by Kelly Link
Jazzerie shoots up her hand. “Can I go first?”
“Kristi, you’re up,” I say.
Kristi flinches. She rises automatically, tripping over her own backpack, weaving her awkward way around desks to the front of the classroom. She looks over to me as if she is pleading, tries to speak to the class, and looks back over to me. I know this makes me a bad person.
“Um, Virginia is a state for lovers,” she begins.
“You know what, Kristi, on second thought, why don’t you go on Monday,” I say, fanning myself with a book.
“I-I can do this,” she stammers.
“Nope. You know, today is not a day for Virginia. You can go on Monday. It’s fine. It’ll be better this way,” I say. “Jazzerie, if you want to go, the time is now.”
“It’s just what I found in my research,” Kristi says.
“Jazz-er-ie.”
Kristi jangles some brass bracelets on her wrist. She looks as if she might cry. I tell myself she is not upset, just confused. A pencil drops to the floor. The heat clicks on, for some stupid reason, and blows stale hot breath on my neck.
Jazzerie confidently sashays up to the front of the classroom. It is like she was born to give this presentation. She flicks back her ponytail with her hand. Standing with her legs apart, she pulls out a thick stack of notecards from her jeans pocket. She reads swiftly, her nose tilted up toward the class.
“I have Alaska, the largest state, and Rhode Island, the smallest. They are opposites. Rhode Island is cute and tiny and way over here and its state bird is the domesticated red chicken. While Alaska is like the Hulk on steroids, way over there. In fact, Rhode Island can fit in Alaska over four hundred twenty times. Alaska is America’s Last Frontier. Its state bird is the willow ptarmigan, which is kind of like a chicken, but it’s not. And the state flower is the forget-me-not, a blue flower, a flower of remembrance, often worn by ladies as a sign of faithfulness and everlasting love.”
“Enough. Pens and paper,” I say, standing up from my desk. They know this means they need to write this down, that a quiz may be looming.
Jazzerie protests, “But I just started my—”
“Jazzerie, sit down now.”
And she does, but not before she gives me her jaw-swinging braces bitch face. From my blazer pocket, I whip out my homemade notecards, more prison scrawl and smudged pen.
I begin. “North Carolina is this green state. Here. Capital, Ra-leigh. The Wright brothers flew the first plane at Kitty Hawk. Look at this: mountains, piedmont, coast. North Carolina sandwich. The Tar Heel State. Home of the Panthers. The cardinal is the state bird and the state flower is the dogwood. North Carolina’s state motto is ‘To be, rather than to seem.’ And you should always be someone you are and never seem like someone that you will never be. Because seeming is lying. It is cheating, plagiarism. And that’s all you need to know about North Carolina. Oh, and that Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, was born there in Waxhaw. And did you know that Andrew Jackson’s wife died of stress because he was obsessed with winning the election? This is what happens when your whole life revolves around someone else and their elitist life goals.”
My students look up at me and back down, their pens and pencils furiously scribbling. I pause. Jeff peers over to Jazzerie to cheat off her notes. They whisper about something and giggle. Flirting probably. Flirting in my class like little shitstorms.
“He killed his wife?” Durrell says. He rubs his head with his eraser. “In North Carolina?”
“South Carolina,” I say loudly. Loudly enough for the whole room to quiet and everyone to stop writing. Light filters into the classroom at a sharp angle and the tops of my students’ heads light up for a second before it slips behind some clouds. “The Palmetto State. Back in the day, people made palmetto cabbage from the trees, and you bet that it tasted like boiled vomit. They never could cook, but what’s worse is that they never even tried. Trees don’t taste good. There is enough real food here to satisfy a nation, and they were lazy. South Carolina: the first to secede from the Union. Launch of the Civil War, which wasn’t civil at all, which is good. You should never have civil breakups. And if you do have a civil breakup, don’t get left behind with the cats and the apartment. You don’t want these things, believe me. Don’t buy an electrified rock mat at the recommendation of your therapist. It won’t bring you peace of mind. Columbia is the capital. State bird: Carolina wren. State flower: yellow jasmine. See that? It’s yellow on the map. Yellow state, yellow jasmine.”
