Writing Portfolio
Paula Hiatt
Writing Portfolio
Excerpt from Secrets of the Apple, a Novel
Two Short Stories of a Related Series
Secrets of the Apple
A Novel By Paula Hiatt
Secrets of the Apple
Excerpt from Chapter Seven
By Paula Hiatt
The doorbell rang twice in a row, followed by a thumping sound outside, like something heavy falling. Ryoki swung open the door, intending to jump out and startle whatever giggling niece or nephew he imagined was out there. Instead he found a middle-aged woman with hair the color of wheat rinsed in pink lemonade, wearing a black polyester cocktail dress with stretch wrinkles across the middle.
“Hi, I’m Susan Calvert, from down the street. My finger just slipped on that bell when I dropped my purse. Sorry about that.” She was nervously brushing invisible dirt from her purse and looking at Ryoki who smiled politely, his eyes drawn to the erratic motion of her hands.
“I understand Kate and all the Porter girls are here today and my mother passed two days ago and—” She put a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, almost concealing the white tissue protecting the delicate fabric from her mascara, her other hand snagging his arm to be led inside and offered a chair.
“You must be Kate’s boyfriend. I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, settling on the sofa and plucking at her handkerchief, carefully so as not to shred the tissue.
He opened his mouth to clarify, but she didn’t give him the chance.
“My mother’s funeral is on Monday. I’ve been wondering and wondering what to do about the music. Then I saw all the cars and remembered the Porter girls were all home for a few days. They’ve sung together for lots of things, even their own mother’s funeral. Beautiful family, such lovely people.” Her voice broke and she paused to dab at her eyes.
“I sure miss Mary. That’s Kate’s mother, but of course you know that,” she said, tapping her forehead. “They gave her quite a send-off when she died. Must have been a whole shop of flowers and people lining up at the funeral home and filing by the casket for three solid hours the night before, then that big old church full clear to the back for the funeral. Those girls singing and playing…You’d have thought she was somebody important instead a just a housewife. But she seemed to have that effect, which is funny, because she wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly. In fact, she once told me that what she really wanted was an electric fence so all she’d have to do is go out in the morning and pick up the bodies. But people sure did line up to pay their respects when she died. She just had that effect.”
Ryoki managed to make a few more noncommittal noises before she put her hand back on his arm and leaned toward him. “I want to get your opinion on something. I want to sue that nursing home for neglecting my mother.” Her eyes refilled with tears. “There was this woman that used to steal my mother’s pudding two, three times a week, and none of the staff ever said a thing to her. Then this woman up and trips during dinner and flips her dress clear over her head. Naturally my mother just laughed and her lower teeth fell out, that’s when the meatball slid wrong and cut off her air. If they hadn’t all rushed off to help that other lady, my mother might still be alive. Besides that, somebody should have helped her get some better-fitting teeth. And besides all that, if they’d stopped the other lady from taking my mother’s pudding, she wouldn’t have laughed and she’d still be alive today. What do you think of that? My husband says no.”
“Mrs. Calvert?” Kate said coming down the hall. Ryoki bolted.
Reviews and Back Cover Blurb for Secrets of the Apple
“Exceptional” –Kirkus Starred Review
“A captivating love story” –Lisa Oliver Monroe, Kirkus Magazine
Back Cover
“When the door shut behind Kate, some invisible detail changed in the room, maybe something to do with the air pressure, or possibly the temperature. Gradually minor noises took on a strange magnification, like the grinding tikka tikka of the antique clock on the credenza and the splatter of raindrops against the windows as the long drizzle finally turned ardent. He felt a chill in his arms and rose to put the clock in a drawer, wondering how he could have occupied this room for two weeks without consciously noting such an irritating sound. Back at his desk, he picked up a pen, reminding himself how rejuvenating it was to work in solitude, free to swear all he wanted. He put the pen down, remembering he didn’t need it. He sat back in his chair. The office felt dead.”
Ryoki is comfortable is his custom-built hell, making money with both hands and slashing his path through the world of men. But there’s something about Kate, something important dangling just at the edge of his consciousness. She can’t read a map, she falls off her heels, and yet she saves his life with a button and a bit of thread. Terrified she’s privately plotting to marry him, he studies her with hooded eyes, attempting to discover her secrets for himself. But understanding Kate will challenge everything he thought he knew.
Why exactly did Eve hand over her apple?
Review
Detailing how family dynamics, cultural diversity and past relationships shape who we are, debut novelist Hiatt subtly explores the cavern between a successful life and a meaningful one . . . An exceptional first effort that captures the harmony of two beating hearts.
Kirkus Starred Review
Travel Articles
By Paula Hiatt
BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
by Paula Hiatt
We spent the week touring factories in southern China, and Thanksgiving morning found us in Shenzhen where we were met at our hotel by our account manager at a plastics factory, a miniature firecracker who had chosen the English name Linda. She started calling my son, Porter, “Harry Potter” right off, which set his mouth in a flat line until mom’s raised eyebrow convinced him to dredge a smile from his emergency supply.
It might have made him feel better if I’d pointed out that he had a couple inches on her and could probably take her in a fair fight, a fact made all the more startling as Porter is barely nine and Linda was wearing four-inch heels hidden under her long pants, though we couldn’t see that detail until hours later when we were all racing tandem bicycles around a lake in an obscure manufacturing town.
Chinese women are all about shoes: thin, lower heels for older women, and a stunningly short skirt and impossibly high heel combination for the young, unless the young woman is feeling particularly casual, in which case she’ll wear skinny pants and flat shoes with a row of buckles or bows or an astonishing Tinker Bell pouf. For a Chinese woman, a shorter than short skirt and five inch heels are no impediment to riding a bike, which she does not mount by kicking the leg back and swinging over, but by first taking off sidesaddle, then bending the knee and lifting the leg over the bar in front to catch the pedal on the other side. How they kept the color of their undies to themselves was a mystery I wasn’t willing to explore, so I averted my eyes before catching onto the nuance of the operation. I’m an American, I wear jeans and comfy shoes, and I mount a bicycle like a horse. Everybody stared.
Actually, people kind of stare at us in America too. Most people don’t take their children on business trips, but the nature of the board game business allows us to take them to game fairs where we shamelessly flout child labor laws, setting our children to wait on unsuspecting customers, demoing games, and play testing new games with designers who hope to publish with us. Taking them to tour the factories was a stretch, even for us, but it was good for them to see that the products they enjoy do not appear by magic. As it turned out, there’s nothing like three kids for breaking the ice.
When we arrived at the plastics factory, mini Linda introduced us to her boss, four toothpicks and a head of hair with the English name Nancy, who owned the factory along with her husband who was out of town on business There’s no point sharing the details of how these two sharp, professional women ended up sharing a tandem bike at the lake, suffice to say it involved chicken hearts, a chocolate fountain, and a Brazilian named Lomi, who wore a straw hat and a red satin shirt.
On the bike Nancy sat in the first seat, pedaling with all eighty pounds, while Linda threw in her two cents, reaching the pedals by the grace of the four-inch spikes glued to her shoes, each woman laughing and panting and swaying side to side in an asynchronous rhythm that threatened to spill them at any minute. My husband and my son, Chase, were on another tandem getting hit on by admiring females. My daughter, Abby, and Porter were together too and challenged Nancy and Linda to a duel, pedaling furiously, Abby in the front with Porter in the back pumping his legs and peeling a clementine that he slid onto his finger like a ring, waggling it at the ladies as he flew past, flashing a cheesy grin and popping it whole in his mouth while perfect strangers cycled by yelling HARRY POTTER.
I was the only single rider, and at the end Linda and Nancy said I must be the most tired because I had no one to help me. I was tired, but only because I nearly died laughing.
What did you do for Thanksgiving? I hope the Turkey was good.
Paradise
By Paula Hiatt
Several years ago my stepmother sent me an email from India where she and my dad were serving as missionaries. On their morning walk they happened across a group of children combing a garbage pile for their breakfast. The oldest girl carried the baby, and when she found a bit of discarded food, she fed the baby rather than herself.
I’ve carried this image ever since and thought very hard about those who jab their fingers at the unfairness of life and proclaim it proof that God couldn’t possibly exist. We started off equal, Adam and Eve running around buck naked without the faintest notion of what a Louis Vuitton handbag might be for–can’t eat it, won’t haul much. Throw that down and help me remember what I named this thing with the eight foot neck that just pooed polka dots all over my foot. Life was simple, until the day Eve handed over her apple, opening man’s eyes to the essential symbiosis of good and evil. Lots of people hate her for this. Life’s not fair because Eve got us kicked out of Paradise.
A few weeks ago I started volunteering in an orphanage in Suzhou, China, a beautiful, brand new facility where the babies are eerily quiet and hardly ever wet their pants. In the baby rooms the cribs are arranged in rows, cute rosy babies up front, bouncing against the rails, the next row a little more handicapped and/or a little less attractive, more handicapped and less attractive, a little more and a little less until you find yourself in the back row with a girl named Violet. In the finite world of the crib, too many of these children retreat into some private universe where the hunt and peck volunteers have a tough time reaching them. The first time I saw Violet’s blank expression, I was trying to give her the bottle the attendant had just thrust into my hands. I dribbled milk before I realized her hands were too palsied to take it, but more than that, she didn’t even react. She had to have been hungry, but she didn’t move. She was larger than the others, with thicker hair and more defined features, so I figured her for an older toddler. I wrapped her in the towel that serves as her blanket and lifted her in my arms to carry her to the baby activity room which is only heated because the expat volunteers won’t make do with less. Settling into a chair, I fed her the bottle which she guzzled almost instantly before curling into a tight, safe ball like a pill bug.
Violet suffers from sandpaper hair and irritated scalp. She smells a little sour and her teeth are coated in the kind of plaque that takes months to build up. Her arms are the size of two of my fingers and her legs aren’t much bigger. She looks to have something in the neighborhood of cerebral palsy with her limbs all bent inward, a back crib child for sure.
“How old is Violet?”
“Eleven or Twelve.”
Like most of the children in the orphanage, Violet was probably found outdoors in the middle of the night, wrapped in blankets, like the nine-day old boy found last week with blond hair and Chinese eyes. It’s illegal to throw away children, but it happens sometimes. It could be poverty, death, the stigma of single motherhood, or the complicated issue of a handicapped child. In a land where you can only have one child, and the younger generation is supposed to support the older, there is precious little margin for one who will never work. All these factors combine to fill the orphanages, cute babies in the front, ugly babies in the back.
I rubbed Violet’s curved spine and massaged her limbs until she relaxed into me. She can’t talk, but she likes music, even if it’s only me humming.
On Wednesday we got an early call–government officials are touring the orphanage and they want to show off the expat volunteers. Most people are gone for the holidays, so you can even bring your family. Can you be ready in half an hour?
We were ready, and two hours later my husband stood holding a baby and chatting with the Communist equivalent of the state governor. The rooms were warm. Violet smelled better and her teeth were brushed, everyone smiling and laughing, taking pictures, the film crew recording everything for posterity. I mostly hid in a corner to watch, but they found me anyway and came over to say hello and thank me as I sat stroking Violet’s sandpaper hair. They genuinely seemed well-meaning, and our foreign faces meant foreign eyes and foreign internet access . . . which ultimately leads to a better funded orphanage.
My son Chase came over to stand next to me as I held Violet. Chase just turned eleven, and I couldn’t begin to lift him.
It’s not fair that a twelve year old girl is spending her life in a crib instead of with a physical therapist. It’s not fair that the perfect infant with the blond hair and Chinese eyes was left on a pile of rubble. And it’s not fair that a young Indian girl was picking through the trash to feed herself and her siblings. Freedom would be such an easy master, if it weren’t for all those pesky consequences. It’s not fair when one man’s choices bloody another man’s nose, or worse, when a string of people bloody the children.
Yet I keep going back to that Indian girl who chose to feed the baby ahead of herself, a bit of soiled food and a moment of choice, a grand choice, a golden choice, a chance to decide whether to live in the dirt or wear a queen’s crown. Satan must have raged when he realized he’d tempted Eve to usher the god-like power of Agency into the mortal world, the very thing he sold his soul campaigning against. Because of Eve, every individual human is endowed with the capacity to choose for himself whether he is more comfortable under the hand of God or the whip of Satan, choice by choice, back and forth, good and evil warring together in every soul, every day. Such a battlefield cannot possibly produce a fair world, yet victory is assured for those who Choose it. Mortal life is short, hardly a blip in our eternal timeline, and Paradise, it seems, is one of the last geographic mysteries, a place that cannot be found unless it is first lost.
I’m not a queen. I’m a fat American wearing a diamond that’s too big and holding children that are too small. I know nothing more of the Indian girl, but the blond Chinese boy is healthy and has a chance of being adopted into some country where his mixed race won’t matter, preferably before he learns to hoard his food. Violet probably won’t make old bones, but when this brief mortal test is over and she towers strong and glorious, I believe her true character as Teacher will be revealed. In that day when we stand woman to woman, I hope I get to thank her for giving me the chance to stroke her sandpaper hair. She will smile and tell me I sing off-key.
Spa Day
By Paula Hiatt
China Is all about manicures, pedicures and massages. Spas abound much to the delight of expats who might not have the chance to indulge in such luxury at home. Although, there ought to be a small skull and crossbones at the entrance of every provider, a subtle warning that a fifty minute massage may include ten minutes of hair pulling and a few bruises. Even silver clouds sometimes have gray linings, kind of like my phone which is shiny silver on top and flat gray on the back. My husband gave it to me with a gleam in his eye, having just experienced the drug-like rush of purchasing a new bit of technology. I held it with suspicion. My friends have noted that my phone and I frequently part company, so my husband received a text from my friend Julie, “We’re going to a Korean spa at 10am. Ask Paula if she wants to come along.”
I dug out my phone and texted back:
“I hear you’re going to a Korean spa. I’m keen to go, but I don’t know what they do there. If it’s anything involving getting wrapped in a towel or a robe, I’m afraid they’ll look at me and say they’ve never had anything that would cover that much real estate. Maybe after that we could go swimsuit shopping, because that’s always fun.”
I hit send.
Too bad it went to Chase’s teacher instead. No fair placing the contacts so close together.
We did make it to the spa, the four of us joking about being the Real Housewives of Suzhou, right up until they told us to strip naked and sit in the pool with all the tiny Chinese girls. And here I was worried about the size of the towels.
“Got anything else to do?”
They gestured vaguely to the upper floors and we each pulled on their standard issue pink shorts and shirts and set off to explore. First there was the salt room where I was happily warm for the first time in weeks. Then we lounged in the ice room, essentially a walk-in freezer that felt curiously like the marble meat locker that is my house. There were various moist saunas too, and huts of paper, wood and adobe, all raised on different levels with coffin-like alcoves carved out underneath, each tube just wide enough for a floor mat and a nap. The spa was all about resting, having an open space in a quiet plane, without the harsh blast of car horns or the beep of e-bikes. People pay the entrance fee for an extravagance of peace. There are other services too, available for a fee, which is how I managed to pay for someone to pull my hair and bruise my shoulders. As soon as I can speak the language, I’m going to ask the first Chinese I see where they found a pencil sharpener big enough for elbows. Still, there might be something to all that pummeling.
The young man massaging my friend said, “You’re not sleeping.” He was right, she had just returned from the United States and was horribly jet tagged, though you couldn’t see it to look at her. He set out to put an end to that, and she wondered what she’d done to make him mad.
I returned home feeling pretty chipper, particularly because I was able to get into the pink shorts.
When my husband came home he said he’d gotten a call from Lee, our contact at the boys Chinese elementary school.
“Is everything all right?”
“I think so,” my husband said.
“One of the teachers got a text she couldn’t understand in the middle of a staff meeting. We think it was from your wife.”
