like unpleasant things. She was noticed in an international writing competition; that’s what counted. She would be okay. Everything at home would be okay. And she would surely feel joy about all this.
And then Marie imagined vacuuming her irritations with a vacuum cleaner. She devised this mental exercise and often took it on when irritated. It worked like this: She picked her irritations—these spiky objects scattered across her mental landscape—one by one and imagined the force of a shiny, powerful machine pulling them in. She whispered, make them disappear. Irritation one, irritation two, irritation three… No matter the amount, they'd all be gone in the vortex of the artificial wind. Gradually, a smile spread on Marie's face, the heat dissipated, and she saw a glimmer of light upon her sorted-out mind.
Dusk and Summer on The Nimi by Erika Gallion | Website | Substack | Instagram
Track 1: Don’t Wait
The creek is known, in our stupid small town, as The Nimi.
I avoid it when I can. My brother, a year behind me in school, does the opposite. He rides his bike to a popular bank on The Nimi, splashes into its filth with his rambunctious friends. The boys, entering sixth grade this year, have yet to shed their hyperbolic boyness, their propensities to wrestle one another to the ground or fart in one another’s faces.
My friends and I, soon to be seventh graders, have gladly shed our girlhood versions of play. We want, desperately, to trade in our Bratz dolls for thongs, our gel pens and diaries for makeup and highlights. Our periods have not only arrived but are already status quo. At the pool, where my friends and I congregate three days of the week throughout the summer, we all stare at each other’s chests, measuring.
I love my friends, but sometimes I have to put my headphones on.
Track 2: Reason to Believe
Sometimes my brother and his friends raft down The Nimi to the pool. They arrive always near the end of our pool days, stinking of sweat and dead bugs.
I dream of being looked at as I enter the bright-blue otherworld of the pool. The older girls in their Victoria’s Secret bikinis stare at me, petrified of my beauty, my power; their boyfriends stare too, mesmerized. But I have eyes only for Mason. His blue eyes wait for me at the end of the pool, his quarterback arms wide open; I imagine the pool’s water making an aisle for me. I walk from the shallow end to the deep end, a bride.
Track 3: The Secret’s in the Telling
While we flip ourselves around like a gymnastics fleet in the water, our mothers spray Banana Boat tanning oil all over themselves. The absence of my father isn’t something my mother needs to explain or excuse at the pool, and I think maybe that’s why she’s so eager to go. The truth of it is that my father doesn’t want to go anywhere. He works and then he drinks beer in the garage and then he eats dinner and then he goes to sleep.
Mason’s family is different. His parents go everywhere together; I’ve even seen them holding hands at Friday night football games, at Save-A-Lot. And, Mason’s parents do not drink. I’ve revealed to Mason what feels to me to be the biggest secret of my life: my father is an alcoholic. But Mason already knows, and his slowly blinking eyes tell me that everyone else does too.
Track 4: Stolen
At fifth grade camp, Mason and I were forced to hold hands for a game but our hands flexed with something stronger than obligation. After camp I begin calling Mason my boyfriend. We talk constantly on AIM. I clog our landline up and don’t feel bad about it because there’s no way my parents have any call as exciting as Mason’s icon swinging to ONLINE after school:
Wildcatzqb10: hey babe
DashboardLover2010: hiiii
Wildcatzqb10: how was your day?
DashboardLover2010: ugh, I can’t get this art project right
Wildcatzqb10: What?! It looks great!!!!
DashboardLover2010: I hate it :x
DashboardLover2010: I wish I was artistic like you
Wildcatzqb10: You’re artistic like u
Wildcatzqb10: Ilysm
Track 5: Rooftops and Invitations
Mason’s older brother, Timothy, seems destined to become a star. He’s a freshman and already the football team’s beloved quarterback. He’s dating a sophomore cheerleader, Jasmine, gorgeous Jasmine. Low on her hip is a pale heart, a sign she’s been in the tanning bed, something I’m still not allowed to do.
I know, when I’m listening to my CDs and when I’m reading my books, that I don’t need this town’s approval. That the world is bigger than The Nimi and the pool. But it’s hard to remember because Mason being the second eldest to Timothy means something here. I feel the weight of obligation on us when we’re with Timothy and Jasmine, like I’m supposed to be learning how to be.
