My eyes were so dry I thought about getting my eye drops out of my purse, but Frank was talking and I wanted to pay attention. If I had to pinpoint the exact time I realized something was wrong, that was it. Frank was talking about some of the tactics writers use to get their stuff published, and looking at him, I realized there was something not quite right about his face. Like it didn't fit the bones right, and then I realized that his voice sounded off, too. Like it was coming from somewhere other than his chest. His mouth was moving, but the words were coming from someplace else.
Sweat was trickling down between my breasts, and it came to me then—like a whole story delivered in a manuscript box tied with string. I knew what was in the basement and why he'd said “no.” I knew why the orange cat had yowled and rubbed against my legs, and why Frank had taken it away, gone into the kitchen and come back without it. There were other things, too, like Frank saying there was a second story to the house, but when I looked as I left at five o'clock, there wasn't a second story. I looked from under my umbrella, looked as I ran to my car, and saw only a low roofline behind dripping tree branches. When the workshop ended, I just grabbed my jacket and my satchel of stories and got out of there as fast as I could. It was still raining, and maybe he can't leave the house when it's raining. Maybe he needs it to be hot and dry and that's why the register was blowing all day from the basement furnace.
As strange as it seems, I didn't ever see the stairs to the basement. There was one door off the kitchen that was closed the whole time, but it didn't really look like a door that would lead to a basement. It was white with a little window in the top, covered by a curtain with pale orange flowers, and I thought I saw it quiver in the hot dry air.
No. I want to be sure to tell it right. I actually didn't have my umbrella that first time when I ran down the steps of the porch, slippery with wet leaves and chipped green paint. I had my head down and I didn't look back because it was raining hard and I wanted to get into my car. That's when my hair got so wet. It curls, frizzes really, when it gets wet like that. I went back for my umbrella later. That's why I went back, to get my umbrella propped up there by the register in the dining room, but also to save them, his wife and daughter.
When I go back later to get my umbrella, I can see through the screen door that there is no one in the workshop room. The sound of the rain on the porch roof covers the noise I make opening the door. Then I see them, worn wooden stairs leading upward to the second story in a dim hallway by the dark fireplace. Maybe the cat had come from there, from the stairs blocked by Frank.
At the top of the stairs, I see a door. It is closed, and the window in it is covered with a tan curtain with pale orange flowers, just like I remember. I open the door and no one is there.
But I am there, lying face down on the light blue chenille bedspread. The one where you can trace the raised swirls with your fingertips while you listen to music, which is why you can't hear him come in. My legs and feet are bare and tanned, the calves strong like a sixteen-year-old swimmer's. He puts his hand around one calf because he likes to feel the muscle there. I try to turn, try to call out, but he already has his knee on my back and his hand, stinking of onions and cigarettes, over my mouth, and I know it will be like it always is.
Why don't I call out for my mother, later, when he takes his hand away from my mouth so that he can use it for other things? My mother is just down the hall, sitting in her pink chair by the window in her bedroom, reading her Ladies Home Journal, painting her nails the same color as the chair. Stupid girl. You are so stupid. He slaps me hard in the face, and blood trickles from my nose onto the pillowcase. That will be hard to get out. If I don't get up and rinse it in cold water, that stain will set. You never listen, he hisses, stupid girl. He slaps me again. But if I call out for her now, while my mother's boyfriend is here, on top of me, his sweaty belly heaving against my back, won't she make him stop?
He whispers to me while he does it, his breath putrid from cigarettes, onions, and beer. Whispers that if I tell, then things will really get ugly. That he'll leave for good, stop giving us money, or maybe even come back and burn down this rat hole of a house. I'll tell her you beg for it, that you walk around in your little white bra and panties when she isn't here, that you stick your tongue in my ear while I'm watching the game on the tube.