Luckily Lee’s English is very good, so he was able to translate for everyone.
I have no business owning a phone.
Kinmen
By Paula Hiatt
Two days before Christmas Eve, we flew into Xiamen, a small resortish island of just 3.5 million people on the southeast coast of China. Owing to a stunning bit of bad luck, our driver suffered a bout of AIzheimers just fifty yards outside the airport. Imagine the odds, inside the airport he was born on the island and knew it like the back of his hand, outside he couldn’t find the ferry landing even with the map we waved in his face. That’s far, 50 rmb at least.
“It’s really close. Here let me help you,” my husband said, flipping on the taxi meter the driver had accidentally forgotten to turn on, darn Alzheimers.
“Tell me exactly where to go, or It will be 50 rmb.”
There was a good bit of yelling in English and Chinese, and some pouty pulling over to the side of the road in a last ditch effort to run the meter and keep up the pretense, but a couple of miles later we arrived at the ferry to the tune of 16 rmb, plus a 4 rmb tip because the driver never broke character.
The ferry took us to Kinmen, a plucky little island controlled by Taiwan, which in the past has been such a hotly contested scrap of real estate it gave birth to the Kinmen Knife Company, that for many years produced high quality knives from spent shell casings gathered from the ground. The company claims to be doing so even to this day, though I suspect that may be along the lines of 50 rmb to the ferry dock. Kinmen only boasts 40,000 people, nearly deserted compared to China with its heavy smog and ubiquitous high rise apartment complexes. The island is mostly rural farmland worked with rakes and hoes by small men and women in big straw hats, surrounded by goats and chickens
On Kinmen our driver spoke Mandarin with such a heavy Taiwanese accent that we barely understood her. But she understood us when we told her we were hungry, and took us to the best restaurant in town, which sadly proved to be closed. Western faces are rare enough in Kinmen that we caused a bit of a stir. When we started to shoehorn back into our cab, the fruit seller next door ran off to alert the family that customers were escaping, open up quick! For the first time in months, we ate Chinese food we recognized. Odd we had to leave China to get it.
We stayed in the Kinmen Guest House, and the next morning the owner showed us around, telling us all about the Wong family who came to Kinmen 900 years ago, and liked each other so much that they all lived together in a crowded little dwelling. Luckily, in the 19th century, the Great Wong made a fortune in Japan and came home to take pity on his relatives, building the bed and breakfast we stayed in, as well as a school, the main hall, and eighteen houses which are still privately occupied. To keep everything harmonious, the whole complex was designed to satisfy the exacting demands of fengshui. For luck the main hall was built behind a natural rock in the vague shape of a dragon head, said to bring riches to anyone who touches it. The building was built over the rock representing the dragons tail, to keep the dragon from flying off. Our guide also pointed out the thin terracotta tiles set on end to form a series of delicate flowers running along the roofs of the houses. “This is a thief alarm,” she said. “If a thief steps on it, the tiles will break, waking everyone in the house.”
We also walked by a door set in a hill that she passed without comment.
“Is that where you keep your janitor supplies?” my nine year-old son, Porter, asked.
“Well, uh, during the war, uh . . .”
“It’s a bomb shelter, Porter.”
“Over here is the oldest palm tree in southern Asia,” our guide said quickly.
There’s also a machine gun tower in the center of the roundabout, the grass neatly clipped and weeded, the camo paint curiously clear and unfaded, though the war is long over. There are spikes set into the beach, and concrete barriers in the ocean, loads of pillboxes too, all over the island, in good working order, cement hidey holes perfect for automatic weapons. I wasn’t all that impressed by the camo fort surrounded by Howiters, until I realized I was looking at the restroom and meeting complex. The actual fort is underground, tunnels blasted through solid rock, wide and long enough that at the entrance they asked if we wanted to drive our car. They let us walk right in without even checking IDs, happy to let us explore their benign memorial, especially the room with the huge gun pointed at China and the camo-clad soldier busy cleaning the firing mechanism. We toured the water tunnel too, the ingenious u-shaped sea tunnel where they could dock their ships even during heavy shelling. There’s a list of instructions out front. The third item says “Stay on the paths,” the fourth is “Avoid the minefields in the forests.”
This is a great path, let’s stay on this path, I love this path. I wonder what mothers in Kinmen tell their children—Be careful crossing the street. Stay on the paths. Avoid the minefields in the forests.
In the past Kinmen has served as Taiwan’s first line of defense against China, and there are still many soldiers stationed there. Though nowadays we can kill each other so much more efficiently, I have no idea whether it still maintains its strategic importance. It’s a pretty little island, rural and sweet, a series of delicate terracotta flowers running along the edge of Taiwan. The trouble with terracotta tiles is that once shattered, they cannot be repaired, they can only be replaced. What do Kinmen mothers tell their children?
When the ferry returned us to Xiamen’s Chinese soil with all its smoggy high rises, we got in a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a nearby mall so we could finish our Christmas shopping before returning home to Suzhou. He smiled big and pleasant, looping us all over the island, quadrupling our fare.
Big Pants
By Paula Hiatt
Chinese women are twigs, and I’m, umm, not. Recently we emerged from the train station into People’s Square in Shanghai and were photographed four times before we could get a single shot of our family. It’s killing me to think how many photo albums I look fat in.
Before coming here, I watched a documentary in which a worker in a Chinese clothing factory held up a pair of pants he’d Just sewn together, clearly stunned at a waist size that would have accommodated himself and a friend. Through an interpreter he said, “Americans are big. They need big pants,” It’s true, most Americans are bigger than the Chinese, and would remain so even if we all ran marathons every summer. But there’s also the niggling fact that a McDonalds cheeseburger is faster and cheaper than whipping up a salmon steak and a fruit salad. Americans love fast and cheap, which would be why we ask a little Chinese guy to sew our giant pants, and call him weightist when he doesn’t try to hide his frank amazement.
Of course, there’s also the issue of Chinese cuisine. In the United States there are Chinese restaurants on practically every corner cranking out tasty morsels of boneless white chicken breast, sweet and sour, sesame seed, or general tso’s, all contributing to the necessity of big pants. No one here has heard of any of those dishes, leading me to believe that in the United States, right at this very moment, a group of Chinese servers is standing in the back kitchen thumbing their noses at the gullible Americans. I’ve walked the walk and smelled the smells in the grocery store, and live eels can be very eloquent. They say that you love whatever food you grow up with, which would explain why I don’t mind the occasional fried pork rind (big pants, big pants). But I’ve got to wonder, are some of these people small because their mothers smiled and said, “Eat this so you get big and strong,” then set out a bowl of soup with tentacles and a duck bill sticking out of the broth—”Nah, I’m good.”
In November we were in the south of China and celebrated Thanksgiving at the Shenzhen Ritz Carlton Thanksgiving buffet where Westerners gathered in hiking boots and stiletto heels to give thanks by eating themselves into the next dress size. Feeling a little homesick, I went straight for the roast turkey and mashed potatoes, but my bizarre children headed for the sushi and goose liver pate, which Porter called “mulch” and liked very much, a good chaser for his lobster and crab. The Shenzhen Ritz Carlton is not an option for Christmas dinner, and I still haven’t found vanilla or cranberries, let alone “all the fixins.” Our Chinese tutor pointed out that she had rabbit’s foot for lunch, and said in all seriousness that we should “feed our Bunny good, then eat it for Christmas dinner.”
That’s certainly my Christmas wish, a nice holiday meal with a little trauma on the side. Of course, maybe a little culinary trauma is exactly what we need, after all, Americans are big. We need big pants.
Does that make me a weightist?
FIRE IN THE HOLE
By Paula Hiatt
The day my plane caught fire I was sitting on the wing and could see smoke billowing out from the engine, just like a war movie–minus the popcorn, comfy seat, and the certainty I would make it out alive.
I was living in São Paulo and flying to northeastern Brazil to stand in the sand at the easternmost point in the Americas, and stay in the round hotel in Juan Pessoa that is in the ocean or out of it, depending on the tide. These curiosities dimmed as the temperature rose in the cabin of the plane. The flight attendants knew the drill and began walking up and down the aisles speaking only Portuguese, “Everything is fine, don’t worry, just take crash position.” Calm smile, measured deliberate movements, “Just take crash position.”
I prayed, of course, in such a Catholic country I suspect the whole plane was praying, but I wasn’t looking at anyone else. You really don’t, right there in the moment of maybe. You’re entirely ripped between millipedes of skittering fear, and looking inward to ask yourself the hard questions. You know what those questions are for you, so I won’t bother to list mine. In the midst of my fright I remembered I had been promised three children. I realize that sounds strange, but I knew I would have three, and I did not yet have even one. I grabbed hold of that image and decided that regardless of what came next, I would be alive. That was key, making a decision.
The plane approached a jungle airport, really just a clearing with an airstrip and a little building where Indiana Jones could have passed a pleasant afternoon between lootings and shootings. But I didn’t yet see any of that. I saw the runway, short, small, the stubbly field, then the trees. We were coming in high and fast, so high and so fast, the antiquated fire truck idling at the end of the tarmac. Even if we touched down safely, how would we ever stop by the end of that tiny runway. I could see us spinning into the field and crashing through the trees, wings ripping off, consumed by a ball of fire, because I had seen a prodigious number of movies and knew all about these things. By then the attendants were strapped in, but their words still rang in my mind, “Everything is fine, just take crash position.” It appeared that “fine” had a definition of which I was previously unaware.
I hunkered back into crash position, tuning myself into the plane, listening for the landing gear, all my passenger take offs and landings pattering through my head, “This is normal that felt weird so high so fast how will we stop how will we stop??? . . .”
The wheels touched earth and the disc brakes, thrust reversers, air brakes, or whatever it had roared to life in a deafening proclamation of survival. Impossibly we ground to a halt with feet to spare, attendants grinning, the passengers bursting into relieved applause for the pilot and for our own lives. Orders barked and the attendants shot to the doors, tearing them open and activating the rubber slides that we all know double as boats in the event of a water evacuation. Exit and Run, Exit and Run, Exit and Run. I couldn’t get into the aisle, and glanced out the window at the little fireman standing on top of his truck to aim his hose directly into the engine, knowing he would take it straight in the face should the whole thing blow. Then I was in the aisle and sliding down the rubber slide, arms crossed in front in a mortician’s pose. I ran into the field, we all did, into a depression where we could drop down should the plane explode.
Spoiler alert: I lived, everyone lived, even the plane, which I’m sure was repaired and went right on ferrying passengers around Brazil. A few hours later we were allowed back on to retrieve our personal belongings, and then our luggage came through. A group of businessmen were in a terrible rush and chartered a helicopter, the rest of us were later collected by a another plane, rerouted and pressed into service. I did manage to stand in the easternmost point of the Americas where tiny crabs tittered through the sand, and I loved the round hotel in the ocean where I found more sand dollars than I have ever seen in my life, before or since.
An interesting footnote to this trip; on the way back my flight was caught in a jungle storm which tossed the plane hither and yon like a toddler with a Matchbox car. For years afterwards I boarded every plane literally praying for a boring flight.
For years after that every trip was haunted for me, not by the fire, but by the switch, that shocking instant of change. It was cool and comfortable, and then it wasn’t, air conditioner, no air conditioner. That was all my warning, a change in temperature. With my seatback and tray table in their upright and locked position, I had largely exhausted my control over my environment. I wanted to go back in time where someone could yell “Fire in the hole!” to give everyone fair warning to get clear, but it was too late, the crisis was upon us, and there was nowhere to go but through.
Let’s fast forward to last week at my house. All the doors and windows were locked and my sixteen year-old son, Porter, and I were in the basement. Porter went into the bathroom, and suddenly the front door slammed hard and mighty, vibrating the couch I was sitting on, adjacent to the front wall of the house. I had locked that door myself, didn’t think it could slam that hard. I thought, “It’s nothing, maybe my imagination, probably a passing truck, not a door slam,” because our minds try to fill in holes, however improbable.
Porter came out, “Who’s here?” he asked. Not my imagination, he’d heard it too, from the bathroom, at the back of the house.
“Don’t know,” I said, my mind rerouting, must be my sister, she has a key.
Off he went up the stairs, jauntily calling out “Hello, Hello,” which began to fade into a softer, more uncertain “hello . . . hello? . . . Mom . . . can you come up, and maybe bring a shovel?”
Fresh out of shovels and baseball bats, I marched up the stairs brandishing my phone only to find Porter had also armed himself with the closest weapon at hand, a pair of, uhhm, tweezers.
“I have my pokey thing, Mom.”
They are very sharp, as tweezers go.
There we were creeping through the house, phone and tweezers at the ready, investigating the front door, looking under beds, ripping open closet doors, garage, storage room, searching for henchmen or serial killers, or possibly a ghost because it was dark out and in a moment of daylight and Halloween spirit, I’d been enjoying a chunk of Paranormal Survivor. (I never claimed to be smart.) Nothing, not one thing, even the ghost had gone silent, probably waiting to scare us to death when we were alone in our beds, though neither of us said it aloud.
It was an earthquake, just so you know. We found out the next day, mystery solved, a little 2.8 allowing the plates to release some pressure, nothing to worry about. I can go back to watching Paranormal Survivor with the same jaundiced eye as before, but that’s not the point of the story. Today I am thinking about courage. Who is brave and what does that even mean?
Two months before I was diagnosed with cancer, I believed I had hit rock bottom, navigating a heartbreaking trial I never, ever thought could happen to me. Who knew rock bottom had a basement, or that basement would have a sewer, and that sewer had a sinkhole. Eventually I was paddling around in the magma where my oars kept catching fire, facing a platoon of bone shattering disasters of which cancer was by far the easiest. Who knew I would honestly wish for those heady days in the cozy comfort of rock bottom.
I’m going to be upfront and admit that I now have far more empathy for suicides than I once had because I now understand what it means to genuinely want to die, anything to stop the horrific emotional pain created by a combination of overwhelming circumstances and a body too weakened by chemo and surgeries to properly support my heart and mind. I would not have taken my life because the image of my three beautiful children loomed in my mind more powerfully than they had when the plane caught fire, and I knew I could never intentionally leave them unguarded, that was key, a decision made. I don’t say any of this for sympathy, I don’t need it. But I do need you to know that I speak from the depths rather than the surface.
Improbable as it may seem on a sunny afternoon, I have learned that sometimes the Boogie Man and all his minions can come to our door. In my imagination I march confidently into battle with a knight’s shining armor, or better yet, cool and chic like James Bond, my pockets bursting with enough gadgets to singlehandedly take down an embassy. The trouble with most Boogie Men is that they arrive without warning. We hear people yelling “Fire in the hole!” all the time, but we never really know which “hole” might apply to us. Consequently, no matter how carefully we plan, or how many wise choices we make, there’s a good chance that at some point we will face our worst fears armed only with an upright tray table and a pair of tweezers.
It’s not fair, I know.
So what is courage? Is it the shining knight who plows through his enemies regardless of his personal fears? Maybe. Is it James Bond saving the world with his wits and an explosive pen, or the woman facing disaster who sits on her hard chair, fists clenched, holding her ground until the storm blows itself out? These are pieces of courage, to be sure, but what if your troubles are longer than a single battle and you only have one explosive pen, or that hard chair eventually becomes too much to bear. A car has a powerful battery, but no matter how powerful it is to start, without the alternator to recharge that battery, pretty soon you’re left by the side of the road calling a tow truck. The strength of a single battery is enough courage to power you through a more compact trial, but for a greater calamity you will need something more.
I hate it when people call me strong because inside I feel like a quivering bowl of Jello, and it makes me feel like a fraud. My battery ran out of power clear back at rock bottom, and I had to learn that mental and physical strength are extremely important, but the true foundation of courage is not strength, but love and trust.