Track 6: So Long, So Long
When do you and Mason want to get married? Ali asks me at the pool. My friends believe, without a doubt, that Mason and I will get married; that we’ll win homecoming queen and king our senior year, as Mason delivers the football team to a tournament run, as I win accolades for my grades.
My friends swoon at the idea of a wedding. Most of us have braces, and most of our metalwork contains bits of the concession stand pizza we can never reach. I feel ugly around Jasmine, I feel uncomfortably young around Timothy, and I feel stupid when I think of explaining all of these insecurities. There’s a premonition in my brain that Mason will one day be swayed into a current, one of his brother’s wake.
Track 7: Currents
Mason and I makeout often, and together we share a secret. We’ve learned to press into one another while kissing so that stars dance behind my eyelids. We’ve learned that it’s not safe for Mason to see stars because of the stain left behind on his pants. We learn and we learn, a pure secret.
Track 8: Slow Decay
Mason comes over to my house where we have the computer room to ourselves. We makeout on the carpeted floor beside the large Dell desktop, breaking apart when we hear the creak of stairs. My parents don’t understand instant messenger, the love emoted through an away message, how raw a conversation behind a screen can be.
Life is a waiting room. I wait for my boobs to grow, for my teeth to straighten perfectly underneath my braces, for my brother and his friends to grow up. I wait for the freedom of a driver’s license, the ability to listen to Dusk and Summer at full volume, windows down. I wait for a diploma and some self-love, the things I think I need to leave The Nimi forever.
Track 9: Dusk and Summer
Behind the pool, I straddle Mason over the base of a slide. We ignore the sounds coming from The Nimi, our constant witness here in this town. I hear my friends at the basketball court. They know I’m making out with Mason but they don’t know the way my crotch grinds against his strong and still-growing thigh muscle. I know the word orgasm but pretend, when it comes into my consciousness, that I do not. I know what I’m experiencing is something my friends will get to later and maybe then I’ll tell them what Mason and I have really been doing. Or maybe this will be ours forever, me and Mason’s, maybe the knowledge of what we’re doing will be ours, always.
I can hear feet thundering down the hill toward the slide but I can’t stop. I kiss Mason as if his mouth holds the answers. I want to get out and I want to stay; I want every summer to go on like this, I never want another. Mason underneath me says hey, I think someone’s coming, and in my head Dusk and Summer is playing, its lyrics slow and intoxicating: Some things tie your life together, slender threads and things to treasure Days like that should last and last and last…
My brother sees me atop Mason. GET OUT OF HERE! I scream at him. He sprints back up the hill toward the pool and Mason begins to fret. It’s the first guilt either of us have felt about our secret.
The rest of the day at the pool passes by in a haze. Mason avoids me, opting to play ball in the pool with his friends. When he and his mom leave I watch him, willing the back of his head to turn around, believing I have the power to make him do so. But he leaves anyway.
Track 10: Heaven Here
I am fifteen when Mason and I break up. We break up before either of us gets a car, before sex but after all the rest. In the hallways we avoid eye contact and in class Mason sits as far away from me as possible. One day we all stop using AIM and I don’t know to save our chat, the evidence of our love. I watch him grow into a version of Timothy and silently lament his choice of athletics over art.
At eighteen we graduate and at twenty I leave. Mason takes up smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco. Mason gets arrested for drunk driving, once, twice, maybe a third time. When I return for weddings I sometimes see Mason and there is a desire in me, as strong as everything felt those summers, for us to lie down together again, to be held safely by an innocence. The Nimi gurgles at me every time I’m home, trying to convince me that here is where I belong.
Afternoons with Jaggery by Vasundhara Singh
The astrologer advised Shubham to buy a black dog, and he did. The astrologer explained that a black dog will better his chances at a good posting. ‘What’s a good posting?’ Anita said to him when he suggested they buy a black Labrador.
‘A good posting is where I have work,’ he said. Her husband has completed twenty one years of his service and is posted at the police headquarters in Bhopal.
He is at the dining table waiting for his second cup of tea. She is in the kitchen breaking a block of jaggery to add to the bubbling tea.