It's a mystery to me how he can talk the whole time, a continuous monologue of hot threats mixed with lies, while he does the other things that I won't remember now, with the rain on the roof right above my head. My hair is in my mouth, and he turns me over and I follow the little cracks in the ceiling while tears drip into my ears. I know not to whimper or beg because the whispered please, please just makes it last longer. My breasts are sore from the bruises he left last time and I pray they won't show above the top of my swimsuit when I go to practice tomorrow.
She is such a stupid girl, lying there all those times with her music on so she can't hear him coming. I want to tell her how stupid she is. I want to tell her about the danger in her house, about what is down in the basement. So I tell her not to let the aliens or cats or ghosts or man or any other story—whatever is down there—do those things to her, that she can use her strong swimmer's legs to stop it. But she looks at me with those stupid blue eyes, hair in her mouth, and all I can do is slap her hard in the face. Blood runs into her ears and onto the blue chenille, and the last thing I tell her before I leave is that she had better rinse that bedspread in cold water before the stain sets.
Late at night, after I close the shutters in my room, I stand close to the mirror and study myself. I have the heat turned up so that warm air from the vent high on the ceiling whispers across the bruises, and my fingers trace them like the raised pattern on a bedspread.
When I show him the story I wrote after the workshop, Frank looks at me and says, “Good!” My right hand pulls the collar of my blouse together. He isn't yet what I need him to be, and I've got to be sure he doesn't see the bruises—not yet.
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The Secretary
Rose Black
After my mother's death, I emptied the secretary.
The secretary was part bookcase, part desk. Three drawers with brass pulls formed the base, the desk folded out on brass hinges. Glazed doors shielded bookshelves and cubby holes. Cove molding, lacquered and curled. Front feet, carved claws.
Into it, my mother put locks of coppery hair, sealed in cellophane packets. Tiny drawers kept keys to padlocks and trunks, skeleton keys, to the side door, to the basement, some to unknown drawers.
On the side, a board of pockets and hooks held plastic beads, old cotton gloves, more keys. One hook held a pendant of clear cut glass.
Across sixty-five years, Christmas cards, Hanukkah cards, family photos strung like popcorn, on red yarn with paper clips. We love you, Ida, said the Christmas card from her dentist and his five beautiful children, sent on vacation from Maui.
Checks and bills stuffed into dividers. Seven small drawers above the desk. Bundles of letters filled the larger drawers. A draft of her resignation from the Florence Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers: After seventeen years, I am no longer comfortable and happy in my work. A draft of her resignation from Crumbaugh Real Estate: Dear Mr. Crumbaugh, I can no longer work at your company. Your anti-Semitic remarks are unacceptable. I never told you this before, but I am Jewish.
I did not want to think anymore about outsides and insides, about where things had come from, and why. I took everything off, everything out. I wiped all the surfaces with a damp cloth, reached in, to the inside. I polished the wood with oil, until it began to glow.
I gave the secretary to a pregnant woman who lived down the street. A few weeks later, she sent me a packet of letters, found in a secret drawer.
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Krishnaware
Amelia Beamer
"So great was Radha's love for Krishna that even today her name is uttered whenever Krishna is referred to,
and Krishna worship is thought to be incomplete without the deification of Radha."
—Madhuri Guin
Radha is aware first of the sun on her face and fabric on her skin. Her hands are wrapped around a mug of ginger tea; she can smell it. Next, a girl's high chatter with the vibrato of bumblebees. Radha's vision finally boots, and she can see she has picked up at the second chapter of Krishnaware, the third scene, in the caf? with the other gopi. Waiting for Krishna.
This time the transition isn't as bad. This time she can breathe. Radha shrugs, and the last whispers of her daily life dissolve, programming deadlines and impersonal apartment walls replaced by the fine tang of dust yellows and the wide, wet blues of India. She is Radha here, and Radha is awake.
Radha's companion babbles on, not noticing how Radha grips the cup as her nausea lifts. The gopi girl is talking about how beautiful Krishna is, how she wants to have her turn, she'd like to have his undivided attention for even a minute. She bites her lip and turns her face away, thinking about it. Radha takes advantage of the pause. Once this was a game. Now it feels too real.