I know, it sounds like the back of a greeting card, but I warned you, I am speaking from the depths, not the surface. Why would a soldier storm the beach at Normandy, if not to protect those he loves? Why does a mother get up through the night with a fussing baby when she’s got other children and a full schedule to keep her up all day as well? True endurance is born of love because love can be boundless, while for a mortal being strength is not. When that plane caught fire, the mere idea of my unborn children calmed me, just imagine the powerhouses they are now, how they change the balance of my life. When the Boogie Man comes and you’re taking inventory of your meager supplies, don’t forget to take stock of those you love and who love you. You have a great capacity to love, to love others, and to love yourself. Recognize your power and embrace it, if you don’t you will always struggle to recharge your battery. Serve others, even if all you can do is hope or pray for them, anything to help you look outside yourself, relieving pressure like tectonic plates rumbling a solitary 2.8, increasing your ability to continue forward.
Loving yourself can be trickier, especially when everything goes sideways. I’m one who is constantly reevaluating my performance, questioning whether I’m good enough. This can be a positive trait because it keeps me working, but the downside is that my mind starts criticizing my heart, then my heart starts picking at my lungs, and pretty soon everybody’s attacking my liver, which is how I got that quivering bowl of Jello jiggling around inside my skin. I haven’t conquered this, but I’ve gotten far enough to know it’s equally vital for us to be kind to ourselves as well as to others. Begin working at this now, start it while the sun is shining so that when the Boogie Man suddenly arrives, those pathways are already mapped and well traveled. If the storm is already upon you, start anyway, even if it is placing one pebble atop another. Love is a creative force rather than a destroyer, if you need courage you can’t afford to ignore it.
Now we come to trust, which is even harder for me than loving myself. I did trust once, doe-eyed and easy, quick as a child to forgive, but the last several years have chiseled that out . . . Let me put it this way, I used to love good stories with a sweet romance on the side, now romance is out and I can’t get enough true crime, the more blood and guts the better. The trouble with true crime is that even if the murderer is caught and punished, the victim is still dead, and the family is still grieving. What is criminal “justice” really? The courts can’t force the perpetrator to return a murdered wife or daughter, whole and unharmed, which is what the family truly wants. In essence the “justice” system can only give the family a pair of tweezers to face down the utterly unimaginable. So who do we trust and where is justice?
The secret is that justice has nothing to do with the criminal. We are each walking an individual path that intersects with good people and bad. If we are lucky enough to be given a pair of tweezers, we should use them to pluck out the hairs of anger and hate before they become chains that change our trajectory and slow our steps. Don’t misunderstand, criminals should be punished for their crimes, but if you’re looking for peace in punishment, you’re putting your trust in the wrong place.
This is your journey, your experience, your chance to learn! Don’t let a criminal or a circumstance, or an illness steal that from you. Do justice to yourself. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone else. I know that some things take years to slide to the rearview mirror, and many leave marks which last for the rest of our lives. It’s superficial to pretend otherwise. I’ve cried gallons of tears in my bedroom with my hand over my mouth so the children wouldn’t hear me through the vents, sobbing out the great and guttural “WHY!!!”
But I know that isn’t really the right question. My life slowly improves when I lay out my little store of supplies and say, “I am in the dark and my life in on fire, what can I do with my tweezers and tray table to improve my situation?” I’m fully aware of how dumb that sounds, but it is a question that provides two important elements, a willingness to trust yourself, and a willingness to take steps. Maybe you can only take one step a day, maybe some days you’ll take a step and get knocked on your backside, and other days you may feel paralyzed, which can lead to self-loathing and distrust, but if we persist in taking steps, even in the dark, one day we will be shocked to realize that not only did we start with everything we needed, but by the end we gained more than we knew existed.
The night of the earthquake Porter would not leave my side as we rifled through the crevices of our house with a phone and a pair of tweezers. “I have my pokey thing, Mom.” He’s too young to comprehend the courage inherent in that statement, but I understand, and I love him for it.
Two Short Stories of a
Related Series
By Paula Hiatt
It’s All About Style
By Paula Hiatt
Walking into the post office I caught sight of myself in the heavy glass door. I’d eaten off my lipstick and my brunette hair fell limp on my shoulders, the roots damp with humidity. My cotton blouse hung in crumpled folds left over from reading “The Tell Tale Heart” on my bed. I stopped for a moment with a hand on the cool metal handle, arrested by my reflection—a stranger to myself.
I looked dull, like a junker Mercedes. People notice when you look sick and green or chic and polished, but never when you look dull. Dull people are anonymous.
A raspy voice startled me. “Miss, are you the doorkeeper?”
Turning I saw the blotchy, translucent hands of an old man carrying three cumbersome packages. Two watery grayish eyes shaded by a charcoal fedora peeked over the top box.
“Excuse me,” I said whipping open the door too fast. A red heat crept up my neck in frond-like streaks. “Can I help you with your packages?”
“That’s all right honey, thank you much,” he said.
I slid my letters into the “Out of Town” slot and left quickly, hoping to avoid anyone who might have noticed me staring at myself.
In the car I turned full attention to my Saturday list, mentally mapping out the most efficient order: dry cleaners, grocery shopping, house cleaning. I thought about the butchers at Dillman’s, last week I’d waited twenty-three minutes.
In the grocery store I scanned the latest issue of Writer’s Digest for possible leads, finally shoving it in my basket under the bananas. For my wedding two years earlier my father had given me a state of the art ultra thin computer with a card addressed to “His Little Writer!” “I know you can do it,” the note had said. I used it to write letters and organize my extensive recipe collection so any dish could be accessed calorically, alphabetically, or categorically. With my husband working so much, I did little cooking, but I liked knowing I could access my compilation so easily.
When his colleagues asked, after we first moved here, my husband said Iwas a free-lance writer, moonlighting as a receptionist until I get established. I interrupted college just before the end to facilitate his internship. It was the right choice.
I try to write something every Saturday off, but at the keyboard my thoughts stiffen into stock stories, headed by whichever hero stared in whatever action/adventure movie playing at the mall’s cheap cinema where I go three times a week. I think my husband suspects my laziness. Three weeks ago at a party a new guy asked what I do. I’d stammered slightly, but he spit out “Receptionist” loud and clear and turned the talk to someone else.
By four o’clock I’d picked up milk, fruit and roast beef; waxed the kitchen floor, cleaned the oven and dropped off three dresses, three pairs of pants, four ties and six white shirts, remembering to point out the small ink stains. At the cleaners Mrs. DeAngelo always grunts over the ink, asking in a thick New Jersey accent if all stockbrokers have as much trouble keeping clean as mine does.
At 4:30 I sat on the couch feeling my body sink into the deep cushions with the relief of work finished. My mind started on the laundry, calculating the amount of clean underwear and white socks left in the drawer. It would have to be done soon. He went through them fast—cut-throat racquetball twice a week, tennis three times and assorted team sports in season.
The night before I’d watched him play community basketball. His tangerine tank top and shorts clung damply to his sweating, tan skin as he streaked between players. Stealing the ball, he’d speed toward me, pivoting at the last second to stay in bounds. His head twisted toward the court in slow motion, flinging sweat beads onto my arm. His hair gleamed almost white—the overhead lights reflected off individual strands making them appear to glow by themselves. One of the other wives turned to me, “He’s fast and assertive, a real scrappy player.” I nodded, wondering if she’d seen his animal desire to win.
Sitting on the couch my reflection from the post office door crept back to me.
How do I appear to him. Dull—probably.
I heard a knock. Outside the peep hole stood my neighbor Anne with her eight month-old Ted strapped in a front carry pouch. I smiled to myself and opened the door.
“How have you been. Ted and I were just about to start our walk and we thought you’d like to come,” she said.
I laced into my Nikes, glad to escape the laundry.
“It’s still hot, but the edge has gone off. Ted was getting so restless, I counted the hours until I thought I could take him out,” she said.
Anne has her degree in microbiology, but quit her job to be Ted’s mom full-time. He spits up on the carpet and keeps her awake two nights a week, but she leans over and kisses his head every half block anyway.
She turned her head to me the way she always does when she wants me to catch every word. “Did you hear about Andrew and Sylvia?”
“No, what’s up with them?”
“They’re getting divorced,” she said, her hand shielding her mouth.
“Are you sure? Last I heard they were on their way to Aruba for a second honeymoon. She mentioned to me two months ago that they were trying for another baby,” I said.
“Not Andrew and Sylvia, Sylvia and her boyfriend. She was just planning to sleep with Andrew within a few days of anytime she slept with what’s his name to cover it up. Anyway, Andrew started to suspect and hired somebody, pictures and everything.”
“Hmmm. This sounds an awful lot like Days of our Lives.”
“No word of a lie. Sylvia told me herself. She’s such a loud mouth. The only shocking thing is that Andrew didn’t find out sooner.”
“They were never really much of a couple. She has big lips and calls out toasts at parties. He reads and laughs politely,” I said.
She smiled broadly and asked, “How’s your job going?”
“You know me, the receptionist of the future.”
“That husband of yours sure keeps busy. On Thursday Jon and I were going to ask you two over for a game of cards, but we didn’t see his car in the drive.”
She looked at me expectantly. I smiled to fill time. She saved me answering.
“That poor guy works so hard. They need to rethink how hard those people work. I’ve seen the stock exchange on tv. Those guys are throwing around little scraps of white paper that represent real money. I don’t want anyone throwing around my money when he’d been working a hundred hours a week. He might get walleyed and use it to wipe his . . .” she broke off, winking at her son.
Our two mile walk had come full circle. I did a little tap step while unlocking the front door. I always feel pumped after talking to Anne.
In the house I turned on the stereo past the fifth notch. The crisp clarity of rock drums beat through the subwoofer, vibrating my skin. Jittering and swerving around the room I stopped in front of the full-length mirror to pose from the side and pucker my lips like a rock star on an album cover wearing a red bustier and matching garter belt.
My blouse was still crumpled.
I felt the sticking sweat of physical labor in a hot room. I picked up a Kleenex to wipe my face and went into the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water streamed over my body washing away the mildew of the day. I thought about the night I first knew I’d fallen in love. We’d gone to an old downtown theatre to see Cyrano De Bergerac. I teared up a little at the end. He’d touched my hand for less than an instant, smiling nakedly with his eyes.
He would be home in two hours. As I shaved my legs I considered topics for conversation. Lately all our talks waded stiffly through a green swamp that limited my subjects to movies or television.
I squeezed a quarter-sized dollop of shampoo into my palm and worked my hair into a frothy lather. Why couldn’t I tell him about the man ahead of me in line at Dillman’s with the enormous nose, three teeth and eighteen strands of hair, who’d shown me a picture of a model in a magazine and said it was his granddaughter; or about Mrs. DeAngelo at the dry cleaners who tells me her life in furtive bits and pieces. Just last week she’d confided that she hadn’t had an evening out alone in almost fifteen years because her husband is a good Italian Catholic who believes in family togetherness. Today Mr. DeAngelo’d cordially tipped his cap to me like always, completely unaware that I knew he screams gibberish when he’s angry, pretending it’s Italian.
The water ran deliciously over my stomach and down my legs. Turning, I let it massage my back before guilt at my waste of time and water urged me to shut it off.
Before drying off, I rubbed myself with baby oil from shoulders to heels and sat by the window at my dressing table wrapped up in a soft, green towel. The breeze felt cool for the first time that day. Outside the dogwoods bloomed in explosions of soft pink blossoms that dropped petals all over the driveway.
Cocking my head to one side I finger dried my long hair, alternately scrunching and fluffing. Then I wound my hair in hot rollers and decided what to wear. It had to be red and quietly sexy. Most of my nice clothes are classic pieces of silk or wool. Finally I settled for a clingy jersey knit dress with a wide scoop neck and an inviting softness.
At my dressing table I started my makeup. Base, powder, eye liner, shadow blended soft, smoky, barely there. Mascara, blush, lip liner full around each lip, outer edge, smudging inside.
I took my rollers out one by one, dropping the clips into their tin. Flipping my head over, I brushed in even strokes until all the curls blended into loose, heavy rolls.
I heard his key in the lock. He walked in with his quick, assertive steps, still wearing his tie all the way to the top.
“Hey baby, how you been?” I asked. My voice sounded rusted and strange to me.
“Fine.” He answered with a rising inflection, elongating the ‘i’, just as he does with strangers.
“Did you make a lot of money today?”
“No, it was pretty slow.”
Bending into his closet, he studied each of his six tennis rackets carefully. Pulling out the first he swung it gracefully, then hit the strings with his palm. Dissatisfied he replaced it and picked up the next in line—1.5 ounces lighter—and repeated the test.
“Would you mind getting my Lightening Stick restrung,” he said.
“Lightening Stick?”
“The dark grey one.”
“Sure. Are you going to play tennis?” I saw he was, but I wanted to talk.
Pausing mid-swing with his third racket, he looked at me for the first time. I saw him see my dress, my hair.
He put his racket down on the bed and took off his watch, laying it gently on the dresser. I almost started up to kiss him. The rising impulse zinged from my stomach down to my toes. I shifted my feet to move toward him. He picked up his digital underwater sports watch and buckled it around his wrist.
He spoke, his back to me. “A bunch of us are meeting down at the courts. Where you headed tonight?”
“I thought I’d get some dinner,” I said.
Opening the drawer he pulled out a white shirt and shorts set with a neon blue stripe running in a diagonal lightning bolt across his chest.
“What do you think of that outfit? I read an article in Tennis Today that said more brights are coming onto the courts,” I said.
“It’s probably because the winners of Wimbledon and the French Open were both sponsored by Reebok. Their players always wear colors,” he said.
He dressed quickly. Taking off his socks he laid them in the corner exactly parallel, two feet from each wall. For two years I’ve wondered why he didn’t just throw them in the hamper. Sometimes I step on them after he’s left.
“What did you do with those new balls I bought?” he asked.
“Front hall closet.”
He went out to get them, and returned laying two cylindrical cartons side by side on the bed. Replacing the third racket, he decided on the fourth and picked up the navy and white Reebok cross-trainers.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“C’mon, I need a kiss.”
He finished lacing his shoes and walked over, quick, assertive steps.
Leaning over he kissed me lip to lip, not fast, not slow, a married kiss. I put my arms around his neck as he pulled away. I focused on his blue eyes, trying to view his face as though for the first time. I saw a vacancy, frightening but clarifying.
“C’mon, let go. If I don’t hurry I’ll be late. Have fun at dinner. See you later.”
I dropped my arms to my sides. “See you.”
He smiled and jauntily walked toward the door.
I heard the throbbing stereo of a slow passing car fight with the neighbor’s blaring television—on the corner a group of teenagers with headphones yelled to each other over their radios. For a single instant the door’s slam rose and swelled into the urban anthem of opiate desire, “What’s next, what’s more? Entertain us.”
Sitting at my dressing table I held a lipstick loosely in my fingers. Fire engine red. “Guaranteed to start a fire,” the advertisement said. Maybe I should have put it on sooner. My mouth curved in a smile at my own gullibility, but I smoothed it on anyway, automatically completing what I’d started.
I slid my feet into black heels and sat with my back to my dressing table. I wanted to cry, scream, scratch my fingernails across the moldings leaving ten perfect marks. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I sat with my legs apart staring at the room, unable to look out the window. I considered calling Sylvia—or Andrew.
The phone on the nightstand cut into the air. I stared at it waiting for the machine to pick up.
What’s next. What’s more.
The Airport
By Paula Hiatt
“I want a divorce,” he said looking just a fraction to the left of her eyes.
In her peripheral vision she could see the line from the ticket counters snaking closer as the maze filled. A mother with three small children, four suitcases and two carry ons struggled past her as fast as they could. She hoped they made their plane.