I know I’m going down the train track to hell, but I can’t stop myself.
“‘In South Carolina there are many tall pines’ is the beginning of a Gram Parsons song that you’ve probably never heard because you’re thirteen, but this is not a song I ever want to hear again, especially in the morning on a foggy day when I’m feeding seagulls a lasagna dinner that was never eaten. South Carolina has several attractions as a tourist destination. For instance, Middleton Place is a damn Southern castle. Have you been to the beach? Dolphins, guaranteed. Which is why South of the Border is never a place where you take your girlfriend, never, especially not on her thirtieth birthday. Not even for art. Do not take your girlfriend to a campy tourist mecca with a thirty-foot sombrero-hatted neon-lit tower. After all this time, you should know her better. And if you happen to do this, you do not say, Isn’t this funny? Isn’t this fascinating? as a way to make up for the fact you are stalled here for a good three hours because someone needs to dick off doing some kind of art thing on South of the Border.”
Jazzerie’s hand springs up. “But I love South of the Border.”
“Why would a person like that place?”
“Because it’s fun. And they have really good popcorn and you can pet donkeys and stuff.”
We glare at each other. In my mind, Jazzerie is being thrown out the window by a blown-up cardboard version of South Carolina, thrown to a muddy pickup truck that will take her far, far away from here. She begins to talk again, but I overpower her.
“South Carolina is a very important state,” I yell, clapping my hands together. I wonder, briefly, if I could be suspended. I flip wildly through my notecards, toss some to the floor. My students have stopped writing entirely. I gasp for breath. “South Carolina has a motto, ‘Dum spiro spero,’ which means ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ And couldn’t we all use a little hope these days? Right? State shell: the lettered olive. The Riverdogs are our minor league baseball team, but don’t fall in love at baseball games because it’s probably a curse. And lastly, the state mineral of South Carolina is the amethyst, which is used to heal people who hurt, especially in February, because it is February.”
Crying in front of eighth graders is a new low point in my life. I can’t even look at them. All my notecards fallen, splayed out all over the floor. Bless America, shit.
I stumble to a cold metal chair off to the left of the blackboard. I drip liquid snot. When I finally look up, they are all staring at me. Horrified, contorted, tearful faces. There are only the faint sounds from outside, a little buzz of traffic. We sit like this for some time before I call on Durrell.
Durrell, backpack still strapped, carries a two-gallon cooler to the front of the class and rests it on my desk. He pulls out a sleeve of Dixie cups from his backpack and untwists the tie. Carefully, he rests the cups on the chalk rest of the chalkboard, then changes his mind and sets them quietly on my desk. He leans back from me, pouring a small cup of red juice that smells like syrup. His hands are dry and small, even for a thirteen year-old. He sets the cup in front of me; the red substance sways, then calms. He doesn’t dare look me in the eye.
Two, three cups at a time, he fills them halfway and hands them out to the class by rows. Somehow they automatically know to pass the little cups back so everyone can have one. He is careful not to step on my fallen notecards, only nudging a few with the tip of his Air Jordans.
/> “Nebraska was my first state. Edwin Perkins invented Kool-Aid in Nebraska in 1927,” Durrell says. Durrell talks about meadowlarks and corn before he starts his report about New York, but I’m not really able to listen. He even makes the class laugh about something I don’t hear because I’m trying to focus intently on the Kool-Aid Dixie cup disintegrating on my planner. I’m only able to stare at this sample size of Kool-Aid. I pick it up and take a sip, knowing it will stain my teeth.