"Do you love him?” Radha asks. She is not unkind.
"Of course,” the bubbly girl answers, pulling her veil away from the breeze and over her smile. “We all do."
Radha smiles back, but it is fake. She leans forward as if to say something important, but then only nods in agreement. “Of course we all do."
Krishna enters the caf? patio then, pretending not to hear them. Radha is facing away from him, but she knows he's there. She knows he's wearing the white dhoti, carrying his flute, and smiling impishly, because this is what Krishna always does at this point in the story. The other girl, as she always does, seems to remember something terribly important that requires her attention. She stands and raises her hand to wave to her god, then turns and scampers off to a group of girls. They look to Radha's still-clearing vision as if they were made of teeth and fabric and sunlight.
Radha feels Krishna approach, inhales Krishna's smell of men and animals to push Christina, that other self in the apartment, away.
"Kisliye Radha jale?” he asks, cocking his head towards the girls. She has turned the translator off; she has already heard everything Krishna says at this part. C'mon. Are you jealous? His dark eyes and white teeth shine.
Radha stops herself from saying no. She leans back in her chair, drinking in his presence. The sky is too bright, the colors are too vivid. But she knows that she will adjust.
"Radha kaise na jale,” she says instead. How can I not be jealous? She smiles sweet and bitter, like an unripe peach.
Krishna sits across from her at the table, leaning in a bit closer than necessary. He runs a finger along her jaw. She tingles after his warm touch.
"You know how I feel about you. You don't have to worry about those other girls. So what if they like me? You're the only one I care about.” His voice is deep, and Radha wants to believe the huskiness is emotion.
"Will you never say the words?” she asks. Her voice is soft, that of someone in mourning.
"Love doesn't work that way. You know it when you look at me. I don't care about anything else, even death,” Krishna says.
Radha is the mortal in love with the god. She meets his eyes, remembers to breathe.
Krishna is gorgeous. He looks straight at Radha, and she pulls her veil over her mouth.
What's bothering her isn't really the other gopi; after as much time as she's spent in Krishnaware, she knows this. The girls stretch in the sun, hoping for his attention. Radha has not forgotten that she used to be one of them. She looks at them a second too long and triggers an audio prompt.
"Gopi are the girls that follow Krishna."
Radha tries to ignore this. Disabling the infodump protocol might tip the admin off to her other hacks.
She can hear their bird voices giggling. In the scripture they were milkmaids; now they are waitresses and bank tellers. Radha doesn't work as a milkmaid or a waitress anymore, though she has vague memories of singing and cows. There are many stories of Krishna and his followers, Radha thinks. Including this one.
"How am I supposed to feel?” Radha says. Krishna leans forward and kisses her, then moves away just as quickly. Radha can't help tasting her lips, closing her eyes.
When she looks at Krishna again, he is leaning back on the chair, grinning at the girls. The girls grasp each other's hands tightly, brown-black eyes glinting like sunlight on snakeskin.
The behavior protocol prompt goes off again. “Radha symbolizes all of the gopi girls’ love for Krishna.” Radha doesn't want this guided tourist experience. She wants Krishna for herself. Normally she plugs in for a few hours’ subjective experience—with REM Tech those hours only cost a few minutes in that other life. This is how she lives two lives. But Radha is ready to give up that other life, to stay with Krishna. She's ready this time, and the thought makes her giddy. She has planned everything.
Krishna looks back at Radha. He shakes his black hair out of his eyes and shrugs as if to say, “This is who I am.” Radha's husband has not left her yet, nor has Krishna's wife left him. This is why she and Krishna shouldn't be together. Or maybe why they are together.
Krishna pulls his flute from his pocket. It, too, glints in the sun. He plays a few notes of a walking song, brisk and steady. He kisses Radha again, this time on the cheek, then leaves for work. Radha turns to watch him go.
