It Occurs to Me That I Am America

by Richard Russo

  Adele moved back to New York in the fall of 1946, and worked for the next thirty-five years for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union as a bookkeeper. Her first day on the job was also the first day for handsome Ludwig Honigwill, a lawyer, a displaced Jew from Poland, who’d made it to the U.S. in 1941. “We went for our Social Security cards together,” she told me with a smile. “We were two numbers apart—we would have been just one number apart but because he was such a gentleman he let the woman behind him go first.” They married five years later, and were together until his death in 1977.

  When the first cousins eventually met, Adele told my mother that the day the American relatives’ telegrams arrived was the day she’d set as a deadline for herself: if she’d heard back from no one, she’d have to start over, alone.

  Adele died in 2004, strong to the end. If only someone could have told her in 1945, newly liberated but deathly ill with typhus, emaciated, grieving, lost: “You will live! You will make it to America, to safety and to family. You will find work there, and love. And not only will you regain your health, but you will live to the age of ninety-two in the borough of Queens in the great city of New York. You will look back at the pathetically small acts of kindness performed only rarely by monsters, and say with a shrug and a sweet smile, ‘People are people.’ And, most amazingly, sixty years from that hell on earth, you will sum up your life, on the record, as good and long and lucky. Imagine such a beautiful thing, newly liberated survivor Adele Rewitsch, because all of that came true.”

  ELINOR LIPMAN is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Then She Found Me, The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel’s Bed, I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays, The View from Penthouse B, and On Turpentine Lane. Her rhyming tweets were published in 2012 as Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. She was the 2011–12 Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College, and lives in New York City.

  JOYCE MAYNARD

  * * *

  The Trout Fisherman

  I wake up—dog on feet, dog on head, dog on face—around five thirty. There’s a house here, but Jolene and I choose to sleep in the little boathouse on the water, where I can hear the frogs and loons all night long and see the moon on the lake.

  Hop out of bed, into my bathing suit, down the ladder, dive into the water. (Sometimes there’s mist rising, and it looks a little chilly. If so I recite my mantra: I never regret a swim. Because as difficult as it may be on occasion to make that first plunge, it’s always true. I never regret that I did.)

  I’m not completely by myself here. Every morning I see the same lone fisherman, rod in the water, in search of his trout. I call out my hello. He answers with his.

  Now here is a surprising fact about my fisherman friend. (His name is John, as I learned, early on in my summer of swimming.) He’s black.

  This might not surprise you if you don’t know that much about very small towns in New Hampshire. But when I grew up here, in the fifties and sixties, months might go by in which you did not encounter a person of color. Later on in my growing-up years, a single African American family attended my school of probably four hundred kids. One Asian girl. One from India. That was the extent of our diversity, and though this has changed considerably now in my home state—in the larger cities or even medium-sized towns—it is still a surprising thing, when swimming in a small lake in a town whose population is under a thousand, to run into a fisherman who’s also a person of color.

  Over the summer, we’ve gotten to talking a little during these early-morning encounters. In this lonely summer after my husband’s death, his presence, even on mornings when we said nothing, offered a form of quiet comfort. Though I knew only his first name, and little else besides the fact he liked to fish, as the weeks passed, on those rare mornings when he failed to show up in that little boat of his, I missed him.

  The trout are excellent in this lake. So is the swimming. And gradually, as June moved into July, and then August, I learned more about my fisherman friend.

  It turns out John and his wife retired here from Missouri. No particular ties to the state of New Hampshire except that they both attended the university here many years ago. As it happens, my father taught English there during those years, but John was more the engineering type and never took a class with him.

  This morning John mentioned a surprising fact. Despite a lifetime of fishing, he cannot swim.

  “I guess you didn’t grow up around water,” I said—thinking of my own hometown, which didn’t have a lake like this, but did offer a wonderful pool where I took swimming lessons every summer. All year long I looked forward to times at that pool, and on the last day before they closed, I could hardly bring myself to get out of the water.

  • • •

  “There was a pool in our town,” John told me, quietly. (He in his little metal boat. I in the lake. Not far off, a loon.) “Blacks weren’t allowed to go in. They thought we might contaminate the water.”

  I should have known, I guess. I am old enough to remember images from television, of black churches burned, white policemen standing at the door of a school, barring entrance to a child just my age, but a different color. Governor George Wallace, manning the barricades.

  But John’s words caught me up short. I felt something like guilt, to be there in that lake at that moment. While he sat in his boat, a man a few years older than I, wearing his life jacket. I was familiar with the not entirely accurate stereotype that African Americans were unlikely to swim. But I had never considered this part of the story. Why?