“What?” she said.
“I want a divorce,” he said, not unkindly.
She shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow she was. A few minutes earlier, she’d smiled to herself because he’d left his car illegally unattended at the curb and walked her in, a very romantic gesture.
She looked directly at him. He appeared to face her steadily, but didn’t quite meet her eyes. She could see he’d chosen a public place so she wouldn’t cry or make a scene, a smart tactic, one he’d probably brag about in later years, maybe say something like “Yeah, I dropped my ex off at the airport and told her to just keep going.” He would be brash and debonair in the locker room, but here in the moment he felt bad, maybe even a little ashamed. She couldn’t gauge how long that feeling might last. Maybe forever, or maybe just until he got back to his car.
Over the loud speaker, a polished voice requested the owner of a dark gray Jaguar return to the curb before the car was towed. Outside the sliding glass doors, they could see the curb attendant glaring at them, speaking into his radio. He looked mean, but he’d given them time before he’d had the car booted or impounded. She suspected he had a kind heart. Her husband said nothing more, just whirled and sprinted out to his car. He’d only had it a month and didn’t care to lose it, not after all the sacrifice it had required.
A sort of numbness carried her through the ticket line. She sleepwalked through security and had traveled almost to her gate before she realized her purse was flapping open awkwardly, exposing her intimate details. She put her hand in to feel for her wallet. Luckily, she hadn’t been robbed. On the plane she took out her compact and checked her makeup. She looked perfect, not a hair out of place. She lowered the compact, clicking it shut and sat unmoving for two hours.
On the ground her grandparents greeted her. She smiled and hugged, making all the appropriate noises in the appropriate places. They had dinner and talked about books and needlepoint and watched a baseball game on tv. Her Grandma Porter pulled out her colorful threads and showed her how to do a new stitch, but didn’t push her to try it herself.
At10:30 she opened her mouth in a convincing yawn, pled traveler’s fatigue, and went to the corner bedroom with connecting bath where she always slept under a creamy embroidered coverlet that should have been in a museum. As was her habit she knelt in bed to say her prayers, then turned out the light and closed her eyes, not that it would do any good, too much pressure built up inside. She wanted desperately to cry, to heave and scream like a steam engine, but the house was so peaceful.
An hour later, she sat up and knelt amidst the covers, but couldn’t get far past the formal greeting of prayer, her gift for language suddenly deserting her. Finally the words burst out in the pared down speech of child. “Please help please help please help.” The tears came after, great wrenching sobs buried silently in the pillow. In time she fell asleep never having closed her prayer. She dreamed of three children playing in the sprinklers in front of her grandmother’s house, their curly coal black hair shining in the sun. She awoke with a start, shaking, but unafraid. Her children. She knew it beyond any doubt.
She had never been given to such dreams, always remained deeply suspicious of those who claimed to see the future, and yet she knew that God had heard her plea and answered her with truth, just not the truth she wanted. Even with a “C” in biology, she knew that brown and blond very seldom produced inky black.
To rest her mind she lay back on her pillow and stared at the moonlight and shadows twining together from both corners of her room. She felt a hundred years old, scarred by war, too tired to start over with curly black hair. She held up her hand and looked at the ring on her finger, thought of the silly romantic girl who had accepted it, and the woman who had kept her promise. It was a half carat brilliant cut, good color, with a defect that could be seen by the naked eye, but only in direct sunlight. A month into the marriage she’d been waiting in the car and noticed a circle of dead light among the tiny prisms cast on the dashboard. She looked at her ring and found the tiny dark spot. She puffed on the diamond and rubbed it on her pants, but the dark spot remained, embedded deep inside.
She didn’t want to start over with a new dark spot. With hair that black, he could be of ethnic origin or perhaps a foreigner. The difficulties of marriage to a Caucasian American had left her gasping and struggling. To pile on a heavy layer of cultural differences would probably drown her entirely. She hadn’t seen the children’s faces. Maybe there had been unnoticed shadows that darkened their hair, made it appear black. She’d already invested so much of herself, too much to try again.
She thought about her husband. It would be easy to play the innocent victim to his abuser, but she didn’t have the heart, not really. Deep inside she knew she had all the evidence of emotional abuse, except a real victim.
She imagined the whole airport scene as it would appear in a movie. The actress that played her would stand looking at him, stunned at first, then her wide, innocent eyes would narrow slightly and she would stand straighter. Twisting the ring from her finger she’d throw it in his face, or maybe the producer would switch the small round diamond for a big sharp marquis she could drop down his pants with a flick of her wrist before she turned to stalk off through the airport to a steady rock beat. The audience wouldn’t applaud, no one applauded at movies, but they would be energized by the beat, exulting in one woman’s triumph over man.
It wouldn’t be what really happened. There had been no soundtrack, no audience, no simple, satisfying wrap up in the interest of time. She felt her ring with her thumb, like married women do. She’d never loved the design, too fussy for her taste. Up close it was flawed, she was flawed, he was flawed. Mostly her husband didn’t like to share or forgive. She’d realized too late about the forgiving. He believed he was marrying a beautiful goddess and never really got over waking up with a human woman.
At the beginning, it worried her all the time, knowing he’d seen through her fraud. All her life the grownups had been impressed, pulling her pigtails, or fondly chucking her chin, singling her out as special, without ever defining what that meant. She had some aptitudes, all arts related, but couldn’t cut it at math or science, the real classes where good students would make real money. In high school her classmates had been more savvy, smelling shyness on the new girl like blood in the water. Occasionally strong attraction prompted her to fight through the fear and open her mouth in front of a boy. She could hear the oddities that came out, but could never quite stop them in time, and went home wishing she’d been born mute.
In college she reinvented herself, learned to bat her eyes as a party trick and enter the room like she owned it. She had plenty of friends in college, a large collection of boys. She smiled to herself trying to remember some of their names and faces. It struck her as funny that she never thought about her successful college days, but sometimes still blushed recalling the succession of embarrassing moments known as high school.
She rolled over on her side and picked at the tiny French knots in the intricate floral pattern. What was she now, success or failure? Her husband had seen through her early in their marriage. The shy awkward girl was still in there and sometimes put in an appearance at a work party when he needed her to sparkle, make him look good. He’d seen her for what she feared herself to be, ordinary, or maybe a little less.
She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, changing the balance of power among the shadows. She got out of bed and pulled her art supplies from her luggage. She wasn’t a natural artist, really only had a germ of talent, but had taken so many drawing classes in connection with her fashion design major that she could at least sketch creditably. She never forgot the day in her portraits class when the model’s actual face appeared on the paper under her hands. Her fingers itched with almost manic energy as she extracted her sketchbook, charcoal and gum eraser, then went back to the bed, plumping the pillows into an upright position.
First she drew her husband as she had first seen him, handsome, well educated, outgoing, glowing with ambition. She let go of her natural precision, could almost hear her teachers in her ear, “Loosen up,” “Don’t let it get too precious,” “Look at the edges.” Her hand moved quickly, without fear, almost without thought as she drew from memory. The lines thinned and thickened, darkened and lightened as she rubbed with her fingers and her gum eraser. Unconsciously she put her charcoal fingers on the coverlet, leaving a nasty black smear on the creamy fabric. Irritated she kicked with her feet until most of it had been shoved to the end of the bed. When the portrait was finished she held it under the light, saw the hope in his eyes, the promise of a bright future. It was beautiful, perfect, the best work she had ever done. She could put it in a frame and send it to his mother, thrilling her on Christmas morning.
Hastily, she pulled off the sheet and let it float to the floor where it sat face up, looking at her. She drew him again, smaller this time, with the same expression, the same desire, but this time he clung desperately to his possessions, arms spread wide protecting them as his wife stood off to the side, indistinct, almost in shadow, a tiny point of light on her left ring finger picked out with a twisted point of her gum eraser. This time she recognized the drawing as art, something she could sell to a gallery. Tonight her fingers were magic. Again she pulled it off and let it float to the floor just askew of the first, overlapping a little.
She drew their house with the rosebushes, then flung it to the floor. She drew three children with curly hair and indistinct features playing in the sprinklers, then copied the room where she sat, focusing on the interplay between light and shadow. Then she designed a room of her own, unlike the navy and gray room she’d designed to share with her husband, but only shared with his clothes. She drew a big four poster bed and comfy chairs with good reading light, a bookcase with leaded glass doors like windows and a big roaring fireplace. In her mind’s eye she could see the colors: dark, rich mahogany for earth, green walls for growth, cream for breath. She held up her drawing. The room looked so free and open, a place she could breathe, but it didn’t look finished. She put the sketchbook back on her lap and added a vase of tall grass and peacock feathers, then looked at it from all angles. Finally, she drew her treasured kimono on the wall opposite the bed. Satisfied she pulled it from the pad and let it slip among the others.
She put down her charcoal and pulled out a brush and a bottle of black ink, extricating it from the almost nuclear war proof wrapping. This was a secret pleasure. She loved the feel of ink on paper, the watery drippiness far scarier than paint because an errant drop could ruin everything at the last moment. She painted rapidly, mostly fashion poses in fanciful dresses, the faces blank except for lips, audaciously large because of the runny ink. She didn’t let these slip to the floor, but laid them carefully flat on every hard surface so they could dry without dripping on the carpet.
Dawn began to lighten the sky and she closed her sketchbook, corking the ink and putting her brush in the glass of water her grandmother had left by her bed. She went around the room gathering her drawings and laid them neatly side by side in three rows. Then she picked out the very best and lined them up together. They were good, she knew it, hard evidence of her worth, the smoking gun. She could hang them on the walls of her living room and when colleagues came over, her husband could say, “My wife’s an artist moonlighting as a receptionist until her career takes off.” When she could feel him tire of saying that, she could commission a private recording of her voice that would play softly for their guests. “My wife’s a singer moonlighting as a receptionist.” Maybe then there would be the piano.
She sat cross legged on the floor leaning against the end of the bed. looking at the drawings for long moments, considering them carefully and thinking of all the adults who had pulled her pigtails and chucked her chin, seeing something when she had never accomplished a thing.
Eventually she gathered the drawings and padded out to the family room, her pajamas stained with ink and charcoal. Even the housekeeper was still abed and the house was silent and chilly. She pulled two logs from the pile and built a teepee with splinters of kindling so the fire could breathe. She took the top drawing, crumpled it and stuffed it under the kindling. The first match caught the paper, the flame licking along the edges, turning them black. One by one she fed the drawings to the fire, allowing them to be consumed individually, in the order they’d been produced.
Halfway through Grandma Porter came in, shrugging on her robe and sitting in the squashy chair near the hearth. “I haven’t seen you up this early of a mornin’ since you were a little bit and sneaking candy.” Her accent was always less polished before her first cup of coffee, more like her own mother’s.
Grandmother and granddaughter sat looking at the drawings, gauging the moment, the appropriate thing to say. “Speak up honey, this is the time. You weren’t ready last night, but now you are.”
“My husband wants a divorce.”
“Do you?” Her grandmother’s clear green eyes held her steadily.
The question hung in the air as the fire ate through an inky dress.
“Do you want your freedom?” grandma asked, making no move to stop the destruction.
“I already have my freedom,” she said, rubbing the heel of her hand briefly over her chest, scratching the itch. “I got charcoal on that bedspread.”
“That counterpane laid over my mother when she birthed every one of her children. It’s hardy.”
Neither woman spoke as the last drawing went into the fire. The biggest log had already caught, popping and crackling, warming the room.
Board Game Packaging Blurbs
By Paula Hiatt
Hide
2-5 Players Ages 10 up
Box Back
Be the Legend
Even cold-blooded secret agents whisper code name: The Legend.
In Hide agents abound, but few truly excel, and fewer still are worthy to be called legendary. Study The Legend, think calmly and strike fiercely, but even the best of the best will need a little luck. Keep your eyes open and choose wisely because you are surrounded by enemies who have studied as well. Will you quickly raise your rank by eliminating competitors, or safely complete your mission by tightly safeguarding your identity and gathering money?
Watch your enemies, use your skills.
Good Hunting.
Coconuts
1-5 Players Ages 10-up
Monkey Magic Monkeys with You
Box Back
Long ago the Monkey King left his peaceful kingdom in the care of his children while he took a great journey which took him far and wide, and kept him away longer than he had intended. He returned to find his children fighting and his beautiful kingdom in chaos. The wise old king sighed and gathered his children. “I have seen much, and learned that successful rulers keep one eye on the present, and the other on the future. I have decided that the first Monkey to collect enough supplies for the winter will replace me as ruler.”
The king’s children bowed and dutifully filed out, but one by one each whispered to the other, “Beware, I have magic.”
Shoot your coconuts straight and true to collect them in the basket, but beware the monkey magic that might monkey with you.
Voodoo
3-6 Players Ages 8-up
Box Back
Mix magical ingredients to cast powerful curses on your adversaries, making them hop on one foot, oink like a pig, or sing a silly tune! The one who prevails must endure every enemy curse, and show no mercy in return. Are you brave enough to accept the challenge?
Warning: you may laugh until you cry!
Board Game Rule Books
By Paula Hiatt
Hagoth: Builder of Ships
Audacious explorers have ignited a stunning shipbuilding boom in the land of Bountiful. Under Master Shipbuilder Hagoth, apprentice craftsmen contend to design, build and sail the best combination of vessels for the daring voyage to the uncharted Land Northward. Beware of sabotage as opportunistic rivals race for the prestigious title: Builder of Ships.
Components
1 Instruction Booklet
1 Game Board
1 Four-sided Die
4 Victory Point Markers
8 Ship Tokens
50 Wood Tokens
100 Playing Cards
Object and Scoring
Players compete to design, build, and sail ships from Bountiful to the Land Northward. Each time a new ship is launched in the Bountiful harbor, the player immediately gains the number of victory points indicated in that harbor, earning additional victory points at the end of each successful voyage. The first player to accumulate 25 victory points wins the game!
Setup
Each player chooses a color and receives two corresponding ship tokens and one victory point marker. To choose first player, shake all victory point markers together and drop one at random. Play will proceed clockwise from first player. The board is positioned in the center of play and all victory point markers are placed at zero. Each player is dealt five cards and the remaining deck becomes the draw pile.
Game Play
During a turn, a player may Play Two Cards OR Perform One Action without holding the necessary action card.
Play Two Cards
Selecting two cards from his or her hand, a player may:
Begin a new ship design or add to an existing blueprint
Go Wooding
Build a completed blueprint
Sail
Attack an opponent
Play one card and discard the other
At the end of a turn, a player must draw two cards, bringing the total back to five. When the draw pile is exhausted, the discard pile is turned over and shuffled. Cards may never be drawn from the discard pile.
Perform an Action
A player may opt to play no cards and choose one of three actions:
Go Wooding
Build one segment of a completed blueprint using previously stockpiled wood
Sail a ship token one space closer to the Land Northward
At the end of the turn no cards may be discarded.
Designing Ships
Ship segment cards can be arranged to complete five different blueprints, but no player may produce more than two ships at any one time. Once a design segment has been laid on the table, it may not be removed except by an opponent’s remove card. However, it may be rearranged within the design, or moved back and forth between two designs, even if it leaves one design empty or does not touch another card. Once a ship’s blueprint is complete, the player may build the ship.
Building Ships
To build a ship, players must first collect wood by taking the Go Wooding action, rolling the four-sided die and receiving the number of wood tokens indicated by the number at the top peak. A player may begin building a completed blueprint before stockpiling all the wood necessary to finish. Using Build cards or by choosing the build action, one wood token must be placed on each segment of a ship’s blueprint.
