I spent some time around my model roommate’s friends. They were a privileged and uniformly White group. Most of them kept to themselves when I walked in the room, but one was a little warmer than the rest. She was tall and thin with dark brown hair. Her eyes seemed to disappear when she smiled, which was often—but mine did too, so I didn’t mind. I liked that she had the guts to talk to me when most of her friends treated me like a leper. Eventually, I asked her to hang out with me at a park near our apartment. It was cold out, but I barely noticed because of how present and inviting she was. She listened to what I was feeling at the time—the isolation from my peers and the anxiety of trying to figure out how to eventually support myself—and told me the same from her side. While we were there, I drew a portrait of her. I sent it to her later.
She invited me to meet her close friends.
I realized she may have been interested in me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Sure, I’d had casual “relationships” with people who didn’t look like me. And sure, I’d met women from other ethnic groups and wanted to bring them home to my parents but couldn’t. But this was the first time someone I took seriously was returning the favor. Something about that—sitting at that diner in Brooklyn with her childhood friends, a half step away from a train ride to her White household—scared me. I was cold to her that night. When she tried to touch my hand under the table, I drew it back into my coat pocket. And when she asked me questions about my family or my childhood in order to clue her friends in, I gave short answers and looked at the door rather than at her. Her friends could tell that something was off and offered to walk her home. I went with them, and one of them gave me the evil eye the whole time. I must have seemed dangerous.
Soon after that, we had one of our loft parties. I invited the girl I’d drawn. We hadn’t communicated much after that night with her friends, but I wanted a second chance. I started drinking before the sun went down. People showed up. I looked for the girl. She didn’t show, so I drank. My model roommate brought hundreds of gold chocolate coins from the Alexander Wang after-party and scattered them across the floor. His girlfriend had a Polaroid OneStep and took individual portraits of each one of our mutual friends except for me.
More people showed up. I looked for the girl. She still didn’t show, so I drank more. A local musician who was friends with the French girl played a set amid twinkling Christmas lights and a crowd that was surging by the minute. I danced on top of the wooden coffee table I’d purchased at IKEA until it fell in on itself and cut me.
More people showed up. I tried to forget about the girl but couldn’t. I drank more. There were plenty of young women there—cute ones too, in miniskirts and halter tops—but I was waiting for the one I’d invited. It became apparent that she wasn’t going to show up at all. I started breaking bottles against the kitchen floor like the overgrown child I was. A few friends joined in. My roommate made us stop. His face went red as the people who were friends with him but whispered about “that black kid from North Carolina” in the hallways of our school looked on.
People started to leave. I would’ve drunk more if I weren’t busy being drunk. Part of the party and I spilled out into the hallway, where we mixed and mingled with another party that was going on next door. We’d switched to punk music. The guitar was driving at points and frenetic at others. The lyrics were undecipherable. I was on my way back in when somebody pushed me. I hit him. Then I felt a wave of hands grip me and shove me out of my apartment. The door slammed in my face. I went downstairs to a friend’s apartment. I was furious, but he calmed me down and told me that from the sound of the footsteps coming through his ceiling, I’d walked into the middle of an impromptu mosh pit and it was all just a misunderstanding. Then I went back upstairs and knocked on the door. I could hear that the party had ended, and I just wanted to go to sleep.
“Go away!” I heard from one of my roommates.
“Dude, let me in!”
“You fucking embarrassed all of us tonight. I don’t want to live with you!”
“That’s fine, but my name is on the lease—let me in!”
“The cops came because of you!”
“They’ve been here all night—there were four parties going on! Let me in!”
I kicked the door. The hinges buckled. I kicked it again, then I heard it unlock. It opened. I stepped through and then felt the blunt force of a closed fist against my left eye. I flew backward against the white wall opposite our apartment.
“Nigger,” I heard as I tried to keep upright. The word meant there was no going back. The door slammed and locked again as my face began to swell. I went downstairs to see if my superintendent had an ice pack or a key or both.