‘Why a black dog? Why not a red or a purple dog?’ she says.
‘Is the tea ready?’ he says and hopes it isn’t. He obediently reaches the office an hour late and returns for lunch an hour early. He drinks two cups of tea in the morning and two in the evening, so she has to break a fresh block of jaggery each morning. Their fourteen year old daughter studies at a boarding school, two train rides away, and a dog, whether it is black or red or purple, is their only hope.
‘The dog should arrive soon,’ he says.
‘The dog?’ she says, placing the cup on the table before him. ‘Aren’t you going to name it?’ Then she remembers that he named their daughter. ‘Fine, I’ll name it. Male or female?’ He takes a loud sip and says, ‘male, the astrologer said it must not be a bitch.’ As he sips loudly, she tries to think of a name for him. All she comes up with is the usual Tommy and Leo and Sheru. She looks back at the kitchen where crumbs of jaggery are scattered over the countertop. ‘Gud?’ she says.
‘Gud?’ he says.
‘Gud,’ she says and points to his empty cup.
‘Gud as in jaggery?’ he says. She nods.
The cook (who also cleans their bedroom every other day) pokes his head through the open door to announce the arrival of the dog. They go out to the lawn to greet Gud, who is standing beside a man in torn jeans. ‘Isn’t he too big?’ she says, looking not at Gud but at the man who her husband refers to as the ‘dog handler.’
‘The astrologer said he should be three years old,’ he says.
‘Where did you find a three year old Labrador?’ she says, looking at the dog handler unzipping his sports jacket.
‘From Laloo’s farmhouse. He has two labradors. The other one turned four a week ago.’ Gud looks at them with mud brown eyes. He instructs the handler to do whatever needs to be done with the dog. They left their daughter under the care of diabetic maids till she was old enough to be admitted into boarding school, so they shouldn’t be expected to know the basics of caregiving. He then rushes to the toilet because the second cup of tea has done its job. ‘What’s your name?’ she says to the man.
‘T.T.’
‘T.T.?’
‘Tinku Tripathi. T.T.’
He tells her he will take Gud for a walk three times a day. At five in the morning, at two in the afternoon, at seven in the evening. At all three times, he will feed Gud and pat his head. Also, twice a week, he will give Gud a bath with lukewarm water. T.T. ties Gud to the front gate and leaves. Gud barks before sunrise and neither of them check on him. From the kitchen window, she sees T.T. scoop up his shit onto the day’s newspaper. When her husband asks for the newspaper, she shrugs her shoulders. She notices that T.T. always wears the same pair of torn jeans, but alternates between a maroon sports jacket and a black one. When he wears the maroon jacket, his hair is slicked with gel and when he wears the black, he lets his curls fall over his forehead. She prefers his loose curls. He looks less serious. She notices, too, his dragging feet after the two o’clock walk and wonders if she should offer her help.
‘You want to take Gud for a walk?’ Shubham says, chewing on a cucumber seasoned with Garam Masala.
‘Only in the afternoons,’ she says.
‘The boy is there, so what’s the issue? Did he complain to you?’ he says and bites into an onion drenched with lemon juice.
‘T.T. Is his name. He has said nothing,’ she says, squeezing half a lemon over the remaining onions.
‘You know Mishra finally got posted to Jabalpur. He was barking about it for months and yesterday, that bastard fell down a staircase. He’s in the hospital with a fracture,’ he tosses back his head with laughter.
She drizzles ghee in his bowl of yellow dal and says, ‘I am free all afternoon. I can take Gud on a walk.’
‘You’ve never taken a dog on a walk.’
‘If we don’t take Gud on a walk, how do you expect to get a good posting?’ she says and takes a stick of cucumber from his plate.
He nods with his eyes closed.
T.T. Is wearing a maroon jacket and the gel in his hair smells of sugary cornflakes. His eyes don’t blink and his nose, a sharp arrowhead. She wonders if today is a good day to offer her help. She can wait till tomorrow when his head is a bouquet of loose curls. Gud has eaten his evening meal and looks at him with hopeful eyes, awaiting the customary pat. ‘Is Gud doing fine?’ she says.
‘Gud is doing fine,’ he says.
‘Why is he looking at you?’
