Around an Imaginary Center

They made a dual layer circle around an imaginary center. The children were in the inner circle, facing each other in their recently purchased clothes their parents had insisted they get since it wasn’t in good manners to make a first impression with pants that barely reached the top of their good son’s pointy ankles or beautiful daughter’s dainty feet. Deep navy blue long-sleeved shirts and khakis numbered as the most popular items purchased from the local mall. One girl had long brown hair, combed to a shine and a purple clip sitting on display around the top of her head, to assist her to see better without the bangs falling, so effortlessly and with such sex appeal, into her green eyes. His arm hair poked out from beneath his pushed up sleeves. They all stood near tree stumps, arranged – assumedly – by the owners of the site to demarcate where people should be. This was no new gathering, rather one ritualized to the owners, each time the participants virgin to the experience, or at least the group dynamic. Eleven children stood, sat, or kneeled by the stump, staring out at each other. Meat market with no intention of any slaughter, slaying, laying, or devouring. Simply kids in as the candy store.

The autumnal air drifted around, swirled by the group, numbering two to one adults to children. Leaves clung with a dry sense of survival to branches greyed by the overcast background. Five trees lined the circumference of the human circle, all stretching their limbs over the circle’s center, as offering in case a storm decided to erupt mid-gathering. During summer, the sun’s heat penetrated with limited success down to the normally hat-donning participants, anxious and sweating from not the yellow rays spreading what would be glee in children’s books but from questions racing through their capped heads as to what would unfold in front of them.

The five trees stood at the cusp not only of the circle, but also at the edge of the hill that fell around the plateau. Five trees in a crescent moon figuration with a rectangular club house fit into the moon’s opening. Glass panels lined the house’s wall facing the group. Inside, dark wood made the floors, pillars, and walls. Door frames were a shade darker. Some participants believed the wood to have come from the trees that once stood and now marked by their stumps here in the gathering spot.

Beyond, deep valleys of golden hue rolled onto more mountains lined with evergreens. Behind him, drove the light brown sugared hue dirt road. No more than one hundred feet were visible, since it dropped off again. Twisted and turned right then left then right with light brush beside it the whole way. Beyond the tall grasses and short shrubs sat the chestnut colored trunks of trees soon to be tall and magnificent. Their branches came close, but didn’t complete the leaf bridge protecting the road from the sun’s energizing power leaving the path faded and muted in color.

The children all shifted back and forth, waiting for the training to start in the rising light. Leaf shadows imprinted themselves on the center of the circle and he gazed not at the young girl across from him, adorned in a deep pink frock with an attached white belt, and three quarter length sleeves. She had a powder blue thick head band helping her see with clarity in preparation for the future. Whatever that might be.

A tall man with albino white hair stepped forward from behind one of the boys to his right. The boy had black hair, as close to being brown without being brown. A green collared shirt draped over his slight shoulders and lay limp over his flat chest and concave stomach as with his father. The father turned his head left and caught eyes with the properly trimmed bangs, slightly greased hair, blue pushed back sleeves, and feverish eyes. Passionate eyes caught the glare back and, as if a nod were enacted, the father began to speak of the games ahead. Children internally reeled with anxious excitement. The parents faded, slowly, to the five trees and started to climb them. From above, they would watch. From above, they would see the grand scheme of movements, of slightly whipping air, and watch chosen leaves depart their parental branches and drift down, flipping as they went showing both top and bottom to children and adults.

The trimmed bangs stayed in place and he dipped in and out between the tree’s self-made grave stones and girls and albinoed father’s son. The girls’ frocks and khakis and dresses danced on the breezes sweeping around the plateau and followed loyally to the beat and hop of the owners. No watches were allowed, so sweat marked the passing of time. Water breaks weren’t built in, and the albino father paced between club house and circle’s edge. He prepared sandwiches for the dangling adults in an open window and watched the sun drip closer to the horizon’s edge. The golden hues and honey soaked fields beckoned the adults down from the tree tops and asked for pumpkins to be set around the circle to note that the training was over for the day. Blue sweater with arm hair poking out, now seeping out with a heft from the accompanying sweat, had a mole on his right cheek, closer to his nose than to his ear. The mole wasn’t large, but it was noticeable. As were the trees of all saturations to him, and he took strides toward the opposite side of the circle, to take in the images. Through his eyes, the tree tops looked perfectly round, dotting the mountain side with greens, reds, crimsons, pinks, chartruse, teal, and purple. The colors didn’t bleed into each other, rather they stood out with prominence, pride, and power.