I STOPPED REMEMBERING and began to look around. The recollection had only taken a few moments. All I really heard in my head was the way the word had rolled off of each speaker’s tongue. I started to see the scene before me as it unfolded itself. I was out there on that hot summer day in New York, standing in the middle of Tompkins Square Park in my Curry 1s with my pizza in the trash can and something nasty on the tip of my tongue.
Maybe I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t been so dejected. But the memories of pain and rejection hung over me like a spirit that never received proper burial rites. I’d gotten too many interviews over the phone that led to shocked looks in person, loose handshakes, and we’ll call yous. Too many people slid over when I sat next to them on crowded subway trains. I’d heard too many headlines about Black boys and men being gunned down in the streets that didn’t directly pertain to me but somehow felt as if they could have included my name in place of the victim of the day’s.
I’d been reduced to a stereotype—someone who woke up without an alarm clock, hung out by the basketball court, drank to forget, and did it all again without thinking twice about why or how or for how long that could last. I’d been reduced to that word they called me—the one I heard on my first day at my first job, the one the kid called me at summer camp, the one my play uncles used in jest, the one that was a threat of violence but never ceased to be violent in and of itself, the one I bled to that night in Brooklyn, the one I’d never said before.
I looked over at Bo Jackson Jr. with the basketball in his hand.
I opened my mouth.
I squared my shoulders.
And I let it fly.
“Nigga, if you don’t give me that damn ball!”
He looked at me, wide-eyed.
All of the lost love and shared hopelessness and dismal kinship was sent out into the hot summer air. It bounced off of the ozone until it pressed back down on everyone within earshot with enough force and power to melt a press or make the air in front of you ripple like a puddle in a rainstorm. I stood and sounded like a man, and yet I felt a piece of my humanity leaving my body. I saw the yoke that my ancestors once wore, how it connected them by the neck and shoulders. I saw the chains that bound them at the ankles in steerage. I formed my own wireless connection, volatile, with sparks like a Tesla coil. And it threatened my vitality but made me feel free.
“My bad,” he said. “You got next with ol’ boy over there.”
Isaac Hughes Green attended the North Carolina State University MFA program and NYU Tisch, has been published in The Georgia Review, and won the 2021 Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize, in addition to being longlisted for The Masters Review’s 2019 Fall Fiction contest and receiving honorable mention for the 2019 James Hurst Prize for Fiction. Green screened a film in the Cannes Short Film Corner and has won screenwriting and cinematography awards. He centers diversity in his writing.
ABOUT THE JUDGES
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Esquire, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the Na
tional Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees.
KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE is the author of Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Story Prize, and winner of a 2020 American Book Award. She is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, such as The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and The American Scholar. Her stories have been translated into numerous languages.
BETH PIATOTE is the author of the mixed-genre collection The Beadworkers: Stories, which was long-listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and short-listed for the California Independent Bookselller Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award in Fiction. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, Catapult, Moss, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is Nez Perce enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
ABOUT THE PEN/ROBERT J. DAU SHORT STORY PRIZE FOR EMERGING WRITERS
THE PEN/ROBERT J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes twelve fiction writers for a debut short story published in a print or online literary magazine. The annual award was offered for the first time during PEN America’s 2017 literary awards cycle.
The twelve winning stories are selected by a committee of three judges. The writers of the stories each receive a $2,000 cash prize and are honored at the annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City. Every year, Catapult publishes the winning stories in Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize.
This award is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts has made him a fitting namesake for this career-launching prize. Mr. Dau was born and raised in Petoskey, a city in Northern Michigan in close proximity to Walloon Lake, where Ernest Hemingway had spent his summers as a young boy and which serves as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. Petoskey is also known for being where Hemingway determined that he would commit to becoming a writer. This proximity to literary history ignited the Dau family’s interest in promoting emerging voices in fiction and spotlighting the next great fiction writers.
LIST OF PARTICIPATING PUBLICATIONS
PEN AMERICA AND Catapult gratefully acknowledge the following publications, which published debut fiction in 2020 and submitted work for consideration to the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize.