Launching Ships
Once every segment is “built” of wood, the player’s ship token is immediately lowered into the Bountiful harbor in the blueprint’s corresponding shipping lane. The player immediately advances the number of victory points indicated by that harbor. Once a ship is in the harbor, its entire blueprint is placed in the discard pile, and its wood tokens returned to stock.
Sailing Ships
Each of the five shipping lanes from Bountiful to the Land Northward corresponds to a specific ship. The markers along each shipping lane designate the number of increments each ship must sail before arriving in the Land Northward.
Each Sail card or sail action advances a ship token one increment closer to the Land Northward. If two Sail cards are played, the movements may be used on one ship token or split between two. Multiple ship tokens may occupy any space on the board.
When a ship completes a voyage to the Land Northward, the player advances the number of victory points indicated in the final harbor, thereby gaining victory points for both the launching of a ship and at the end of a successful voyage. No single player may sail more than two ships at any one time.
Hint: the largest ship is worth 5 points at launch, and an additional 6 points upon arrival at the Land Northward. In contrast, the smallest ship is worth only 1 point at launch and only 1 additional point upon arrival because it completes the journey in a single sail. The key is to build the fastest combination of ships.
Playing Cards
| Ship Segment
Seven separate segments combine to create five different blueprints. |
| Go Wooding
Roll the four-sided die and collect the number of wood tokens listed at the top peak, either for stock pile or immediate use with a build card. |
| Build
1 Build one blueprint segment out of wood. 2 Build two blueprint segments out of wood. ? Roll the four-sided die and build the number of blueprint segments indicated by the top peak, provided enough wood has been stockpiled. |
|
| Sail
Sail a ship token one space closer to the Land Northward. |
| Skip
Skip the next turn of one opponent. |
| Remove
Remove and discard any segment from an opponent’s blueprint as long as no part of it has been built out of wood. |
| Delay
Push one opponent’s ship back one space in the shipping lane, no further than Bountiful harbor. |
| Destroy
Remove one wood token from an opponent’s partially built blueprint. Return to stock. |
King’s Vineyard
2-4 Players Ages 10+ 45 Minute Play
The King is searching for the apprentice with the cleverest way with grapes to become the new Master of the Vineyard. The wily King will pay three surprise visits, judging the grapes for color, sweetness and size of the vine, dispensing gifts of goblets, bottles and barrels to demonstrate his appreciation. After the final visit, the apprentice with the most valuable gifts will become Master of the King’s Vineyard.
Components
- Rulebook
- 60 Single-Variety Grape Cards
- 36 Double-Variety Hybrid Grape Cards
- 16 Special Action Cards
- 3 King Cards
- 80 Vine Tiles
- 1 First Player Card
- 70 Point Tokens
Goblet = 1 Point Bottle = 5 Points Barrel = 10 Points
Object
Players vie to impress the King who judges each vineyard according to the number of ripe grapes, adding bonuses for sweetness, fruits of the same color, and the uniformity of the vines. At the end of each royal visit, players tally their scores and collect the King’s gifts as point tokens. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.
Setup
Two Player Game
Before beginning a two player game, choose one grape color to be completely removed from the deck. For example: Should players choose green, remove all 15 single color green grape cards and all 18 hybrid grape cards containing green grapes. Once one color has been removed, proceed with normal setup and play.
Three or More Player Game
Setting aside the 3 king cards, thoroughly shuffle the rest of the deck and deal 6 cards to each player. Once all cards have been dealt, the deck is turned face-down to become the draw pile. Insert the three king cards into the draw pile at roughly equal intervals starting a few cards from the bottom and working up no higher than the upper third. Vine tiles are a shared resource and should be in reach of all players. To begin play, the first player takes the first player card, which will rotate clockwise at the end of each round.
Playing the Game
The game is played as a series of rounds, each comprised of seven phases accomplished in order: Draw, Discard, Wilt, Harvest, Plant, Grow and Ripen.
Draw and discard are completed in order beginning with first player and moving clockwise around the board. After draw and discard, the next phases may be performed simultaneously by all players. However, each player must wilt, harvest, plant, grow and ripen in order. Once all phases are accomplished, the first player token moves clockwise to the next player.
Draw Beginning with first player, players refill their hands up to 6 cards by drawing from the draw pile, the discard pile or both. Note: This phase is skipped for the first round since all players begin with 6 cards.
When the king card is drawn it is placed in the center of the table, indicating that the king is on his way to inspect the vineyard. The player who drew the king draws another card to replace it and the round continues. All players have the rest of the round to prepare for scoring.
If the last king has been drawn and there are no more cards in the draw pile, complete the final round by shuffling the discard pile and laying it face-down as the new draw pile.
Discard Players may discard as many cards as they wish. However, no new cards may be drawn until the next round, and the rest of the phases must be completed with the cards in hand.
WiltWilt one vine segment of each ripe grape cluster. To wilt the vine, turn the vine tile to the brown, bare side. One vine segment will wilt each turn after the grapes have ripened. Do not wilt the vines of unripened grapes. Skip this phase if a player’s vineyard contains no ripe grapes.
Watering Can Special Action Card During the wilt phase, a player may use one or more watering can cards. Each watering can prevents one vine segment from wilting. Multiple watering cans may be used on one plant or divided among several. Used watering can cards are discarded to the game box.
Harvest All grapes with completely wilted vines must be harvested. The vine tiles are returned to common stock and the grape cards are placed in the player’s personal stock, held aside to determine the winner in the event of a tie.
Players may also elect to harvest grapes which are not wilted or ripened, but no longer desired in the vineyard. Unripened grapes are placed on the discard pile, and ripened grapes are added to the player’s personal stock.
Players with nothing to harvest may skip this phase.
Plant To plant place a grape card face-down on the table with the unripened grapes showing. Each player must plant 1 grape card during each round up to 3 plants. After accumulating 3 plants, a player may elect to skip the planting phase. No vineyard may grow more than 5 plants at any one time.
Shovel Special Action Card During the plant phase, a player may play one or more shovels to plant multiple grape cards. However, vineyards are still limited to 5 plants. Used shovel cards are discarded to the game box.
Grow Each player must add one leafy vine tile to each unripened grape cluster. Ripened grapes do not grow. Unripened grapes continue to grow one vine tile each round until the plant reaches the maturity range listed on the card, and the player ripens it by turning the grape card face-up. No plant may exceed or short change its maturity range. If a player’s entire vineyard is ripe, this phase is skipped.
Fertilizer Special Action Card During the grow phase, a player may use one or more fertilizer cards. Each suffusion of fertilizer grows one additional vine tile. Multiple fertilizer cards may be applied to one plant or divided among several. However, each plant remains limited to its listed maturity range. Used fertilizer cards are discarded to the game box.
Ripen Grapes may be ripened at their minimum listed length, but must be ripened at their maximum length. Grapes are ripened by turning the grape card face-up at the end of its vine. Once ripened, the vines will begin to wilt during the wilt phase of the following round.
Scoring If the king was drawn during the draw phrase, he will inspect each vineyard after the ripen phase, dispensing gifts according to the following criteria:
Grape Points
- Points awarded only for ripe (face-up) grapes
1 Point for each ordinary grape cluster
2 Points for each sweet grape cluster
Matching Color Bonus
- Dual color hybrid grape clusters score once for each color
2 Points for the most grapes of the same color (ties don’t score)
1 Point for 2 grape cards of the same color
2 Points for 3 grape cards of the same color
4 Points for 4 grape cards of the same color
7 Points for 5 grape cards of the same color
Matching Vines Bonus
- Ripened Grapes Only
- Wilted Vine Tiles Count
1 Point for 2 vines of the same length
2 Points for 3 vines of the same length
4 Points for 4 vines of the same length
7 Points for 5 vines of the same length
After the king’s first and second visits, players collect their gifts, the king card is discarded to the box and the game continues.
Winning the Game Following the king’s third and final visit, all vineyards are scored and gifts distributed. The player with the most points is declared Master of the King’s Vineyard.
In the event of a tie, tied players score the number of harvested grape cards in their personal stock. Should this also come out a tie, the two players should shake hands and share their esteemed title.
Credits
Game Design Sandeep Kharkar and Dave Haslam
Indulgence and Support Pallavi Ranade-Kharkar and Trisha Haslam
Graphic Design Kevin Keele
Editing Paula Hiatt
Play Testing Aaron Walker, Brad Worthen, Daniel, Greg Jones, John Sears, Phil Kilcrease, Kelly Murphy, Tyler Laing
Special Thanks Abby, Chase and Porter
Paula Hiatt
Writing Portfolio
Excerpt from Secrets of the Apple, a Novel
Two Short Stories of a Related Series
Secrets of the Apple
A Novel By Paula Hiatt
Secrets of the Apple
Excerpt from Chapter Seven
By Paula Hiatt
The doorbell rang twice in a row, followed by a thumping sound outside, like something heavy falling. Ryoki swung open the door, intending to jump out and startle whatever giggling niece or nephew he imagined was out there. Instead he found a middle-aged woman with hair the color of wheat rinsed in pink lemonade, wearing a black polyester cocktail dress with stretch wrinkles across the middle.
“Hi, I’m Susan Calvert, from down the street. My finger just slipped on that bell when I dropped my purse. Sorry about that.” She was nervously brushing invisible dirt from her purse and looking at Ryoki who smiled politely, his eyes drawn to the erratic motion of her hands.
“I understand Kate and all the Porter girls are here today and my mother passed two days ago and—” She put a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, almost concealing the white tissue protecting the delicate fabric from her mascara, her other hand snagging his arm to be led inside and offered a chair.
“You must be Kate’s boyfriend. I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, settling on the sofa and plucking at her handkerchief, carefully so as not to shred the tissue.
He opened his mouth to clarify, but she didn’t give him the chance.
“My mother’s funeral is on Monday. I’ve been wondering and wondering what to do about the music. Then I saw all the cars and remembered the Porter girls were all home for a few days. They’ve sung together for lots of things, even their own mother’s funeral. Beautiful family, such lovely people.” Her voice broke and she paused to dab at her eyes.
“I sure miss Mary. That’s Kate’s mother, but of course you know that,” she said, tapping her forehead. “They gave her quite a send-off when she died. Must have been a whole shop of flowers and people lining up at the funeral home and filing by the casket for three solid hours the night before, then that big old church full clear to the back for the funeral. Those girls singing and playing…You’d have thought she was somebody important instead a just a housewife. But she seemed to have that effect, which is funny, because she wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly. In fact, she once told me that what she really wanted was an electric fence so all she’d have to do is go out in the morning and pick up the bodies. But people sure did line up to pay their respects when she died. She just had that effect.”
Ryoki managed to make a few more noncommittal noises before she put her hand back on his arm and leaned toward him. “I want to get your opinion on something. I want to sue that nursing home for neglecting my mother.” Her eyes refilled with tears. “There was this woman that used to steal my mother’s pudding two, three times a week, and none of the staff ever said a thing to her. Then this woman up and trips during dinner and flips her dress clear over her head. Naturally my mother just laughed and her lower teeth fell out, that’s when the meatball slid wrong and cut off her air. If they hadn’t all rushed off to help that other lady, my mother might still be alive. Besides that, somebody should have helped her get some better-fitting teeth. And besides all that, if they’d stopped the other lady from taking my mother’s pudding, she wouldn’t have laughed and she’d still be alive today. What do you think of that? My husband says no.”
“Mrs. Calvert?” Kate said coming down the hall. Ryoki bolted.
Reviews and Back Cover Blurb for Secrets of the Apple
“Exceptional” –Kirkus Starred Review
“A captivating love story” –Lisa Oliver Monroe, Kirkus Magazine
Back Cover
“When the door shut behind Kate, some invisible detail changed in the room, maybe something to do with the air pressure, or possibly the temperature. Gradually minor noises took on a strange magnification, like the grinding tikka tikka of the antique clock on the credenza and the splatter of raindrops against the windows as the long drizzle finally turned ardent. He felt a chill in his arms and rose to put the clock in a drawer, wondering how he could have occupied this room for two weeks without consciously noting such an irritating sound. Back at his desk, he picked up a pen, reminding himself how rejuvenating it was to work in solitude, free to swear all he wanted. He put the pen down, remembering he didn’t need it. He sat back in his chair. The office felt dead.”
Ryoki is comfortable is his custom-built hell, making money with both hands and slashing his path through the world of men. But there’s something about Kate, something important dangling just at the edge of his consciousness. She can’t read a map, she falls off her heels, and yet she saves his life with a button and a bit of thread. Terrified she’s privately plotting to marry him, he studies her with hooded eyes, attempting to discover her secrets for himself. But understanding Kate will challenge everything he thought he knew.
Why exactly did Eve hand over her apple?
Review
Detailing how family dynamics, cultural diversity and past relationships shape who we are, debut novelist Hiatt subtly explores the cavern between a successful life and a meaningful one . . . An exceptional first effort that captures the harmony of two beating hearts.
Kirkus Starred Review
Travel Articles
By Paula Hiatt
BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
by Paula Hiatt
We spent the week touring factories in southern China, and Thanksgiving morning found us in Shenzhen where we were met at our hotel by our account manager at a plastics factory, a miniature firecracker who had chosen the English name Linda. She started calling my son, Porter, “Harry Potter” right off, which set his mouth in a flat line until mom’s raised eyebrow convinced him to dredge a smile from his emergency supply.
It might have made him feel better if I’d pointed out that he had a couple inches on her and could probably take her in a fair fight, a fact made all the more startling as Porter is barely nine and Linda was wearing four-inch heels hidden under her long pants, though we couldn’t see that detail until hours later when we were all racing tandem bicycles around a lake in an obscure manufacturing town.
Chinese women are all about shoes: thin, lower heels for older women, and a stunningly short skirt and impossibly high heel combination for the young, unless the young woman is feeling particularly casual, in which case she’ll wear skinny pants and flat shoes with a row of buckles or bows or an astonishing Tinker Bell pouf. For a Chinese woman, a shorter than short skirt and five inch heels are no impediment to riding a bike, which she does not mount by kicking the leg back and swinging over, but by first taking off sidesaddle, then bending the knee and lifting the leg over the bar in front to catch the pedal on the other side. How they kept the color of their undies to themselves was a mystery I wasn’t willing to explore, so I averted my eyes before catching onto the nuance of the operation. I’m an American, I wear jeans and comfy shoes, and I mount a bicycle like a horse. Everybody stared.
Actually, people kind of stare at us in America too. Most people don’t take their children on business trips, but the nature of the board game business allows us to take them to game fairs where we shamelessly flout child labor laws, setting our children to wait on unsuspecting customers, demoing games, and play testing new games with designers who hope to publish with us. Taking them to tour the factories was a stretch, even for us, but it was good for them to see that the products they enjoy do not appear by magic. As it turned out, there’s nothing like three kids for breaking the ice.
When we arrived at the plastics factory, mini Linda introduced us to her boss, four toothpicks and a head of hair with the English name Nancy, who owned the factory along with her husband who was out of town on business There’s no point sharing the details of how these two sharp, professional women ended up sharing a tandem bike at the lake, suffice to say it involved chicken hearts, a chocolate fountain, and a Brazilian named Lomi, who wore a straw hat and a red satin shirt.
On the bike Nancy sat in the first seat, pedaling with all eighty pounds, while Linda threw in her two cents, reaching the pedals by the grace of the four-inch spikes glued to her shoes, each woman laughing and panting and swaying side to side in an asynchronous rhythm that threatened to spill them at any minute. My husband and my son, Chase, were on another tandem getting hit on by admiring females. My daughter, Abby, and Porter were together too and challenged Nancy and Linda to a duel, pedaling furiously, Abby in the front with Porter in the back pumping his legs and peeling a clementine that he slid onto his finger like a ring, waggling it at the ladies as he flew past, flashing a cheesy grin and popping it whole in his mouth while perfect strangers cycled by yelling HARRY POTTER.