He stared at these colors from the top of a bench constructed from four two by fours between two crates. Between two stumps acting as crates. One was labeled Brazil. One, unmarked.

The others sat and reclined, and the adults sat in the club house in deep green chairs with light brown arm rests and golden flecks throughout. The chandelier above the table in the dining room wasn’t gaudy, but rather tied together with the natural environment around and outside and mosquitoes didn’t find the plateau consequently letting the children sit outside without bother.

Right cheeked mole stood, trying to train his eyes to magnify the tree’s colors in the last dregs of light on this day. He stood, moving back and forth, pacing, on the bench. The left sock had slouched its way down to his boney ankle, ceasing to create a clean line from shoe to sock to pant, rather gathering and creating tidal waves between the light brown leather shoe with one buckle and the pants his adults insisted that he purchase with their money.

Another boy, with khaki shorts and cargo pockets, long sleeved white polo now adorning three grass stains and one streak of dirt, watched the back and forth of the standing boy. He watched as the boy leaned closer. He saw through the boy’s eyes, the magnificent colors spread out before him. He saw as the boy crept left to avoid the overhanging branch and slipped foot with crumpled sock onto the Brazilian labeled crate. The crate had appeared sturdy, seeing as it supported half of a bench upon which the boy paced. It appeared solid since it came from Brazil, a far away land with stories of beauty and exoticism and foods unknown to these boys and girls and adults. The adults sat inside eating sandwiches and drinking port.

The buzzing started immediately. The gentle hum of the sinking sun and quieting flora and roaming fauna was overtaken by the at first buzz then violent screaming on behalf of the hornets that lay resting in the Brazilian crate. Children, at once devoid of rest, scattered into the club house by ways of the front and back entrance. The adults heard the clamor from inside the glass lined home. Blue shirt cheek mole was stuck. His left foot sunk quickly into what he soon to find out was a bee-hive. The hornets flew out in a fury, levitating his foot back out. Ducking and rolling as if he were in a 1950’s nuclear bomb scare, looking for some sort of desk-shelter from the explosive rage, he steamrolled a pumpkin, splitting it in half.

The orange rind seemed a calming color amongst the crimson future he may be facing. Grabbing a quarter of the pumpkin, the boy took off in a sprint not toward the transparent house, but toward the beige almost colorless road, toward the hill.

Taking deep strides against his winged oppressors, he shot past the tall grasses. The angle of the hill aided his flight and adrenalin pumped furiously into his veins, legs, and knees.

He placed the pumpkin on his head, letting the strings and seeds dangle and fall past his ears, giving heat relief and natural helmet against the sharp harpoons attached to the hornets. He twisted right, left, and a gentle right as the road went from forty five degrees to thirty to ten to zero and he ran with the horizon. Out to his right stretched a farm cut into the woods supporting what seemed to be exclusively corn. Half way around the crescent bend in the road sat a small cottage, all terrain vehicle and old man with no more than two hundred hairs on the top of his head with a horse shoed white perimeter. The elderly wore light overalls, buckled on one side, a coat similar to man in the local salvation army – that being a beige coat with two large check marks of two colors (blue and red) on the shoulder. He paid the boy no mind as he gained then lost speed and distance against the ever approaching bees. Yelling to the man from two hundred feet back, the boy pleaded in segmented breaths for help. The older man, slow on foot but mentally quick, started the vehicle and waited for the boy to slide onto the back of the ATV. Perched and ready to flee, the old man ushered the moled boy on.

The engine revved. The boy abandoned the pumpkin in hopes that the bees would take that as the original criminal. He slid onto the black leather seat and grabbed hold of loves’ handles. The boy took off at twenty miles per hour, sitting down, onto the road, around the bend and into the tree covered road ahead as the sun sank completely past the hill, putting day to rest and awaking twilight.

So this is a super random story that has been stuck in my mind!