  All could say was “I’m so sorry.”

  A few minutes after, I swam back to my house. Had my shower, made my coffee. Turned on my laptop to find out what new abomination our current administration had cooked up overnight. If pancreatic cancer hadn’t killed my husband, I have been saying for a while now, what’s going on now might have.

  Today, I learned, the Civil Rights Division of our Justice Department—an office whose creation came out of the intent to rectify decades of injustice in our country toward persons of color and preserve educational opportunities of the sort that allowed my friend John to come to my hometown from Missouri to study engineering—has been directed to focus its energies on a new goal: the mission of this division will now be “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

  In plain language, they have been directed to seek out evidence of discrimination against that put-upon and downtrodden group of which I am a member: white people.

  I didn’t grow up rich. But when I entered the water of my town swimming pool every summer morning I never gave a thought to the idea that some children might not be allowed to do this. For a few years there, I watched so many of the smartest boys in my school head off to an elite Ivy League prep school one town over that did not allow girls. But in my senior year, I got to attend that school. Same as, a year later, I got to attend another fine university that had once admitted only men.

  When I did, my classmates included many persons of color like John, who came from places where the schools were probably not the best. The schools they were allowed to attend, anyway. It was affirmative action that made it possible for those students to gain access to that level of education. They were not the only ones whose lives were enriched by this. So was mine. So were we all.

  When I read the small-minded, entitled, hate-filled invective of those who would deny affirmative action, my mind returned to the trout fisherman in his boat this morning, who does not swim. Until his retirement, by the way, John worked as an engineer. He is a man of no small accomplishment. He just didn’t get to go in the pool.

  • • •

  I asked him, before swimming back to shore, about his children.

  He has four. All grown now. Grandchildren too. They’re all swimmers. That’s what happens when you let a person get in the water. He brings the next ge
neration along.

  JOYCE MAYNARD is the author of sixteen books, including the novels To Die For and Labor Day and the memoir At Home in the World. Her most recent memoir, about finding and losing her husband, is titled The Best of Us.

  SUSAN MINOT

  * * *

  Listen

  —We were all so surprised.

  —You were surprised? I wasn’t surprised.

  —Shocked.

  —It was surprising how unhappy.

  —No one saw.

  —No one could see.

  —No one wanted to see.

  —They saw.

  —Didn’t really think about it.

  —So they were right.

  —Of course they were right.

  —They were wrong.

  —Who’s they?

  —They were.

  —They are.

  —Seeing what they weren’t.

  —Feeling left.

  —Who’re they?

  —Wanted what everybody else.

  —Left out.

  —Who’s everybody?

  —Reasons for it.

  —Can’t ignore the numbers.

  —People want.

  —The numbers say it all.

  —People hoping.

  —What the numbers mean.

  —People always want.

  —What the rich.

  —People always want something.

  —What the poor.

  —People always something new.

  —Want something more.

  —People always.

  —Who’re people?

  —The uncounted.

  —They can’t.

  —The ignored.

  —They won’t.

  —They try.

  —Just ignore.

  —They’re forgotten.

  —They know who they are.

  —They’re to blame.

  —Who’s the problem?

  —They’re corrupt.

  —They’re the future.

  —Liars.

  —They’re what’s happening.

  —They’re the heart.

  —They won’t.

  —Who’re they?

  —Never on our side.

  —They were never.

  —They don’t care.

  —They’re insane.

  —They used to be great.

  —Why can’t they get along?

  —They’re clueless.

  —Trying our best.

  —Symbols of hate.

  —Doesn’t work anymore.

  —Symbol of hope.

  —Used to be great.

  —Not trying.

  —Have to fix.

  —Have no choice.

  —Making it worse.

  —Did our best.

  —Human behavior.

  —Must do better.

  —Having no choices.

  —The rich.

  —Wrong of them.

  —The poor.

  —Can’t handle.

  —Leaving.

  —Never leaving.

  —Must do something.

  —Time for a change.

  —Out of complacency.

  —Not mine.

  —Doesn’t work anymore.

  —Time to act.

  —Not theirs.

  —Who’re they?

  —We’ll show them.

  —What they’re saying.

  —They are.

  —What they want to say.

  —What they couldn’t say.

  —What they’re thinking.

  —What are they thinking?

  —They couldn’t say.

  —No one was listening.

  —The rich always.

  —Can’t be helped.

  —Human nature.

  —Can’t be changed.

  —Must be saved.

  —Weirder every day.

  —Nature unbridled.

  —What I heard.

  —Did something else happen?

  —Can’t watch.

  —Can’t listen.

  —How can they?

  —Can’t dismiss.

  —Can’t blame.