3Elements Literary Review
805 Lit + Art
adda
AGNI
American Short Fiction
Barrelhouse
Berkeley Fiction Review
Black Warrior Review
Boston Review
Brio Literary Journal
Carve Magazine
Change Seven
Columbia Journal
The Common
The Conium Review
The Courtship of Winds
Defunkt Magazine
Dispatches
Down River Road
Driftwood Press
Dristikon
Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading
Electric Literature’s The Commuter
English Bay Review
Epiphany Magazine
Evergreen Review
Exposition Review
Fairy Tale Review
Five Points
Foglifter
Forever Endeavour Magazine
The Forge Literary Magazine
Four Way Review
GASHER Journal
The Georgia Review
The Gettysburg Review
Granta
The Gravity of the Thing
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts
Hypertext Review
The Ilanot Review
International Human Rights Art Festival
Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art
Lightspeed Magazine
The Literary Review
The Lit Quarterly
Lit Star Review
The Los Angeles Review
McSweeney’s
Memorious
Mensa Bulletin
Michigan Quarterly Review
midnight & indigo
Midwest Review
Muumuu House
New England Review
Newfound
The New Yorker
New York Tyrant Magazine
Nimrod International Journal
NOON
Nowhere Magazine
October Hill Magazine
Okay Donkey Magazine
Orca
Oxford American
Oyez Review
Oyster River Pages
PANK
Pigeon Pages
Ploughshares
Porter House Review
Prospectus: A Literary Offering
Puerto del Sol
Roars & Whispers
The Rumpus
The Rupture
Salamander
sinθ magazine
So to Speak
The Southern Review
Southwest Review
The Summerset Review
SUNU: Journal of African Affairs, Critical Thought + Aesthetics
The Threepenny Review
Timeworn Literary Journal
Virginia Quarterly Review
Washington Square Review
Waxwing Magazine
West Branch
Westerly Magazine
Wild Roof Journal
Wordrunner eChapbooks
PERMISSIONS
“The First Time I Said It” by Isaac Hughes Green. First published in The Georgia Review 74.3 (Fall 2020). Copyright © Isaac Hughes Green. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Force, Mass, Acceleration” by Heather Aruffo. First published in The Southern Review volume 56, number 3 (Summer 2020). Copyright © Heather Aruffo. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Good Girls” by Lindsay Ferguson. First published in Barrelhouse (February 14, 2020). Copyright © Lindsay Ferguson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The List” by Stanley Patrick Stocker. First published in Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art 42 (Winter 2019/2020). Copyright © Stanley Patrick Stocker. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Mandy’s Mary Sue” by Qianze Zhang. First published in sinθ magazine #17 “STICKY 粘” (November 16, 2020). Copyright © Qianze Zhang. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Maria” by Amy Haejung. First published in Waxwing Literary Journal XXI (Summer 2020). Copyright © Amy Haejung. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Math of Living” by Nishanth Injam. First published in Virginia Quarterly Review 96.4 (Winter 2020). Copyright © Nishanth Injam. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Re: Frankie” by Mackenzie McGee. First published in Porter House Review (November 30, 2020). Copyright © Mackenzie McGee. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Salt” by Alberto Reyes Morgan. First published in Michigan Quarterly Review volume 59, number 4 (Fall 2020). Copyright © Alberto Reyes Morgan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Strong-Strong Winds” by Mathapelo Mofokeng. First published in adda (September 15, 2020). Copyright © Mathapelo Mofokeng. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Taxi” by Pardeep Toor. First published in Midwest Review volume 8 (2020). Copyright © Pardeep Toor. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Transit” by Khaddafina Mbabazi. First published in Virginia Quarterly Review 96.3 (Fall 2020). Copyright © Khaddafina Mbabazi. Reprinted by permission of the author.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. The organization champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate cre
ative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Copyright © 2021 by Catapult
First published in the United States in 2021 by Catapult (catapult.co)
All rights reserved
Please see Permissions on pages 199–200 for individual credits.
ISBN: 978-1-64622-079-3
Cover design by Nicole Caputo
Cover illustration by Sirin Thada
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936334
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Best Debut Short Stories 2021 Page 16