Hopefully it's not too confusing? It's also not finished, I'm trying to decide where, exactly, to go with it. I am also working on a novella that is too large to fit here (it's like 70 ish pages so far), so if anyone would be willing to take a look at that sometime, please let me know via email! camccartney@gmail.com. Or in the comments I guess. Okay, yay writing blog! Also, my whitespace seems weird on this. If there's a subject change, please feel free to add whitespace in your mind because it's probably there!!!

:) Caitlin

On a balmy night in mid-July, Anastasia Romanov, once a Grand Duchess of Russia, would ascend into her afterlife.

The room was already occupied by three women.

An air of indifference was general that evening. The women were busy. Writing, one of them. One of them sewed. Another gazed into a large cylindrical kaleidoscope. “A viewing,” she called it; for when she looked she did not see strange shapes and colors, but rather a random assortment scenes from her life. Her life?

The other women thought Anne B. quite vain, and Anne B. knew it. But she maintained that she could not help herself. She could not stop.

Two of the room’s occupants were busy on the night of Anastasia’s ascension. But one woman waited for the girl.

“So young!” Anne H. had remarked upon receiving the message. “Younger than you,” she’d continued, directing her statement toward Anne B. “Seventeen. A child still!”

“A child!” Anne B. had exclaimed. “Why, at seventeen, I had already—”

“Been married?” asked Anne Bronte, a smile forming on her lips.

“You’re wicked,” said Anne B. A tilt of the head that shifted her long black hair.

No, Anne B. had not been married. She had not yet been married at seventeen. Now she could see the benefit of this. Her marriage had been the death of her.

Nobody returned to Anne H.’s earlier comment. A child. The women did not care, not really. Another occupant! That was what they were thinking. It had been years since Anne Bronte had arrived.

“I can’t be certain of her situation,” Anne H. continued, peering into the sphere that hung suspended in the middle of the room. “The family appears poor by modern standards. But death by execution. How horrible!”

“And why execute a family of peasants?” A nasty question from Anne B.

“Why—I’ve no idea.”

When it was time for the death, all of them decided to watch.

“I thought neither of you cared,” said Anne H.

Anne B. rolled her eyes.

“I was at a good stopping point,” said Anne Bronte, glancing at her journal, which hovered in the far right corner of the room above a nineteenth-century desk.

“That’s good. She’ll need us here to take care of her,” said Anne H.

No one rejoined this time. They watched, and they remembered. Each alone, they remembered their dreams, their breaths, their deaths.

The death was gruesome, the most gruesome Anne B. had seen since her own, which she, blindfolded, had not seen in the first place. Anne Bronte had experienced an easy death. Uninteresting, at least. But Anne B. had had her head severed with a blade. And history had remembered her, too. Upon her arrival, Anne Bronte had been pleased to meet Anne B. but had not known of Anne H. Poor Anne B. had been all alone for years. Even when Anne H. arrived, Anne B. had been without respectable company. At first Anne B. had thought Anne H. a servant sent to her, bearing some tiding or apology. Anne H. had interesting stories about the new religion, and the new world, and the new colonies, but she became boring.

Anne B. knew true suffering.

She had heard terrible things about Anne H.’s death, of course, but Anne H. did not like to speak of it. She’d seen her children killed. Well, at least Anne H. had seen her children grow up. Anne B. shut her eyes and tried to conjure the image of her daughter. Her little daughter, the very picture of the king. What was her name? Her daughter, who had become a Queen. Dead by now, of course.

The words began to surface but then the winds began to blow and Anne B. looked up.

“She’s coming!” said Anne H.

And then she was there. The girl. Out of nowhere, physically present. This was what it had been like with Anne Bronte, too.

This girl was covered in blood. Gasping, sputtering. Dramatic. Anne B. raised her eyebrows. Her dress had been cut open; bright jewels spilled out of it.

Jewels!

“This is no peasant!” exclaimed Anne B. She bent down and crawled toward the girl.

“Anne B.! Would you give her a bit of space?” said Anne Bronte.

Anne B. did not answer; the girl was sitting up.

Anne H. held both of the girl’s shoulders.

“Where am I?” asked the girl.

“What is your name?” asked Anne B.

“—Anastasia.”

“Anastasia what?”

The girl coughed. “I—”

“Don’t be afraid, dear,” said Anne H.

“Am I dead?”