At the end of class, I tell them I’ll see them Monday, when the rest of their state projects are due. I tell them they all get A’s for the day, as some kind of coded desperate bribe. They file out. Jazzerie flies past me, Jeff chasing after her. Kristi gives me a half smile then war-paths. Durrell tells me to try to relax this weekend. He tells me his older brother freaks out sometimes and nods as if I’m supposed to understand what this means. I assume it’s not good.
The sun shines in that strange angle where all the dust lights up, swirling and twinkling. I could be slipping into another dimension. Maybe if I try, I’ll end up some place far away, like Nebraska or Iowa, or, better yet, Alaska. Of course, this doesn’t work. They won’t turn in their projects Monday. They can’t. It’s Presidents’ Day and there is no school.
The following week I ask to take a temporary leave of absence.
“Two weeks,” Dr. Sarah DeMint says, relieved, “should give you a little regroup time.”
After our meeting, I drive my clunker junker down 17-South as if I’m going to Savannah, through some forests and marshes, past some white-tailed deer gathering by the side of the road. The highway becomes two lanes. I make a sudden turn, onto the connector to Edisto Island, and am reminded how much Micah enjoyed this drive. He loved it because he thought it was like going into space above the green marshland, stretching endlessly.
I pull over here on the connector and get out. Every now and then, a car zooms past. I planned to drop my amethysts and homespun notecards over the bridge, but I decide against it. Actually, I’m not sure why I drove out here. When I made the turn, I thought I might break down, but I think it’s all out now.
I look out into the space of the land, the air cool and nipping at the exposed space between my cropped pants and my socks. The color of the water seems to match the grayness in the sky. Marsh grass has faded to a rusty wheat. There is a flock of geese off toward the horizon. A few ibises, like little white specks, flutter and disappear into the grass. From somewhere there is a whiff of detritus and pluff mud. I take a deep breath and get back into my car and drive home.
To my surprise, I receive a letter in the mail a few days later. It’s from my geography class. How could they want anything to do with me, ever again? Get Well Soon, it says with all their scrawly middle school signatures and a few state mottoes.
Durrell writes that Oregon’s state motto is “She flies with her own wings.” He says, “Be a bird, Ms. R. (And that wasn’t even my state!)”
Kristi says, “New Hampshire says, ‘Live free or die!’”
There are a few others: “I have found it”; “To the stars through adversity”; “Ever upward”; “It grows as it goes; Eureka!”
I make a little pin prick near the top of the fold in the card. I pin it with a nail to my wall, fold my arms and stand back.
______________
Amy Sauber lives in New Hampshire, where she is working on a collection of short stories. From the Carolinas, she holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and currently teaches in Maine.
Editor’s Note
“The Asphodel Meadow” stood out from the very beginning, both in terms of style and subject matter. With its minimalistic, matter-of-fact sentences and its way of introducing the premise with just the right amount of ambiguity and feeling, the story quickly became an interesting and entertaining read. We’re suckers for engaging first-person narratives, and especially those that make us empathize with the protagonist and root for the underdog, regardless of whether the eventual outcome is ever disclosed and without having complete details of the entire situation. Another notable characteristic of the story is the way it uses repeated words and phrases. For us, 99 percent of the time we see repeated words, we wince and cringe, but in this piece the repetition works.
Joseph Levens, editor
The Summerset Review
The Asphodel Meadow
Jim Cole
He invited my wife to hike up a mountain. She laughed. She twisted her hair in a tight bun. He stepped out onto the porch and picked up the morning newspaper. The air was cool. Dew covered the buttercups. He put the roof down on his sports car. A neighbor peeked through the curtains. Lamb’s wool covered the car seats. My wife put on her shorts. She pulled a pink T-shirt over her black bra. She slipped her feet into white sandals. She nestled in the sheepskin. He handed her the newspaper. She dropped it on the floorboard.
She turned to him and said, “Look at what passes for the new. You will not find it there but in despised poems.”
She pushed her feet against the dashboard and stroked black polish on her toenails. “Don’t hit any fucking bumps,” she said.