  —So surprising.

  —More each day.

  —Less each day.

  —Have to leave.

  —Never leaving.

  —What can we do?

  —I thought we were.

  —What will they do?

  —Isn’t fair.

  —We didn’t know.

  —Seen it all.

  —What the kids?

  —It’s never been.

  —Truly insane.

  —Lost his mind.

  —Never had it.

  —He was great.

  —Never in my lifetime.

  —Only the rich.

  —Like it was before.

  —99%.

  —Keep fighting.

  —Really worried.

  —How do you like your meat done?

  —Can’t listen anymore.

  —What’re they saying?

  —Can’t watch.

  —Can’t stop watching.

  —How can people?

  —Can’t sleep.

  —What do they want?

  —Please hold.

  —How can people not?

  —More.

  —Stop complaining.

  —Feeling threatened.

  —Upon themselves.

  —Did something else happen?

  —You mean Charlottesville?

  —No, since then.

  —Anyone better?

  —Sorry I’m late.

  —Somebody must.

  —Who?

  —She couldn’t.

  —She could have.

  —She didn’t.

  —He did.

  —He heard them.

  —He was great.

  —They hated him.

  —We loved him.

  —They loved him.

  —He heard them.

  —Can’t believe this.

  —Nothing like this yet.

  —Can’t be happening.

  —Had to happen.

  —They’ve finally gotten.

  —Can’t go on.

  —Can’t stand to listen.

  —Can’t bear to watch.

  —Has to change.

  —Message is clear.

  —What’s the message?

  —Can’t bear.

  —They’re insane.

  —Must condemn.

  —Has to stop.

  —Blame the rise.

  —Feeling threatened.

  —No one listening.

  —Accept the differences.

  —Deliberate strategy.

  —No strategy.

  —No one listening.

  —He heard them.

  —No one heard.

  —They heard him.

  —Which them? Which him?

  —Across the aisle.

  —This is how I like to cook my meat.

  —Great again.

  —Really worried now.

  —Like the world has never seen.

  —Not the way I like it.

  —Lies.

  —Getting what they want.

  —No, thank you.

  —Hell, yeah.

  —Must ignore it.

  —All lies.

  —Has to change.

  —Nothing new.

  —Never before.

  —Once again.

  —Feeling threatened.

  —Haven’t a clue.

  —Never will.

  —This is where I work.

  —Not anymore.

  —Threatened.

  —I never did before.

  —Can’t stand it.

  —Not anymore.

  —Have to for my family.

  —Still can’t believe it.

  —Can’t imagine.

  —Can’t bear.
/>   —Can’t look.

  —Not another word.

  SUSAN MINOT is the author of the novels Monkeys, which was published in a dozen countries and won the 1987 Prix Femina Étranger in France; Folly ; Evening ; Rapture ; and Thirty Girls. She has written a collection of short stories, Lust & Other Stories, and of poems, Poems 4 A.M. She wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty and coauthored the screenplay of Evening, based on her novel. Most recently she wrote a one-act play, Summer, which was performed at Waterman’s Community Center in North Haven, Maine, in 2017. She also likes to paint.

  WALTER MOSLEY

  * * *

  Between Storms

  After the storm Michael Trey just didn’t want to leave his apartment anymore. There was something about the booming thunder and the dire news reports, the red line across the bottom of every TV show warning residents to stay inside and away from windows even if they were closed and shaded. Subway tunnels were flooded, as were the streets. The airports would be closed for the next four days and the Hudson had risen up over the West Side Highway to cause millions of dollars in damage in Lower Manhattan.

  The mayor interrupted TV Land’s repeat of an old Married with Children episode to report that the National Guard had been called out.

  The president had taken a train (a train!) to Manhattan to address New Yorkers everywhere, telling one and all that he had declared them a disaster. He wore a white dress shirt with thin green and blue lines across it. He didn’t wear a tie because he was getting down to business—that’s what Michael thought. Even the president was afraid of the havoc that nature had wrought.

  It didn’t matter that the sun was shining the next day or that the skies were blue and cloudless. The storm was only hiding behind the horizon. And there with it was a hothouse sun; crazed terrorist bombers; women with HIV, hepatitis C, and thoughts of a brief marriage followed by a lifetime of support. In North Korea they were planning a nuclear attack and there was probably some immigrant on the first plane in after the storm carrying a strain of the Ebola virus that would show signs only after he had moved past the customs area.

  Michael didn’t go to work the next morning. The radio and TV said that most public transportation was moving normally. Traffic was congested, however. Three sidewalks in Manhattan had collapsed from water damage. Just walking down the street someone might get killed or paralyzed.