Dead! Of course she was dead. Of course all of them were dead. Anne B. wanted to be the one to answer the usual questions: dead! Alone! Heaven! You believed in—!

Anastasia was a useful addition. Young. Lively. She knew all about—

“Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the name of your daughter. Queen Elizabeth. I know all about her.”

Anne B. would have cried, had it been possible.

Time passed, moved like raindrops on the windshield of a car.

All of them were interested in cars. They all spent a bit more time looking into their glass jars, their cylindrical kaleidescopes. Crystal.

One day Anne Bronte had interesting news: “Anastasia,” she called. “There’s a girl down there who’s pretending to be you. She’s telling people she’s a Grand Duchess. I saw her in a newspaper article. Pretending she’s you! Can you imagine?”

“How can this be?” asked Anastasia.

Across the room, Anne B. crossed her arms, jealous.

They all missed someone more than they missed anybody else. The trouble was, it was difficult to remember people. People and their images fled from memory. It was as though heaven’s pockets were forever separating. Losing was easy. Natural.

For Anastasia it was Alexei, her brother. Who was protecting him now?

Anne Bronte missed her Emily, with whom she had hoped to reunite, after her death; Anne B. wished more than anything to see Elizabeth again—and Anne H. also missed her daughter, her littlest girl, her sweet girl whose hair was the color of—the color of—

“What was that color called?” she asked Anastasia. She reached out to her, she touched her arm. “What was that color? The color of—” But she could not articulate it.

“Red,” called Anne Bronte, her voice soft (softer than any earthly voice) from across the room. Anne H. asked about red often.

They kept watching Anastasia’s imposter. A slight woman.

“There’s a resemblance, you must admit,” said Anne Bronte.

“How curious!” exclaimed Anne H.

Anastasia resented the agreement and refused to look at the other woman.

“I’m here,” Anastasia maintained. “I’m here and I’m damned bored of this place.”

Anne B. fanned herself in the mirror. “Can’t you see why they all remembered me?” she gloated.

“But you’re not famous for your beauty, Anne B.,” said Anne Bronte.

“Oh?” A glance full of jewels, full of poison.

“You’re famous because they held you prisoner.” Anne Bronte snapped shut her book.

It was a loud fight.

“I’m famous because I’ve been held prisoner,” said Anastasia, trying to relate. “And that explains my imposter.”

“No,” said Anne B. “No, Anastasia, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re famous because you were murdered. We—” (Anne B. gestured) “—will always be more famous than any of them—” (another gesture) “—because we were murdered. Brutally,” she added. “You, too, I suppose,” she said to Anne F. in afterthought.

They sat there, trying to remember what it had been like.

“I wasn’t famous,” said Anne F. The newest addition.

But the others remembered, better, the things that had gone on (with regard to Anne F.), and they could do nothing more than exchange looks.

“Perhaps you will be, dear,” said Anne H.

“I never dreamed that history would remember me,” said Anne Bronte.

“You dreamed, all right,” cackled Anne B. “Who doesn’t? Who of us didn’t?”

Anastasia opened her mouth thoughtfully, as if to speak, but Anne B. interrupted her.

“Although I suppose Anne Bronte has a point. We all could not have known what our legacies would be. Different circumstances. You just wait,” continued Anne B. to Anne F., “And try to remember. Ask yourself these questions: did you know anybody important in your life? Did you do anything meaningful?”

“Leave the girl alone,” said Anne H. “Anne F., Anastasia, why don’t you two search for a nice book?”

“Look for one about—” began Anne B.

“Nothing historical,” snapped Anne H. “I want no more fighting, for the moment. We need our space. Let’s all take some space.”

They wanted to give Anastasia her space.

Space from the imposter, space from the new addition. (It wasn’t easy, being old news, and all of them but Anne F. understood how Anastasia felt. Although none of them had ever dealt with an imposter. So they tried to give her space.)

But nobody could leave the room.

Anna was an old woman when she arrived. She followed not only Anne F., but also Annie O. and Annie S.

Anna was an old woman who’d experienced a quiet death. Peaceful, by some standards. Who else had had such peace? It was unimaginable.

Anna preferred the company of Annie S., who was blind and also patient.

Anna still believed she would be seeing her husband in “heaven.”