I was the only single rider, and at the end Linda and Nancy said I must be the most tired because I had no one to help me. I was tired, but only because I nearly died laughing.
What did you do for Thanksgiving? I hope the Turkey was good.
Paradise
By Paula Hiatt
Several years ago my stepmother sent me an email from India where she and my dad were serving as missionaries. On their morning walk they happened across a group of children combing a garbage pile for their breakfast. The oldest girl carried the baby, and when she found a bit of discarded food, she fed the baby rather than herself.
I’ve carried this image ever since and thought very hard about those who jab their fingers at the unfairness of life and proclaim it proof that God couldn’t possibly exist. We started off equal, Adam and Eve running around buck naked without the faintest notion of what a Louis Vuitton handbag might be for–can’t eat it, won’t haul much. Throw that down and help me remember what I named this thing with the eight foot neck that just pooed polka dots all over my foot. Life was simple, until the day Eve handed over her apple, opening man’s eyes to the essential symbiosis of good and evil. Lots of people hate her for this. Life’s not fair because Eve got us kicked out of Paradise.
A few weeks ago I started volunteering in an orphanage in Suzhou, China, a beautiful, brand new facility where the babies are eerily quiet and hardly ever wet their pants. In the baby rooms the cribs are arranged in rows, cute rosy babies up front, bouncing against the rails, the next row a little more handicapped and/or a little less attractive, more handicapped and less attractive, a little more and a little less until you find yourself in the back row with a girl named Violet. In the finite world of the crib, too many of these children retreat into some private universe where the hunt and peck volunteers have a tough time reaching them. The first time I saw Violet’s blank expression, I was trying to give her the bottle the attendant had just thrust into my hands. I dribbled milk before I realized her hands were too palsied to take it, but more than that, she didn’t even react. She had to have been hungry, but she didn’t move. She was larger than the others, with thicker hair and more defined features, so I figured her for an older toddler. I wrapped her in the towel that serves as her blanket and lifted her in my arms to carry her to the baby activity room which is only heated because the expat volunteers won’t make do with less. Settling into a chair, I fed her the bottle which she guzzled almost instantly before curling into a tight, safe ball like a pill bug.
Violet suffers from sandpaper hair and irritated scalp. She smells a little sour and her teeth are coated in the kind of plaque that takes months to build up. Her arms are the size of two of my fingers and her legs aren’t much bigger. She looks to have something in the neighborhood of cerebral palsy with her limbs all bent inward, a back crib child for sure.
“How old is Violet?”
“Eleven or Twelve.”
Like most of the children in the orphanage, Violet was probably found outdoors in the middle of the night, wrapped in blankets, like the nine-day old boy found last week with blond hair and Chinese eyes. It’s illegal to throw away children, but it happens sometimes. It could be poverty, death, the stigma of single motherhood, or the complicated issue of a handicapped child. In a land where you can only have one child, and the younger generation is supposed to support the older, there is precious little margin for one who will never work. All these factors combine to fill the orphanages, cute babies in the front, ugly babies in the back.
I rubbed Violet’s curved spine and massaged her limbs until she relaxed into me. She can’t talk, but she likes music, even if it’s only me humming.
On Wednesday we got an early call–government officials are touring the orphanage and they want to show off the expat volunteers. Most people are gone for the holidays, so you can even bring your family. Can you be ready in half an hour?
We were ready, and two hours later my husband stood holding a baby and chatting with the Communist equivalent of the state governor. The rooms were warm. Violet smelled better and her teeth were brushed, everyone smiling and laughing, taking pictures, the film crew recording everything for posterity. I mostly hid in a corner to watch, but they found me anyway and came over to say hello and thank me as I sat stroking Violet’s sandpaper hair. They genuinely seemed well-meaning, and our foreign faces meant foreign eyes and foreign internet access . . . which ultimately leads to a better funded orphanage.
My son Chase came over to stand next to me as I held Violet. Chase just turned eleven, and I couldn’t begin to lift him.
It’s not fair that a twelve year old girl is spending her life in a crib instead of with a physical therapist. It’s not fair that the perfect infant with the blond hair and Chinese eyes was left on a pile of rubble. And it’s not fair that a young Indian girl was picking through the trash to feed herself and her siblings. Freedom would be such an easy master, if it weren’t for all those pesky consequences. It’s not fair when one man’s choices bloody another man’s nose, or worse, when a string of people bloody the children.
Yet I keep going back to that Indian girl who chose to feed the baby ahead of herself, a bit of soiled food and a moment of choice, a grand choice, a golden choice, a chance to decide whether to live in the dirt or wear a queen’s crown. Satan must have raged when he realized he’d tempted Eve to usher the god-like power of Agency into the mortal world, the very thing he sold his soul campaigning against. Because of Eve, every individual human is endowed with the capacity to choose for himself whether he is more comfortable under the hand of God or the whip of Satan, choice by choice, back and forth, good and evil warring together in every soul, every day. Such a battlefield cannot possibly produce a fair world, yet victory is assured for those who Choose it. Mortal life is short, hardly a blip in our eternal timeline, and Paradise, it seems, is one of the last geographic mysteries, a place that cannot be found unless it is first lost.
I’m not a queen. I’m a fat American wearing a diamond that’s too big and holding children that are too small. I know nothing more of the Indian girl, but the blond Chinese boy is healthy and has a chance of being adopted into some country where his mixed race won’t matter, preferably before he learns to hoard his food. Violet probably won’t make old bones, but when this brief mortal test is over and she towers strong and glorious, I believe her true character as Teacher will be revealed. In that day when we stand woman to woman, I hope I get to thank her for giving me the chance to stroke her sandpaper hair. She will smile and tell me I sing off-key.
Spa Day
By Paula Hiatt
China Is all about manicures, pedicures and massages. Spas abound much to the delight of expats who might not have the chance to indulge in such luxury at home. Although, there ought to be a small skull and crossbones at the entrance of every provider, a subtle warning that a fifty minute massage may include ten minutes of hair pulling and a few bruises. Even silver clouds sometimes have gray linings, kind of like my phone which is shiny silver on top and flat gray on the back. My husband gave it to me with a gleam in his eye, having just experienced the drug-like rush of purchasing a new bit of technology. I held it with suspicion. My friends have noted that my phone and I frequently part company, so my husband received a text from my friend Julie, “We’re going to a Korean spa at 10am. Ask Paula if she wants to come along.”
I dug out my phone and texted back:
“I hear you’re going to a Korean spa. I’m keen to go, but I don’t know what they do there. If it’s anything involving getting wrapped in a towel or a robe, I’m afraid they’ll look at me and say they’ve never had anything that would cover that much real estate. Maybe after that we could go swimsuit shopping, because that’s always fun.”
I hit send.
Too bad it went to Chase’s teacher instead. No fair placing the contacts so close together.
We did make it to the spa, the four of us joking about being the Real Housewives of Suzhou, right up until they told us to strip naked and sit in the pool with all the tiny Chinese girls. And here I was worried about the size of the towels.
“Got anything else to do?”
They gestured vaguely to the upper floors and we each pulled on their standard issue pink shorts and shirts and set off to explore. First there was the salt room where I was happily warm for the first time in weeks. Then we lounged in the ice room, essentially a walk-in freezer that felt curiously like the marble meat locker that is my house. There were various moist saunas too, and huts of paper, wood and adobe, all raised on different levels with coffin-like alcoves carved out underneath, each tube just wide enough for a floor mat and a nap. The spa was all about resting, having an open space in a quiet plane, without the harsh blast of car horns or the beep of e-bikes. People pay the entrance fee for an extravagance of peace. There are other services too, available for a fee, which is how I managed to pay for someone to pull my hair and bruise my shoulders. As soon as I can speak the language, I’m going to ask the first Chinese I see where they found a pencil sharpener big enough for elbows. Still, there might be something to all that pummeling.
The young man massaging my friend said, “You’re not sleeping.” He was right, she had just returned from the United States and was horribly jet tagged, though you couldn’t see it to look at her. He set out to put an end to that, and she wondered what she’d done to make him mad.
I returned home feeling pretty chipper, particularly because I was able to get into the pink shorts.
When my husband came home he said he’d gotten a call from Lee, our contact at the boys Chinese elementary school.
“Is everything all right?”
“I think so,” my husband said.
“One of the teachers got a text she couldn’t understand in the middle of a staff meeting. We think it was from your wife.”
Luckily Lee’s English is very good, so he was able to translate for everyone.
I have no business owning a phone.
Kinmen
By Paula Hiatt
Two days before Christmas Eve, we flew into Xiamen, a small resortish island of just 3.5 million people on the southeast coast of China. Owing to a stunning bit of bad luck, our driver suffered a bout of AIzheimers just fifty yards outside the airport. Imagine the odds, inside the airport he was born on the island and knew it like the back of his hand, outside he couldn’t find the ferry landing even with the map we waved in his face. That’s far, 50 rmb at least.
“It’s really close. Here let me help you,” my husband said, flipping on the taxi meter the driver had accidentally forgotten to turn on, darn Alzheimers.
“Tell me exactly where to go, or It will be 50 rmb.”
There was a good bit of yelling in English and Chinese, and some pouty pulling over to the side of the road in a last ditch effort to run the meter and keep up the pretense, but a couple of miles later we arrived at the ferry to the tune of 16 rmb, plus a 4 rmb tip because the driver never broke character.
The ferry took us to Kinmen, a plucky little island controlled by Taiwan, which in the past has been such a hotly contested scrap of real estate it gave birth to the Kinmen Knife Company, that for many years produced high quality knives from spent shell casings gathered from the ground. The company claims to be doing so even to this day, though I suspect that may be along the lines of 50 rmb to the ferry dock. Kinmen only boasts 40,000 people, nearly deserted compared to China with its heavy smog and ubiquitous high rise apartment complexes. The island is mostly rural farmland worked with rakes and hoes by small men and women in big straw hats, surrounded by goats and chickens
On Kinmen our driver spoke Mandarin with such a heavy Taiwanese accent that we barely understood her. But she understood us when we told her we were hungry, and took us to the best restaurant in town, which sadly proved to be closed. Western faces are rare enough in Kinmen that we caused a bit of a stir. When we started to shoehorn back into our cab, the fruit seller next door ran off to alert the family that customers were escaping, open up quick! For the first time in months, we ate Chinese food we recognized. Odd we had to leave China to get it.
We stayed in the Kinmen Guest House, and the next morning the owner showed us around, telling us all about the Wong family who came to Kinmen 900 years ago, and liked each other so much that they all lived together in a crowded little dwelling. Luckily, in the 19th century, the Great Wong made a fortune in Japan and came home to take pity on his relatives, building the bed and breakfast we stayed in, as well as a school, the main hall, and eighteen houses which are still privately occupied. To keep everything harmonious, the whole complex was designed to satisfy the exacting demands of fengshui. For luck the main hall was built behind a natural rock in the vague shape of a dragon head, said to bring riches to anyone who touches it. The building was built over the rock representing the dragons tail, to keep the dragon from flying off. Our guide also pointed out the thin terracotta tiles set on end to form a series of delicate flowers running along the roofs of the houses. “This is a thief alarm,” she said. “If a thief steps on it, the tiles will break, waking everyone in the house.”
We also walked by a door set in a hill that she passed without comment.
“Is that where you keep your janitor supplies?” my nine year-old son, Porter, asked.
“Well, uh, during the war, uh . . .”
“It’s a bomb shelter, Porter.”
“Over here is the oldest palm tree in southern Asia,” our guide said quickly.
There’s also a machine gun tower in the center of the roundabout, the grass neatly clipped and weeded, the camo paint curiously clear and unfaded, though the war is long over. There are spikes set into the beach, and concrete barriers in the ocean, loads of pillboxes too, all over the island, in good working order, cement hidey holes perfect for automatic weapons. I wasn’t all that impressed by the camo fort surrounded by Howiters, until I realized I was looking at the restroom and meeting complex. The actual fort is underground, tunnels blasted through solid rock, wide and long enough that at the entrance they asked if we wanted to drive our car. They let us walk right in without even checking IDs, happy to let us explore their benign memorial, especially the room with the huge gun pointed at China and the camo-clad soldier busy cleaning the firing mechanism. We toured the water tunnel too, the ingenious u-shaped sea tunnel where they could dock their ships even during heavy shelling. There’s a list of instructions out front. The third item says “Stay on the paths,” the fourth is “Avoid the minefields in the forests.”
This is a great path, let’s stay on this path, I love this path. I wonder what mothers in Kinmen tell their children—Be careful crossing the street. Stay on the paths. Avoid the minefields in the forests.
In the past Kinmen has served as Taiwan’s first line of defense against China, and there are still many soldiers stationed there. Though nowadays we can kill each other so much more efficiently, I have no idea whether it still maintains its strategic importance. It’s a pretty little island, rural and sweet, a series of delicate terracotta flowers running along the edge of Taiwan. The trouble with terracotta tiles is that once shattered, they cannot be repaired, they can only be replaced. What do Kinmen mothers tell their children?
When the ferry returned us to Xiamen’s Chinese soil with all its smoggy high rises, we got in a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a nearby mall so we could finish our Christmas shopping before returning home to Suzhou. He smiled big and pleasant, looping us all over the island, quadrupling our fare.
Big Pants
By Paula Hiatt
Chinese women are twigs, and I’m, umm, not. Recently we emerged from the train station into People’s Square in Shanghai and were photographed four times before we could get a single shot of our family. It’s killing me to think how many photo albums I look fat in.
Before coming here, I watched a documentary in which a worker in a Chinese clothing factory held up a pair of pants he’d Just sewn together, clearly stunned at a waist size that would have accommodated himself and a friend. Through an interpreter he said, “Americans are big. They need big pants,” It’s true, most Americans are bigger than the Chinese, and would remain so even if we all ran marathons every summer. But there’s also the niggling fact that a McDonalds cheeseburger is faster and cheaper than whipping up a salmon steak and a fruit salad. Americans love fast and cheap, which would be why we ask a little Chinese guy to sew our giant pants, and call him weightist when he doesn’t try to hide his frank amazement.
Of course, there’s also the issue of Chinese cuisine. In the United States there are Chinese restaurants on practically every corner cranking out tasty morsels of boneless white chicken breast, sweet and sour, sesame seed, or general tso’s, all contributing to the necessity of big pants. No one here has heard of any of those dishes, leading me to believe that in the United States, right at this very moment, a group of Chinese servers is standing in the back kitchen thumbing their noses at the gullible Americans. I’ve walked the walk and smelled the smells in the grocery store, and live eels can be very eloquent. They say that you love whatever food you grow up with, which would explain why I don’t mind the occasional fried pork rind (big pants, big pants). But I’ve got to wonder, are some of these people small because their mothers smiled and said, “Eat this so you get big and strong,” then set out a bowl of soup with tentacles and a duck bill sticking out of the broth—”Nah, I’m good.”
In November we were in the south of China and celebrated Thanksgiving at the Shenzhen Ritz Carlton Thanksgiving buffet where Westerners gathered in hiking boots and stiletto heels to give thanks by eating themselves into the next dress size. Feeling a little homesick, I went straight for the roast turkey and mashed potatoes, but my bizarre children headed for the sushi and goose liver pate, which Porter called “mulch” and liked very much, a good chaser for his lobster and crab. The Shenzhen Ritz Carlton is not an option for Christmas dinner, and I still haven’t found vanilla or cranberries, let alone “all the fixins.” Our Chinese tutor pointed out that she had rabbit’s foot for lunch, and said in all seriousness that we should “feed our Bunny good, then eat it for Christmas dinner.”
That’s certainly my Christmas wish, a nice holiday meal with a little trauma on the side. Of course, maybe a little culinary trauma is exactly what we need, after all, Americans are big. We need big pants.