He bends down to pat his head. She offers to take Gud for a walk in the afternoons. He twitches the sharp tip of his nose.
‘Madamji there’s no need for that.’
‘I am free in the afternoons,’ she says. He blinks now.
‘Madamji I always come on time. I always feed him well. I always pat his head.’ ‘I know. I want to take Gud for a walk,’ she says.
‘Madamji you can take him for a walk in the morning or in the evening.’
‘What’s wrong with afternoons?’ she says. He clicks his tongue.
‘Madamji the sun is so hot in the afternoons, you’ll fall ill.’
‘I’ll drink an extra glass of water,’ she says.
‘Madamji Gud is not easy to handle.’
‘Why?’ she says and looks down at Gud, snoring on the ground between them. ‘Madamji Gud barks.’
‘Should Gud be singing instead?’ she says.
The ambassador stops at the front gate. Her husband stumbles out of it in white jogging shorts. The driver hands him the tennis racket. ‘I shouldn’t have eaten a second paneer paratha,’ he says. She follows him into the house.
From the kitchen window, she sees T.T. untie Gud’s leash from a pole at the front gate. Gud’s wagging bottom and his curls encourage her to gulp a glass of water and step out of the door. She is in slippers instead of four inch high wedges. She may be in her thirty-seventh year, but the afternoon sun can’t stop her from braving the streets. Following from ten steps behind, she constantly looks at the houses she passes by. Double storey houses housing napping government officers and their wives who are sighing or slapping their children. She, too, has fed her husband well (maybe a little too well) so he isn’t expected to wake up before four o’clock. They make a left turn and walk along the white boundary wall over which she can see the identical backsides of these houses, a clothesline sagging with curtains and servants squatting on the ground to eat their lunch. T.T. plucks a bougainvillea and feeds it to Gud. Gud stops by a Maruti and pees on a tyre. They continue walking along the empty road and not once does Gud bark.
When they stop by the entrance of the Arera club, she turns her back towards him. A moment later, she glances back to find him standing there with Gud lounging at his feet. A moment later, she glances back to see him walking ahead with a man on his right and Gud’s wagging bottom on his left. She rushes past the club’s gate, hoping the guard doesn’t notice her. This is where her husband plays tennis each evening and dines carelessly. This is where they lunch on Sundays among people who look like them and talk like them, among people who discuss their trips to Amsterdam and Cape Town but refuse to tip the waiters. This man, in black pants and a white shirt, looks like a waiter. They enter a small park with a square patch of grass in its centre. She looks on from the gateless opening as they sit on the ground. T.T. opens the leash and Gud rubs his back against the silver-tipped grass. The waiter opens a tiffin and T.T. kisses him on the cheek. They eat kebabs and fling peanuts into their mouths, and T.T. throws half a breadstick at Gud.
She disturbs their picnic by saying, ‘if you’re busy in the afternoons, I can take Gud on a walk.’
T.T. and the waiter are lovers, T.T. told her. They belong to the same village, he said, so their mothers asked them to look out for each other and being the dutiful sons that they are, they looked out for each other. Afternoons is when they meet in the park to eat the club’s morning leftovers. Women who drink tomato soup but leave half a breadstick for fear of gluten. Men who eat an early lunch of kebabs. Retiree’s who drink whiskey at eleven in the morning and forget the bowl of peanuts that accompany it after a glass or two. The waiter has a crew cut and a mole on his chin. ‘I enjoy his company,’ he said, pointing to Gud.
‘You can join us if you want,’ T.T. said. ‘If you’re free in the afternoons.’
This scene plays on a loop in her head as she stands in the kitchen breaking a block of jaggery. Shubham is at the front gate, patting Gud’s head. The astrologer has asked him to pat the dog for at least five minutes each day. When he returns to the dining hall after five minutes, she places a cup of tea on the table before him and asks him if he eats breadsticks at the club. He squeezes his eyebrows, so she says, ‘the breadsticks that come with soup. Do you eat breadsticks?’
He shakes his head and says, ‘I don’t want to eat plain rice today. Tell the cook to make pulao. Make sure he adds raisins,’ and takes a loud sip.
At six in the morning, T.T. knocks on the door to inform her that Gud hasn’t eaten since yesterday evening. ‘Is he ill?’ she says.