Sometimes Anne H. would cry out. “Susanna,” she would say, “They did not kill—”

They told tales of obliterated families. Families obliterated.

They were united by their traumas, their naming.

Anastasia would mention, “I remember a mauve room in the palace—”

Across the room, Anna: “—my mother’s room, a mauve room, a mauve room in the palace—the palace—”

Anne F. and Anastasia were competitors and best friends. When Anne F. was alive, she’d followed Anastasia’s story. Or was it Anna’s story?

“A lost princess!”

Anne F. never knew that Anna was an imposter; DNA tests had not been invented until—DNA tests have not yet been invented.

This was all before she received the diary—

She used to argue about it with her—

“—sisters,” moaned Anna, “my sisters are—”

“My sisters!”

All of them looked up. Anne H., Anne B., Anne Bronte and Anne Bonny. Annie S. Annie O. Anne F.

What would happen?

“And what is your name, then?” asked Anna of Anastasia. A hint of a smile on her face. Anna was an old woman who only liked the company of Annie S. or Anne H.

“I’m—” Anastasia began.

Something occurred to her. She wanted to grin. She remembered her Shura, her beloved nanny, and what was it Shura used to call her? Something about an imp. You imp, she would say, you—

Anastasia grinned.

“Why I’m hurt,” Anastasia said to Anna. “Don’t you know your own sister?”

Anna did not blink.

“Why—it cannot be—it has been so long—oh!”

Anna paused. Anna paused.

“Oh!”

Anna paused.

“Maria!” she said finally, “Maria, my, my—”

“Maria!” exclaimed Anastasia. “Then you do not recognize me at all. I am—” Anastasia hesitated, deciding—“I am Tatiana.”

“Tatiana,” said Anna, “Tatiana, my sister.” She stepped forward and took Anastasia’s hand.

An old woman.

A mean trick.

Anastasia pulled away.

“I’m not your damn sister,” said Anastasia. She had missed cursing.

“Tatiana! How can you say such a thing?”

“Damn you,” said Anastasia. “Damn, damn—”

“That is enough!”

A long pause, a soft—

“Anne H.?”

How strange it had been to hear Anne H. raise her voice.

“I’ve been held prisoner,” said Anastasia.

“And I escaped,” mused Anna.

“We’ve all been held prisoner.” Anne H.

“None of us escaped,” said Annie S. Was it an epiphany?

“We’re women.”

(A low voice from the room’s far corner. Process of Elimination. Why, Anne B.! How unlike you, you thought you could hide—)

“She is not in her right mind,” whispered Annie S.

Anne H. was sewing. The two of them watched Anna A., who was rifling through the crown jewels. Anastasia’s? Anne B.’s? Who gave a damn?

“No. No, she is not quite—how did you phrase it? In her right mind. But we must take care of her. Why, we’re all she has. Perhaps we can help her.”

“Help her find her true identity?” asked Annie S.

“Her true identity, yes! How fun it will be!”

Anne H. smiled at Annie S., but when she looked away she was not smiling; for a moment she could not remember how to smile.

Across the room, Annie O. was teaching something to Anastasia and Anne F.

“That’s it, lift—you aim with—ah! Perfect form, Anastasia! That’s my girl!”

“If only we could really shoot! Anything! A bird, a squirrel, a crazy imposter—Papa’s guards used to carry huge—”

Anne H. did not smile, across the room.

“What are they doing over there?” asked Annie O.

“Shotguns. Shotguns, even—even here.”

“And how did you die, then, Anne H.?”

The longing never ended.

“What color—?”

Her voice sounded very frail.

I have been working on this story since I got to India.

I have not gotten very far. (In my defense, my laptop died.) I hope feedback will kick me in the butt a bit. Go for it, y'all.

---

Title Title Title

Susceptible. That was the word Frank used, when I told him Deena was taking me with her to India. “You know how your mother is susceptible,” he said. “To things.” He cleared his throat awkwardly in between. His Adam’s apple bobbed like a fish.

I raised my eyebrows, which was unfair. I knew what he meant.

“You know how she—” He cleared his throat again. “How she gets carried away.”

When I didn’t reply, he added, finally, “I just don’t want you to get caught up in her mess.”

Which was kind of him, really. Fatherly, even.