Does that make me a weightist?
FIRE IN THE HOLE
By Paula Hiatt
The day my plane caught fire I was sitting on the wing and could see smoke billowing out from the engine, just like a war movie–minus the popcorn, comfy seat, and the certainty I would make it out alive.
I was living in São Paulo and flying to northeastern Brazil to stand in the sand at the easternmost point in the Americas, and stay in the round hotel in Juan Pessoa that is in the ocean or out of it, depending on the tide. These curiosities dimmed as the temperature rose in the cabin of the plane. The flight attendants knew the drill and began walking up and down the aisles speaking only Portuguese, “Everything is fine, don’t worry, just take crash position.” Calm smile, measured deliberate movements, “Just take crash position.”
I prayed, of course, in such a Catholic country I suspect the whole plane was praying, but I wasn’t looking at anyone else. You really don’t, right there in the moment of maybe. You’re entirely ripped between millipedes of skittering fear, and looking inward to ask yourself the hard questions. You know what those questions are for you, so I won’t bother to list mine. In the midst of my fright I remembered I had been promised three children. I realize that sounds strange, but I knew I would have three, and I did not yet have even one. I grabbed hold of that image and decided that regardless of what came next, I would be alive. That was key, making a decision.
The plane approached a jungle airport, really just a clearing with an airstrip and a little building where Indiana Jones could have passed a pleasant afternoon between lootings and shootings. But I didn’t yet see any of that. I saw the runway, short, small, the stubbly field, then the trees. We were coming in high and fast, so high and so fast, the antiquated fire truck idling at the end of the tarmac. Even if we touched down safely, how would we ever stop by the end of that tiny runway. I could see us spinning into the field and crashing through the trees, wings ripping off, consumed by a ball of fire, because I had seen a prodigious number of movies and knew all about these things. By then the attendants were strapped in, but their words still rang in my mind, “Everything is fine, just take crash position.” It appeared that “fine” had a definition of which I was previously unaware.
I hunkered back into crash position, tuning myself into the plane, listening for the landing gear, all my passenger take offs and landings pattering through my head, “This is normal that felt weird so high so fast how will we stop how will we stop??? . . .”
The wheels touched earth and the disc brakes, thrust reversers, air brakes, or whatever it had roared to life in a deafening proclamation of survival. Impossibly we ground to a halt with feet to spare, attendants grinning, the passengers bursting into relieved applause for the pilot and for our own lives. Orders barked and the attendants shot to the doors, tearing them open and activating the rubber slides that we all know double as boats in the event of a water evacuation. Exit and Run, Exit and Run, Exit and Run. I couldn’t get into the aisle, and glanced out the window at the little fireman standing on top of his truck to aim his hose directly into the engine, knowing he would take it straight in the face should the whole thing blow. Then I was in the aisle and sliding down the rubber slide, arms crossed in front in a mortician’s pose. I ran into the field, we all did, into a depression where we could drop down should the plane explode.
Spoiler alert: I lived, everyone lived, even the plane, which I’m sure was repaired and went right on ferrying passengers around Brazil. A few hours later we were allowed back on to retrieve our personal belongings, and then our luggage came through. A group of businessmen were in a terrible rush and chartered a helicopter, the rest of us were later collected by a another plane, rerouted and pressed into service. I did manage to stand in the easternmost point of the Americas where tiny crabs tittered through the sand, and I loved the round hotel in the ocean where I found more sand dollars than I have ever seen in my life, before or since.
An interesting footnote to this trip; on the way back my flight was caught in a jungle storm which tossed the plane hither and yon like a toddler with a Matchbox car. For years afterwards I boarded every plane literally praying for a boring flight.
For years after that every trip was haunted for me, not by the fire, but by the switch, that shocking instant of change. It was cool and comfortable, and then it wasn’t, air conditioner, no air conditioner. That was all my warning, a change in temperature. With my seatback and tray table in their upright and locked position, I had largely exhausted my control over my environment. I wanted to go back in time where someone could yell “Fire in the hole!” to give everyone fair warning to get clear, but it was too late, the crisis was upon us, and there was nowhere to go but through.
Let’s fast forward to last week at my house. All the doors and windows were locked and my sixteen year-old son, Porter, and I were in the basement. Porter went into the bathroom, and suddenly the front door slammed hard and mighty, vibrating the couch I was sitting on, adjacent to the front wall of the house. I had locked that door myself, didn’t think it could slam that hard. I thought, “It’s nothing, maybe my imagination, probably a passing truck, not a door slam,” because our minds try to fill in holes, however improbable.
Porter came out, “Who’s here?” he asked. Not my imagination, he’d heard it too, from the bathroom, at the back of the house.
“Don’t know,” I said, my mind rerouting, must be my sister, she has a key.
Off he went up the stairs, jauntily calling out “Hello, Hello,” which began to fade into a softer, more uncertain “hello . . . hello? . . . Mom . . . can you come up, and maybe bring a shovel?”
Fresh out of shovels and baseball bats, I marched up the stairs brandishing my phone only to find Porter had also armed himself with the closest weapon at hand, a pair of, uhhm, tweezers.
“I have my pokey thing, Mom.”
They are very sharp, as tweezers go.
There we were creeping through the house, phone and tweezers at the ready, investigating the front door, looking under beds, ripping open closet doors, garage, storage room, searching for henchmen or serial killers, or possibly a ghost because it was dark out and in a moment of daylight and Halloween spirit, I’d been enjoying a chunk of Paranormal Survivor. (I never claimed to be smart.) Nothing, not one thing, even the ghost had gone silent, probably waiting to scare us to death when we were alone in our beds, though neither of us said it aloud.
It was an earthquake, just so you know. We found out the next day, mystery solved, a little 2.8 allowing the plates to release some pressure, nothing to worry about. I can go back to watching Paranormal Survivor with the same jaundiced eye as before, but that’s not the point of the story. Today I am thinking about courage. Who is brave and what does that even mean?
Two months before I was diagnosed with cancer, I believed I had hit rock bottom, navigating a heartbreaking trial I never, ever thought could happen to me. Who knew rock bottom had a basement, or that basement would have a sewer, and that sewer had a sinkhole. Eventually I was paddling around in the magma where my oars kept catching fire, facing a platoon of bone shattering disasters of which cancer was by far the easiest. Who knew I would honestly wish for those heady days in the cozy comfort of rock bottom.
I’m going to be upfront and admit that I now have far more empathy for suicides than I once had because I now understand what it means to genuinely want to die, anything to stop the horrific emotional pain created by a combination of overwhelming circumstances and a body too weakened by chemo and surgeries to properly support my heart and mind. I would not have taken my life because the image of my three beautiful children loomed in my mind more powerfully than they had when the plane caught fire, and I knew I could never intentionally leave them unguarded, that was key, a decision made. I don’t say any of this for sympathy, I don’t need it. But I do need you to know that I speak from the depths rather than the surface.
Improbable as it may seem on a sunny afternoon, I have learned that sometimes the Boogie Man and all his minions can come to our door. In my imagination I march confidently into battle with a knight’s shining armor, or better yet, cool and chic like James Bond, my pockets bursting with enough gadgets to singlehandedly take down an embassy. The trouble with most Boogie Men is that they arrive without warning. We hear people yelling “Fire in the hole!” all the time, but we never really know which “hole” might apply to us. Consequently, no matter how carefully we plan, or how many wise choices we make, there’s a good chance that at some point we will face our worst fears armed only with an upright tray table and a pair of tweezers.
It’s not fair, I know.
So what is courage? Is it the shining knight who plows through his enemies regardless of his personal fears? Maybe. Is it James Bond saving the world with his wits and an explosive pen, or the woman facing disaster who sits on her hard chair, fists clenched, holding her ground until the storm blows itself out? These are pieces of courage, to be sure, but what if your troubles are longer than a single battle and you only have one explosive pen, or that hard chair eventually becomes too much to bear. A car has a powerful battery, but no matter how powerful it is to start, without the alternator to recharge that battery, pretty soon you’re left by the side of the road calling a tow truck. The strength of a single battery is enough courage to power you through a more compact trial, but for a greater calamity you will need something more.
I hate it when people call me strong because inside I feel like a quivering bowl of Jello, and it makes me feel like a fraud. My battery ran out of power clear back at rock bottom, and I had to learn that mental and physical strength are extremely important, but the true foundation of courage is not strength, but love and trust.
I know, it sounds like the back of a greeting card, but I warned you, I am speaking from the depths, not the surface. Why would a soldier storm the beach at Normandy, if not to protect those he loves? Why does a mother get up through the night with a fussing baby when she’s got other children and a full schedule to keep her up all day as well? True endurance is born of love because love can be boundless, while for a mortal being strength is not. When that plane caught fire, the mere idea of my unborn children calmed me, just imagine the powerhouses they are now, how they change the balance of my life. When the Boogie Man comes and you’re taking inventory of your meager supplies, don’t forget to take stock of those you love and who love you. You have a great capacity to love, to love others, and to love yourself. Recognize your power and embrace it, if you don’t you will always struggle to recharge your battery. Serve others, even if all you can do is hope or pray for them, anything to help you look outside yourself, relieving pressure like tectonic plates rumbling a solitary 2.8, increasing your ability to continue forward.
Loving yourself can be trickier, especially when everything goes sideways. I’m one who is constantly reevaluating my performance, questioning whether I’m good enough. This can be a positive trait because it keeps me working, but the downside is that my mind starts criticizing my heart, then my heart starts picking at my lungs, and pretty soon everybody’s attacking my liver, which is how I got that quivering bowl of Jello jiggling around inside my skin. I haven’t conquered this, but I’ve gotten far enough to know it’s equally vital for us to be kind to ourselves as well as to others. Begin working at this now, start it while the sun is shining so that when the Boogie Man suddenly arrives, those pathways are already mapped and well traveled. If the storm is already upon you, start anyway, even if it is placing one pebble atop another. Love is a creative force rather than a destroyer, if you need courage you can’t afford to ignore it.
Now we come to trust, which is even harder for me than loving myself. I did trust once, doe-eyed and easy, quick as a child to forgive, but the last several years have chiseled that out . . . Let me put it this way, I used to love good stories with a sweet romance on the side, now romance is out and I can’t get enough true crime, the more blood and guts the better. The trouble with true crime is that even if the murderer is caught and punished, the victim is still dead, and the family is still grieving. What is criminal “justice” really? The courts can’t force the perpetrator to return a murdered wife or daughter, whole and unharmed, which is what the family truly wants. In essence the “justice” system can only give the family a pair of tweezers to face down the utterly unimaginable. So who do we trust and where is justice?
The secret is that justice has nothing to do with the criminal. We are each walking an individual path that intersects with good people and bad. If we are lucky enough to be given a pair of tweezers, we should use them to pluck out the hairs of anger and hate before they become chains that change our trajectory and slow our steps. Don’t misunderstand, criminals should be punished for their crimes, but if you’re looking for peace in punishment, you’re putting your trust in the wrong place.
This is your journey, your experience, your chance to learn! Don’t let a criminal or a circumstance, or an illness steal that from you. Do justice to yourself. I’m speaking to myself as much as anyone else. I know that some things take years to slide to the rearview mirror, and many leave marks which last for the rest of our lives. It’s superficial to pretend otherwise. I’ve cried gallons of tears in my bedroom with my hand over my mouth so the children wouldn’t hear me through the vents, sobbing out the great and guttural “WHY!!!”
But I know that isn’t really the right question. My life slowly improves when I lay out my little store of supplies and say, “I am in the dark and my life in on fire, what can I do with my tweezers and tray table to improve my situation?” I’m fully aware of how dumb that sounds, but it is a question that provides two important elements, a willingness to trust yourself, and a willingness to take steps. Maybe you can only take one step a day, maybe some days you’ll take a step and get knocked on your backside, and other days you may feel paralyzed, which can lead to self-loathing and distrust, but if we persist in taking steps, even in the dark, one day we will be shocked to realize that not only did we start with everything we needed, but by the end we gained more than we knew existed.
The night of the earthquake Porter would not leave my side as we rifled through the crevices of our house with a phone and a pair of tweezers. “I have my pokey thing, Mom.” He’s too young to comprehend the courage inherent in that statement, but I understand, and I love him for it.
Two Short Stories of a
Related Series
By Paula Hiatt
It’s All About Style
By Paula Hiatt
Walking into the post office I caught sight of myself in the heavy glass door. I’d eaten off my lipstick and my brunette hair fell limp on my shoulders, the roots damp with humidity. My cotton blouse hung in crumpled folds left over from reading “The Tell Tale Heart” on my bed. I stopped for a moment with a hand on the cool metal handle, arrested by my reflection—a stranger to myself.
I looked dull, like a junker Mercedes. People notice when you look sick and green or chic and polished, but never when you look dull. Dull people are anonymous.
A raspy voice startled me. “Miss, are you the doorkeeper?”
Turning I saw the blotchy, translucent hands of an old man carrying three cumbersome packages. Two watery grayish eyes shaded by a charcoal fedora peeked over the top box.
“Excuse me,” I said whipping open the door too fast. A red heat crept up my neck in frond-like streaks. “Can I help you with your packages?”
“That’s all right honey, thank you much,” he said.
I slid my letters into the “Out of Town” slot and left quickly, hoping to avoid anyone who might have noticed me staring at myself.
In the car I turned full attention to my Saturday list, mentally mapping out the most efficient order: dry cleaners, grocery shopping, house cleaning. I thought about the butchers at Dillman’s, last week I’d waited twenty-three minutes.
In the grocery store I scanned the latest issue of Writer’s Digest for possible leads, finally shoving it in my basket under the bananas. For my wedding two years earlier my father had given me a state of the art ultra thin computer with a card addressed to “His Little Writer!” “I know you can do it,” the note had said. I used it to write letters and organize my extensive recipe collection so any dish could be accessed calorically, alphabetically, or categorically. With my husband working so much, I did little cooking, but I liked knowing I could access my compilation so easily.
When his colleagues asked, after we first moved here, my husband said Iwas a free-lance writer, moonlighting as a receptionist until I get established. I interrupted college just before the end to facilitate his internship. It was the right choice.
I try to write something every Saturday off, but at the keyboard my thoughts stiffen into stock stories, headed by whichever hero stared in whatever action/adventure movie playing at the mall’s cheap cinema where I go three times a week. I think my husband suspects my laziness. Three weeks ago at a party a new guy asked what I do. I’d stammered slightly, but he spit out “Receptionist” loud and clear and turned the talk to someone else.
By four o’clock I’d picked up milk, fruit and roast beef; waxed the kitchen floor, cleaned the oven and dropped off three dresses, three pairs of pants, four ties and six white shirts, remembering to point out the small ink stains. At the cleaners Mrs. DeAngelo always grunts over the ink, asking in a thick New Jersey accent if all stockbrokers have as much trouble keeping clean as mine does.
At 4:30 I sat on the couch feeling my body sink into the deep cushions with the relief of work finished. My mind started on the laundry, calculating the amount of clean underwear and white socks left in the drawer. It would have to be done soon. He went through them fast—cut-throat racquetball twice a week, tennis three times and assorted team sports in season.
The night before I’d watched him play community basketball. His tangerine tank top and shorts clung damply to his sweating, tan skin as he streaked between players. Stealing the ball, he’d speed toward me, pivoting at the last second to stay in bounds. His head twisted toward the court in slow motion, flinging sweat beads onto my arm. His hair gleamed almost white—the overhead lights reflected off individual strands making them appear to glow by themselves. One of the other wives turned to me, “He’s fast and assertive, a real scrappy player.” I nodded, wondering if she’d seen his animal desire to win.
Sitting on the couch my reflection from the post office door crept back to me.