‘I think Gud is bored.’
‘I would be too. Whatever you give him looks like shit. What do dogs eat?’ He tucks a springy curl behind his ear and says, ‘dogs and children eat the same things.’ She thinks of her daughter and all she sees is a bruised knee. ‘I fed my daughter doodh roti.’
‘Doodh roti is perfect.’
The cook is watering flower pots from the fridge, so she takes out yesterday’s dough and makes two rotis. Then she heats two glasses of milk and arranges it on a tray. She carries it out to the front gate where Gud yawns and T.T. sniffs his hand. He tears the rotis into small pieces in the bowl and pours warm milk over it. They watch Gud push his snout into the shallow pool of gooey milk. Gayatri always ate doodh roti with wet eyes and a clenched jaw. After licking the bowl clean, Gud looks up at them and they pat his head. He whispers into her ear, ‘Madamji, I’ll see you in the afternoon.’
After Gud has licked his bowl, chin and nose clean, they start their walk. She doesn’t follow from ten steps behind, but walks beside him. Her hair falls over her shoulders and her eyes are lined with kohl. Gud pees on an abandoned football. The sun casts a metallic glaze along the concrete road. They collect the waiter at the entrance of the club. He wraps his arm around T.T.’s waist and says to her, ‘a man had a heart attack at the cafe. So I’ve brought his kebabs too. Hope you like mutton.’ She nods.
The mutton kebab has too many corianders in it, so she feeds hers to Gud. The waiter’s name is Rakul but his fellow waiters call him Rocket, owing to the speed with which he attends to the dining crowd. He is talking about the man who suffered a heart attack before his eyes. ‘First, he was green. Then, blue. Then, white,’ he says. ‘But his wife didn’t notice. She was sitting next to him, chewing like a cow.’ T.T. chuckles. She takes a spoonful of peanuts from the tiffin. Rocket asks her if she has a daughter or son.
‘Daughter,’ she says.
‘How many?’
‘One.’
They all look at Gud who snores with his eyes open. She hears sticky smooching noises from over her shoulder and turns to see Rocket smiling at her as T.T. sucks along his neck. She lies down on the grass and closes her eyes. Her silence is trapped between Gud’s snoring and T.T.’s sucking and yet she falls asleep. T.T. shakes her awake to tell her that it's time to leave. At the club’s gate, Rocket says, ‘there is a birthday party at the cafe tomorrow so eat a light lunch. They always order too many pastries. Hope you like Black Forest.’ She nods.
By the time Shubham leaves, T.T. has already left with Gud, so she tightens the laces of her daughter’s shoes and jogs down the road, nearly bumping into a bougainvillea bush and arrives, panting, at the park. Rocket holds out his tiffin towards her, filled to the brim with melting chocolate and blobs of white frosting. She is about to ask for a spoon when she notices their thickly coated fingers. So with three curved fingers, she scoops up the cake and shoves it into her mouth before it soils her kurta. Sitting beside an asleep Gud, she sees frosting on his snout and wipes it with her chocolate-sticky fingers. Clouds cover the sun. She stares at T.T.’s bobbing curls. Rocket passes the tiffin over to her, and she scoops up another untidy bite.
Shubham is at the front gate with his arms bent against its hot iron ledge. T.T. has stopped by a faded blue scooter because Gud spotted a stray kitten behind its wheel. With deep wrinkles of irritation etched across his face, he asks her where she has been.
‘On a walk,’ she says.
‘A walk in the afternoon?’
‘You said I would get hungry if I went for a walk,’ she says, walking past him.
‘I meant in the evening.’
‘You should’ve mentioned that,’ she yells from the dining hall.
He continues to stand there as his wrinkles ebb and flow. T.T. ties Gud to the gate. ‘Good afternoon, sirji,’ he says.
‘Pat Gud’s head,’ she yells from the kitchen. ‘For a good posting.’ He pats his head, but the dog stares off toward T.T. who disappears into the shadows of the sugar cube houses. On the countertop, she breaks a block of jaggery to add to Gud’s bowl of doodh roti. ‘Jaggery is eating jaggery,’ she says to T.T.