We waited to check our bag behind a woman whose suitcase was ten pounds overweight. She argued with the airline representative behind the counter. Her double chins wagged. She was a medical missionary, she explained. She was bringing medicines, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, expired sutures—every ounce was necessary. Sweat trickled into her eyebrows.

I nudged Deena. “Do something,” I muttered.

Deena shrugged. Her bra strap slipped down her shoulder, past the sleeve of her tank top. She did not pull it back up.

“All of that stuff is for a good cause,” I said. “It’s to save lives.”

“I don’t like missionaries,” Deena said. “They give me the heebie-jeebies.”

The woman was stuffing thermometers from her suitcase into her carry-on. One of them fell to the floor, its clatter echoing on the tiles, and spun in circles, spiraling away from the woman. She heaved a huge, gusty sigh that was nearly a sob, and bent over further to pick it up, pushing sweaty bangs out of her eyes.

“That wasn’t very nice,” I said.

Deena shrugged again.

We had tried this before, but never in India. It had been Amsterdam for Kabbalah, floating down the canals with red thread tied around our wrists. I still remembered the crepes with ham and cheese, and the uneven cobblestone under my light-up sneakers, bought on sale at Payless a week before that first adventure. They pinched my toes after only six months, when we made our way to China, to try Buddhism this time. I switched to noodles, and sandals. A cart rolled over my big toe during our visit to the Great Wall, and the nail turned black and fell off. We went back to the States in January, with Frank; he was a Mormon, he thought Deena would love Salt Lake, he wanted to teach me to ski.

After the divorce, Deena made it as far as Reno. She ordered me to stop talking to Frank, but he called every Sunday anyway, to make sure I had finished my homework. Deena pretended not to notice, but the day after I recited “Hiawatha” to Frank over the phone, Deena asked how I felt about moving to New Mexico, to live with the Navajo nation. It was not a genuine inquiry; the suitcase was open on the kitchen table.

“They’re really connected, down there,” she told me.

“To what? The Internet?”

Deena frowned. “No. To birds. The sky. The Great Creator.”

“I thought you were over God,” I said.

“No,” Deena snapped. “I am over Mormonism. I am over Christianity. I am over Frank.” She paused. “There won’t be any Internet with the Navajos, Laura. There may not even be any telephone wires.”

The Navajos lasted the longest, longer even than Frank, and we had stayed with Frank long enough for me to call him Dad. But even the Navajos, who did have telephone, and sometimes Internet, soured with time. That was when Deena decided we needed to visit “the real Indians.” Which was when Frank drove from Salt Lake to the reservation, to take me to coffee, and warn me that Deena was susceptible. It was the first time I had seen him in three years.

I looked like Frank. When I was twelve, I had been happy for salespeople at the mall to mistake him for my real father. He was balder, now, than when I was twelve, and fatter. He put his hand on mine and asked me, please, to come live with him again in Salt Lake.

“That must be illegal,” I told him. “You never adopted me or anything.”

“Taking you to India in the middle of your junior year should be illegal. What about the SATs? What about college?”

“They offer the SATs abroad, you know. For diplomats’ kids and stuff.”

“Deena is not a diplomat,” Frank said. “Deena is a nomad. Deena is a parasite. Deena—”

“Needs looking after,” I interrupted. “Besides, I’ve never been to India.”

We were followed. Onto trains, into buses, around street corners, through markets and villages and down dusty rural roads. Villagers fed us and fed us until I was sick outside of a temple, half-digested pav bhaji splashing across the pile of shoes by the entrance. In the markets the salesmen showered Deena with anklets and bangles until she could barely lift her legs and arms, and the farmers gave her the ripest fruit from their stalls. Everybody wanted a photograph. Deena was small and brown and dark-haired like them, and I was tall and blonde and unusual-looking, but everybody wanted a photograph with Deena. I sat tucked into the rickshaws and did not ask questions. Deena would never have given me answers, anyway.