He dropped a backpack behind her seat. Inside the backpack there was a bottle of water and a map and a bag of almonds and a pomegranate and a pocketknife.
“Don’t fucking drip on my upholstery,” he said.
He turned the key in the ignition and they headed toward the mountain.
My wife is a poet. Four years ago, a publisher accepted her first book. We were on our honeymoon. We were camping in an orange tent. I woke in the sleeping bag the second morning and the light inside the tent was orange, and my wife was gone. The tent flap was open. I looked up and stared at a mosquito on the ceiling.
They listened to traffic reports and jazz. He drove fast on the highway out of the city. He drove down a dirt road and over a wooden bridge. He parked the car in a meadow that had tall grass and lilies and cows. The cows turned their heads and they looked at my wife.
He got out of the car. He unfolded the map. He spread the map on the hood. The hood of the car was hot. On the map it said the top of the mountain was 1,044 feet above sea level. My wife opened her car door. He spread the map in the dirt. My wife put her feet on the corners of the map and looked. He kneeled down and he put his thumb on a spot on the map that read, 1,044 ft. He stretched out his hand and he put his little finger near my wife’s left foot.
He said, “That’s how far we have to go. How far do you think it is from there to there?”
He held up his hand and stared from his thumb to his little finger. His knees were dirty.
“Annie,” he said, “that’s where we are going. A beautiful meadow full of flowers. Hot as hell, but filled with flowers. Drink water. It’ll be hot as hell. Stay hydrated.”
She said, “I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell.”
The second morning of my honeymoon, the air in the tent was cold. My eyesight was blurry. I looked around the tent. I took a sip of water from a plastic bottle. I peeked outside. Three elk walked by.
My wife started to hike up the trail. The trail was in the woods. They walked in the shade. They saw poison oak. They saw ferns. They saw three banana slugs. They saw spider webs. They looked at trees lying on the ground. Those trees were dead. The ground was soft. He stopped to pee and saw orange mushrooms. My wife saw a black caterpillar. He took off his shoes and his socks. He walked in the mud. His toes were muddy. He said, “Take off your sandals.”
“My nails. They’re going to get muddy,” my wife said. She asked him if the ground felt chilly. She said she was afraid of banana slugs. She smiled.
They walked beside a stream. He carried my wife’s sandals in the backpack. They saw a cluster of forget-me-nots. He said if he tried to pick them for her, he would fall in the water. She laughed. She s
aid she would like to see that.
“That’s the German legend,” he said. “The girl’s lover dies drowning. You know I can’t swim, right?”
“Maybe I would save you,” my wife said.
My wife picked four blackberries. He pointed to acorns on the trail. He pointed at hoofprints on the trail. He said they were from unicorns. He walked beside my wife where the trail widened. He said maybe she could capture a unicorn.
She sat on a log. Her toes were muddy. He rubbed the mud off her feet. He slipped her feet into her sandals.
They walked out of the woods. They were on the top of the mountain. My wife saw two praying mantises. They did not move. They were the color of the grass. She saw a lizard on a rock. She saw another praying mantis.
My wife pointed at the lizard and she said, “Look at that. How did it lose its tail?”
He said, “Maybe his lover bit it off.”
“No,” she said, “that’s praying mantises. And it’s their heads.”
He saw two praying mantises beside a stream. One was eating a fly.
He said, “Why are there so many fucking praying mantises?”
That morning on my honeymoon, I found my wife sitting in a green truck with a park ranger. I walked to the truck. I had on boxers and wool socks. Pine needles stuck to my socks.
“They called,” she said through the windshield. She made a fist against her cheek and held out her thumb and little finger. She opened the door. “They called. They found me all the way out here.”
I said, “You left me.”
She had on my gray sweatpants and a pair of sandals.
“The ranger knocked on the tent door,” she said. “He said I had a phone call. A call from New York. All the way out here. It must have been nine o’clock there. They accepted my collection, and they found me. Who knows how they found me?”