An hour later, she is breaking a smaller block of jaggery to add to her husband’s tea. When he complains of the tea not being sweet enough, she tells him to control his sugar intake. He goes out to pat his head and returns to say, ‘the astrologer said that it can happen anytime now.’
‘What?’ she says.
‘I could be given a good posting anytime now.’ He leaves for work an hour early. She shampoos her hair, lines her eyes with kohl and laces up her shoes.
The grass is hot as a birthing mother’s backside. Even Gud has trouble falling off to sleep today and takes sultry rounds of the park. T.T.’s hair is slick back and she can smell the sugary corn flakes smell of the gel. Rocket is talking about the man who had a heart attack in the cafe a few days ago. His widow came to cancel their membership and treated herself to a vegetarian club sandwich. She wonders when she’ll be a widow.
‘I know where we can go,’ Rocket says and stands up.
They enter the club through a back gate and hurry across a well-maintained lawn to a large silver door. Rocket pulls at its silver handle and it opens with a jerk. He falls back on the grass and T.T. laughs at him. The cold storage room is a narrow rectangular space with steel shelves on both sides of the walls. Bags of peas and raw red meat and salad leaves and an orange-coloured cake that says, ‘Jiyo hazaron saal.’
‘Gud,’ T.T. says, raising his head from the floor. ‘Gud.’
She looks around the cold storage room as if she might see Gud here. ‘We left Gud at the park,’ Rocket says. ‘Didn’t we?’
They hurry across the field and jog down the road and stumble into the park that is empty and bleached from the overhead sun. T.T. slaps his own cheek and says, ‘Gud is my responsibility.’ Rocket rubs his arm and says that his break is over. ‘Go back to work,’ T.T. says. ‘At least one of us should have a job.’
She checks in the bougainvillea bushes and he yells at the napping houses. ‘Have you seen a black dog?’ he says, but the sugar cubes snore away. They check his urinating spots: the faded blue scooter and the Maruti and the poster of an advocate. T.T. squats in front of the white boundary wall and freezes.
‘I’ll take the blame,’ she says. ‘You’ll get paid.’
His glassy eyes stare off into the distance. ‘I am going back to my village.’ ‘Now?’ she says.
‘I have a wife there. There, I’ll be someone’s husband, someone respectable.’ ‘You won’t have a job in the village,’ she says. ‘Won’t you miss Rocket?’ ‘I’ll be a husband there.’ He stands up and walks away, leaving her squatting there in the white afternoon.
Still in her daughter’s shoes and lines of kohl running down her cheeks, she greets her grinning husband at the front gate. ‘Where’s Gud? I need to pat his head,’ he says as the driver hands him his briefcase. She knows what this is about because he didn’t come home for lunch today.
‘You got a good posting?’ She takes his briefcase.
‘Not a good posting, the good posting. I’ve been transferred to Gwalior. Gud?’
‘Gud’s gone,’ she says. ‘How many servants will we have there?’
‘Three cooks, four gardeners, two sweepers, a dog handler. Gud?’
‘Gud’s gone,’ she says. ‘How big is the lawn?’
‘There are jackfruit trees and papaya…’
He sits at the dining table while she goes into the kitchen to break an enormous block of jaggery. ‘Now tell me,’ she says. ‘How old is the bungalow?’
In the evening, she tells the cook to throw away Gud’s steel bowl and herbal shampoo and conditioner and yet, when she is tucked in bed, she waits for Gud to bark before sunrise.
On Sunday afternoon, she finds herself at the club for Shubham’s farewell lunch, surrounded by men in pastel coloured shirts and women in dark cotton saris. The men sip glasses of whiskey and swallow whole kebabs while the women gulp down glasses of lemonade and nibble on papads. Mrs Dikshit talks about her plan of compiling a photo book on the textiles of Bhopal. Mr Dixit says that his wife has a real eye for picking out elegant curtains. Anita has drunk two glasses of lemonade and wants to use the toilet but hears the nervous clattering of trays. Two waiters are placing bowls of tomato soup before the guests. One of the waiters is Rocket. She smiles at him, but he doesn’t look at her. At the far end of the table, someone talks about their trip to Amsterdam.
She eats her breadstick, her husband doesn’t touch his.
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I live around so many