We were looking for an ashram—not just any old ashram, but a particular one, a traveling one. Every year the guru moved his meditation center to a new village or city, so only his true followers could find him. Deena had no doubt that she was one of these followers, but also no idea where the ashram was. We saw a lot of India that way, those first few months. Deena refused to stay at hotels, or buy bottled water. I got well acquainted with the feel of dirt beneath my cheek after I could no longer squat over the Indian toilets, my legs like rubber after voiding the entirety of my stomach in one steady, brown stream. Deena promised there would be real bathrooms when we reached the ashram, and that I could buy McDonald’s in the next city. I called Frank from a payphone outside the fast food strip in the train station, and asked him how much an airplane ticket to Utah would cost from Mumbai.

“Actually,” Frank told me, his voice more vague than usual through the cracked plastic receiver, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea anymore, Laura. I’m actually, um. Actually, I’m seeing someone new.”

He was kind enough to tell me he hoped everything would work out, and that I was a bright girl, and would go far. He said to send his best to Deena. Then he told me goodbye, not unfeelingly. Then he hung up.

My hands shook as I put the phone back on the hook, and my French fries spilled across the ground. A little boy darted forward and began to eat them, crouched like a stork, knees bent and wobbly from hunger. I handed him the whole cardboard container and went to find Deena in the Pizza Hut. She had cheese on her chin.

Pascale was expecting us. He showed us to a musty room with thick red curtains and a yellow bedspread on the lumpy double bed. A gecko crawled across the windowsill, and chanting wafted up from the courtyard through the open windows.

“Those are the sounds of morning meditation,” Pascale explained. He had a faint French accent, teeth stained from betel juice, a neatly-trimmed beard. He was handsome—more so when he smiled. “Normally I lead the meditations,” he said, “but I have been waiting for you.”

He looked at me when he said it. I blinked. He did not.

Deena laughed. The sound rippled across the room and sun streamed in the windows, flooding the small space. The air was suddenly stifling. Pascale tugged at his collar. Then he cleared his throat, and the room cleared with it; he was not smiling anymore.

“You and your daughter are most welcome,” he said to Deena. She beamed, and he paused, his fingertips pressed together; then he opened his palms, cupping his hands in greeting.

“But, of course, the minimum age for my ashram is twenty-five. I hope you understand.”

His hands fell away to his sides, now, fluttering like torn ribbons, apologetic, pathetic. I felt myself stand up straighter, and open my mouth.

“Not a problem.”

Deena said it. She clapped her hand on my shoulder; she had to reach up to do so. Her head bobbled away below my line of sight as she continued, “Laura’s not the spiritual type, anyway, she doesn’t have the gift for it.”

There was a long silence.

Then Pascale said, “I see,” and I could tell that he did not believe her. “In which case—shall we leave Laura to do the unpacking? And I will introduce you to your fellows downstairs.”

Deena waltzed out of the room right away, her scarf flapping behind her. Pascale lingered a little longer, looking at me. He was short, shorter than me, even if he was taller than Deena. He crossed his arms and drummed his fingers on them.

“We will make use of you, I think,” he said, finally, and then he turned and walked out.

I opened the suitcase, and started to unpack.

I cleared tables, washed dishes, hung laundry on the line, while Deena smoked shisha and sat cross-legged on the warm stones in the courtyard and chanted until she was hoarse. The ashram was a crumbling, haphazard facility, with one woman who did the cooking and a man to watch the gate. My arrival was, in many ways, propitious; had I not been there to do the rest of the household chores, Pascale would probably have moved the ashram again, which he did, usually, by leaving in the middle of the night and informing no one of his next destination.

Rachel told me this. She was Pascale’s former lover, which was why, she said, she held the record at having found Pascale no fewer than thirteen times. The next best was Desmond, a South African man, at six. “It’s because I slept with him,” she said. “Once you’ve had a man’s penis inside you, you have a pretty good idea where he’s headed next.” She said penis in a French accent: pen-ees. She looked at Deena when she said it.

Dear Friends

Hello! Since graduating Davidson, I've found myself missing reading the stories of my old classmates. I've also had trouble, at times, keeping up with my own writing, what with no readily available writing workshops to attend! So, after talking to a few of you, I decided to start this blog. I'm not really sure how blogging works, which is kind of a problem. But hopefully there will be a way for us to upload our stories, let each other know when we have something and would like feedback, and READ!

So I hope you all had a great holiday break! Or not a break? At any rate, I've invited the people who I initially thought of/know might be interested. Feel free to spread the word! I miss you guys!
Caitlin