"Radha's passion for Krishna serves as a symbol of longing for the ultimate unification with God,” the prompt says. It reminds Radha of sex with Krishna. He's always been a bit sloppy, one of those boys who can get by on looks alone. It frustrates Radha, but she stays with Krishna, waiting. She knows that unification is an event in time, and that Radha is supposed to embody eternal wishing. Radha knows that unfulfilled passions are far sexier, and this is why she waits for Krishna.
Krishna doesn't herd cows anymore. He writes software. He herds bits of data. He is gentle, and even gods need jobs. Krishna keeps a long string of them, like misshapen beads. In this chapter of Krishnaware, he is in middle management. In this chapter, Radha works at the same company, but today is her day off. Some months ago, in a different chapter, she asked to be moved to another department. She works with clients now, people looking for a Religious Experience. Or is that Christina's job, Radha wonders. Sometimes it is hard for Radha to remember who she is; her memories curl and mingle like smoke from neighboring fires.
Radha wraps her hands around her cooling tea, ginger over the curry and cumin drifting from the next shop. She thinks about how she can have Krishna to herself. There will always be pretty gopi, other girls to distract him. There will always be Christina, waiting and jealous. Radha is ready to move beyond this experience. She had two problems. Now she has one plan: she has hacked herself into Krishnaware, turned off the safeties. Two or three of Christina's days will give Radha time to live; time enough to die happy. Her plan is this: she will steal Krishna.
Radha has five ideas for stealing Krishna. Five like the buttons on Christina's console, one for each finger. She fishes a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolds it on the table, and writes her five options again. These are the options the game will allow, after the hacking she has done.
Option #1: Clone him. This way, Radha thinks, she can make him say he loves her. She would prefer to carry the zygote to term herself, even though it is more expensive. She wouldn't need his permission on the gray market.
Option #2: Murder-Suicide. Even gods can die. You get to know these things when you know Krishna as well as Radha knows Krishna. Sometimes Krishna frustrates her so very much, and she can't change the way he is. She can only wait for him. This option is not so pretty. This is a bad option. She knows that this is not a real option.
Option #3: Get over Krishna. She likes this option least, but she writes it anyway. Her husband has his own apartment now, his own life. Radha never liked him all that much. She is devoted to Krishna. This won't change. Radha draws a black line through t
his option.
Option #4: Take a trip together. This would have to be far away from civilization. She is thinking beyond the solar system, or the new tourist hotel under the ocean. She might like to see the buggy-eyed, fanged fish. This would be an extended arrangement. It might be enough.
Option #5: Do Nothing. Nothing different, anyway. This is always an option, in any situation, and usually the option people like the least. This is the option she decides every day. This, too, isn't a real option. She writes it down anyway, then crosses it off twice.
Radha waits for Krishna. She waited through his silly dragonslaying, his other wives and families. Krishna always returns to Radha. Radha is always waiting, changing like the weather.
Radha knows in some part of her mind that all the options will be chosen by other versions of Radha. Knowledge of this does not bother her too much. She picks an option for herself. She chooses the best option.
* * * *
Radha and Krishna board the craft. It is a two-person resort shuttle. Radha has paid money, given notice to her work, programmed their destination. The details are sharp; everything seems so unreal when you leave one life for another. The ship rises and falls while they sleep, everything on autopilot. Radha wakes once and looks out the single window. She thinks she sees Saturn. She sighs in anticipation, then realizes that she has already arrived. Radha settles down again on the small cot and wraps her arms and legs around Krishna. He must know of her plan, her selfish plan, but he says nothing. He sleeps with his mouth open, legs twitching.
Later, as if in a dream, Radha feels the ship land, wonderfully far from everywhere, from everyone. She slips out from under Krishna's sleep-heavy arm. She goes to the control panels, long brown fingers finding and rubbing out the little computer brains. She leaves life support, lights, little else. This is her favorite hack, the hack that makes it possible to disable the ship, strand them together. It will be a long time before Krishnaware's automatic shut-off kicks in, a long time before anyone finds them.
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