How do I appear to him. Dull—probably.
I heard a knock. Outside the peep hole stood my neighbor Anne with her eight month-old Ted strapped in a front carry pouch. I smiled to myself and opened the door.
“How have you been. Ted and I were just about to start our walk and we thought you’d like to come,” she said.
I laced into my Nikes, glad to escape the laundry.
“It’s still hot, but the edge has gone off. Ted was getting so restless, I counted the hours until I thought I could take him out,” she said.
Anne has her degree in microbiology, but quit her job to be Ted’s mom full-time. He spits up on the carpet and keeps her awake two nights a week, but she leans over and kisses his head every half block anyway.
She turned her head to me the way she always does when she wants me to catch every word. “Did you hear about Andrew and Sylvia?”
“No, what’s up with them?”
“They’re getting divorced,” she said, her hand shielding her mouth.
“Are you sure? Last I heard they were on their way to Aruba for a second honeymoon. She mentioned to me two months ago that they were trying for another baby,” I said.
“Not Andrew and Sylvia, Sylvia and her boyfriend. She was just planning to sleep with Andrew within a few days of anytime she slept with what’s his name to cover it up. Anyway, Andrew started to suspect and hired somebody, pictures and everything.”
“Hmmm. This sounds an awful lot like Days of our Lives.”
“No word of a lie. Sylvia told me herself. She’s such a loud mouth. The only shocking thing is that Andrew didn’t find out sooner.”
“They were never really much of a couple. She has big lips and calls out toasts at parties. He reads and laughs politely,” I said.
She smiled broadly and asked, “How’s your job going?”
“You know me, the receptionist of the future.”
“That husband of yours sure keeps busy. On Thursday Jon and I were going to ask you two over for a game of cards, but we didn’t see his car in the drive.”
She looked at me expectantly. I smiled to fill time. She saved me answering.
“That poor guy works so hard. They need to rethink how hard those people work. I’ve seen the stock exchange on tv. Those guys are throwing around little scraps of white paper that represent real money. I don’t want anyone throwing around my money when he’d been working a hundred hours a week. He might get walleyed and use it to wipe his . . .” she broke off, winking at her son.
Our two mile walk had come full circle. I did a little tap step while unlocking the front door. I always feel pumped after talking to Anne.
In the house I turned on the stereo past the fifth notch. The crisp clarity of rock drums beat through the subwoofer, vibrating my skin. Jittering and swerving around the room I stopped in front of the full-length mirror to pose from the side and pucker my lips like a rock star on an album cover wearing a red bustier and matching garter belt.
My blouse was still crumpled.
I felt the sticking sweat of physical labor in a hot room. I picked up a Kleenex to wipe my face and went into the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water streamed over my body washing away the mildew of the day. I thought about the night I first knew I’d fallen in love. We’d gone to an old downtown theatre to see Cyrano De Bergerac. I teared up a little at the end. He’d touched my hand for less than an instant, smiling nakedly with his eyes.
He would be home in two hours. As I shaved my legs I considered topics for conversation. Lately all our talks waded stiffly through a green swamp that limited my subjects to movies or television.
I squeezed a quarter-sized dollop of shampoo into my palm and worked my hair into a frothy lather. Why couldn’t I tell him about the man ahead of me in line at Dillman’s with the enormous nose, three teeth and eighteen strands of hair, who’d shown me a picture of a model in a magazine and said it was his granddaughter; or about Mrs. DeAngelo at the dry cleaners who tells me her life in furtive bits and pieces. Just last week she’d confided that she hadn’t had an evening out alone in almost fifteen years because her husband is a good Italian Catholic who believes in family togetherness. Today Mr. DeAngelo’d cordially tipped his cap to me like always, completely unaware that I knew he screams gibberish when he’s angry, pretending it’s Italian.
The water ran deliciously over my stomach and down my legs. Turning, I let it massage my back before guilt at my waste of time and water urged me to shut it off.
Before drying off, I rubbed myself with baby oil from shoulders to heels and sat by the window at my dressing table wrapped up in a soft, green towel. The breeze felt cool for the first time that day. Outside the dogwoods bloomed in explosions of soft pink blossoms that dropped petals all over the driveway.
Cocking my head to one side I finger dried my long hair, alternately scrunching and fluffing. Then I wound my hair in hot rollers and decided what to wear. It had to be red and quietly sexy. Most of my nice clothes are classic pieces of silk or wool. Finally I settled for a clingy jersey knit dress with a wide scoop neck and an inviting softness.
At my dressing table I started my makeup. Base, powder, eye liner, shadow blended soft, smoky, barely there. Mascara, blush, lip liner full around each lip, outer edge, smudging inside.
I took my rollers out one by one, dropping the clips into their tin. Flipping my head over, I brushed in even strokes until all the curls blended into loose, heavy rolls.
I heard his key in the lock. He walked in with his quick, assertive steps, still wearing his tie all the way to the top.
“Hey baby, how you been?” I asked. My voice sounded rusted and strange to me.
“Fine.” He answered with a rising inflection, elongating the ‘i’, just as he does with strangers.
“Did you make a lot of money today?”
“No, it was pretty slow.”
Bending into his closet, he studied each of his six tennis rackets carefully. Pulling out the first he swung it gracefully, then hit the strings with his palm. Dissatisfied he replaced it and picked up the next in line—1.5 ounces lighter—and repeated the test.
“Would you mind getting my Lightening Stick restrung,” he said.
“Lightening Stick?”
“The dark grey one.”
“Sure. Are you going to play tennis?” I saw he was, but I wanted to talk.
Pausing mid-swing with his third racket, he looked at me for the first time. I saw him see my dress, my hair.
He put his racket down on the bed and took off his watch, laying it gently on the dresser. I almost started up to kiss him. The rising impulse zinged from my stomach down to my toes. I shifted my feet to move toward him. He picked up his digital underwater sports watch and buckled it around his wrist.
He spoke, his back to me. “A bunch of us are meeting down at the courts. Where you headed tonight?”
“I thought I’d get some dinner,” I said.
Opening the drawer he pulled out a white shirt and shorts set with a neon blue stripe running in a diagonal lightning bolt across his chest.
“What do you think of that outfit? I read an article in Tennis Today that said more brights are coming onto the courts,” I said.
“It’s probably because the winners of Wimbledon and the French Open were both sponsored by Reebok. Their players always wear colors,” he said.
He dressed quickly. Taking off his socks he laid them in the corner exactly parallel, two feet from each wall. For two years I’ve wondered why he didn’t just throw them in the hamper. Sometimes I step on them after he’s left.
“What did you do with those new balls I bought?” he asked.
“Front hall closet.”
He went out to get them, and returned laying two cylindrical cartons side by side on the bed. Replacing the third racket, he decided on the fourth and picked up the navy and white Reebok cross-trainers.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“C’mon, I need a kiss.”
He finished lacing his shoes and walked over, quick, assertive steps.
Leaning over he kissed me lip to lip, not fast, not slow, a married kiss. I put my arms around his neck as he pulled away. I focused on his blue eyes, trying to view his face as though for the first time. I saw a vacancy, frightening but clarifying.
“C’mon, let go. If I don’t hurry I’ll be late. Have fun at dinner. See you later.”
I dropped my arms to my sides. “See you.”
He smiled and jauntily walked toward the door.
I heard the throbbing stereo of a slow passing car fight with the neighbor’s blaring television—on the corner a group of teenagers with headphones yelled to each other over their radios. For a single instant the door’s slam rose and swelled into the urban anthem of opiate desire, “What’s next, what’s more? Entertain us.”
Sitting at my dressing table I held a lipstick loosely in my fingers. Fire engine red. “Guaranteed to start a fire,” the advertisement said. Maybe I should have put it on sooner. My mouth curved in a smile at my own gullibility, but I smoothed it on anyway, automatically completing what I’d started.
I slid my feet into black heels and sat with my back to my dressing table. I wanted to cry, scream, scratch my fingernails across the moldings leaving ten perfect marks. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I sat with my legs apart staring at the room, unable to look out the window. I considered calling Sylvia—or Andrew.
The phone on the nightstand cut into the air. I stared at it waiting for the machine to pick up.
What’s next. What’s more.
The Airport
By Paula Hiatt
“I want a divorce,” he said looking just a fraction to the left of her eyes.
In her peripheral vision she could see the line from the ticket counters snaking closer as the maze filled. A mother with three small children, four suitcases and two carry ons struggled past her as fast as they could. She hoped they made their plane.
“What?” she said.
“I want a divorce,” he said, not unkindly.
She shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow she was. A few minutes earlier, she’d smiled to herself because he’d left his car illegally unattended at the curb and walked her in, a very romantic gesture.
She looked directly at him. He appeared to face her steadily, but didn’t quite meet her eyes. She could see he’d chosen a public place so she wouldn’t cry or make a scene, a smart tactic, one he’d probably brag about in later years, maybe say something like “Yeah, I dropped my ex off at the airport and told her to just keep going.” He would be brash and debonair in the locker room, but here in the moment he felt bad, maybe even a little ashamed. She couldn’t gauge how long that feeling might last. Maybe forever, or maybe just until he got back to his car.
Over the loud speaker, a polished voice requested the owner of a dark gray Jaguar return to the curb before the car was towed. Outside the sliding glass doors, they could see the curb attendant glaring at them, speaking into his radio. He looked mean, but he’d given them time before he’d had the car booted or impounded. She suspected he had a kind heart. Her husband said nothing more, just whirled and sprinted out to his car. He’d only had it a month and didn’t care to lose it, not after all the sacrifice it had required.
A sort of numbness carried her through the ticket line. She sleepwalked through security and had traveled almost to her gate before she realized her purse was flapping open awkwardly, exposing her intimate details. She put her hand in to feel for her wallet. Luckily, she hadn’t been robbed. On the plane she took out her compact and checked her makeup. She looked perfect, not a hair out of place. She lowered the compact, clicking it shut and sat unmoving for two hours.
On the ground her grandparents greeted her. She smiled and hugged, making all the appropriate noises in the appropriate places. They had dinner and talked about books and needlepoint and watched a baseball game on tv. Her Grandma Porter pulled out her colorful threads and showed her how to do a new stitch, but didn’t push her to try it herself.
At10:30 she opened her mouth in a convincing yawn, pled traveler’s fatigue, and went to the corner bedroom with connecting bath where she always slept under a creamy embroidered coverlet that should have been in a museum. As was her habit she knelt in bed to say her prayers, then turned out the light and closed her eyes, not that it would do any good, too much pressure built up inside. She wanted desperately to cry, to heave and scream like a steam engine, but the house was so peaceful.
An hour later, she sat up and knelt amidst the covers, but couldn’t get far past the formal greeting of prayer, her gift for language suddenly deserting her. Finally the words burst out in the pared down speech of child. “Please help please help please help.” The tears came after, great wrenching sobs buried silently in the pillow. In time she fell asleep never having closed her prayer. She dreamed of three children playing in the sprinklers in front of her grandmother’s house, their curly coal black hair shining in the sun. She awoke with a start, shaking, but unafraid. Her children. She knew it beyond any doubt.
She had never been given to such dreams, always remained deeply suspicious of those who claimed to see the future, and yet she knew that God had heard her plea and answered her with truth, just not the truth she wanted. Even with a “C” in biology, she knew that brown and blond very seldom produced inky black.
To rest her mind she lay back on her pillow and stared at the moonlight and shadows twining together from both corners of her room. She felt a hundred years old, scarred by war, too tired to start over with curly black hair. She held up her hand and looked at the ring on her finger, thought of the silly romantic girl who had accepted it, and the woman who had kept her promise. It was a half carat brilliant cut, good color, with a defect that could be seen by the naked eye, but only in direct sunlight. A month into the marriage she’d been waiting in the car and noticed a circle of dead light among the tiny prisms cast on the dashboard. She looked at her ring and found the tiny dark spot. She puffed on the diamond and rubbed it on her pants, but the dark spot remained, embedded deep inside.
She didn’t want to start over with a new dark spot. With hair that black, he could be of ethnic origin or perhaps a foreigner. The difficulties of marriage to a Caucasian American had left her gasping and struggling. To pile on a heavy layer of cultural differences would probably drown her entirely. She hadn’t seen the children’s faces. Maybe there had been unnoticed shadows that darkened their hair, made it appear black. She’d already invested so much of herself, too much to try again.
She thought about her husband. It would be easy to play the innocent victim to his abuser, but she didn’t have the heart, not really. Deep inside she knew she had all the evidence of emotional abuse, except a real victim.
She imagined the whole airport scene as it would appear in a movie. The actress that played her would stand looking at him, stunned at first, then her wide, innocent eyes would narrow slightly and she would stand straighter. Twisting the ring from her finger she’d throw it in his face, or maybe the producer would switch the small round diamond for a big sharp marquis she could drop down his pants with a flick of her wrist before she turned to stalk off through the airport to a steady rock beat. The audience wouldn’t applaud, no one applauded at movies, but they would be energized by the beat, exulting in one woman’s triumph over man.
It wouldn’t be what really happened. There had been no soundtrack, no audience, no simple, satisfying wrap up in the interest of time. She felt her ring with her thumb, like married women do. She’d never loved the design, too fussy for her taste. Up close it was flawed, she was flawed, he was flawed. Mostly her husband didn’t like to share or forgive. She’d realized too late about the forgiving. He believed he was marrying a beautiful goddess and never really got over waking up with a human woman.
At the beginning, it worried her all the time, knowing he’d seen through her fraud. All her life the grownups had been impressed, pulling her pigtails, or fondly chucking her chin, singling her out as special, without ever defining what that meant. She had some aptitudes, all arts related, but couldn’t cut it at math or science, the real classes where good students would make real money. In high school her classmates had been more savvy, smelling shyness on the new girl like blood in the water. Occasionally strong attraction prompted her to fight through the fear and open her mouth in front of a boy. She could hear the oddities that came out, but could never quite stop them in time, and went home wishing she’d been born mute.
In college she reinvented herself, learned to bat her eyes as a party trick and enter the room like she owned it. She had plenty of friends in college, a large collection of boys. She smiled to herself trying to remember some of their names and faces. It struck her as funny that she never thought about her successful college days, but sometimes still blushed recalling the succession of embarrassing moments known as high school.
She rolled over on her side and picked at the tiny French knots in the intricate floral pattern. What was she now, success or failure? Her husband had seen through her early in their marriage. The shy awkward girl was still in there and sometimes put in an appearance at a work party when he needed her to sparkle, make him look good. He’d seen her for what she feared herself to be, ordinary, or maybe a little less.
She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, changing the balance of power among the shadows. She got out of bed and pulled her art supplies from her luggage. She wasn’t a natural artist, really only had a germ of talent, but had taken so many drawing classes in connection with her fashion design major that she could at least sketch creditably. She never forgot the day in her portraits class when the model’s actual face appeared on the paper under her hands. Her fingers itched with almost manic energy as she extracted her sketchbook, charcoal and gum eraser, then went back to the bed, plumping the pillows into an upright position.
First she drew her husband as she had first seen him, handsome, well educated, outgoing, glowing with ambition. She let go of her natural precision, could almost hear her teachers in her ear, “Loosen up,” “Don’t let it get too precious,” “Look at the edges.” Her hand moved quickly, without fear, almost without thought as she drew from memory. The lines thinned and thickened, darkened and lightened as she rubbed with her fingers and her gum eraser. Unconsciously she put her charcoal fingers on the coverlet, leaving a nasty black smear on the creamy fabric. Irritated she kicked with her feet until most of it had been shoved to the end of the bed. When the portrait was finished she held it under the light, saw the hope in his eyes, the promise of a bright future. It was beautiful, perfect, the best work she had ever done. She could put it in a frame and send it to his mother, thrilling her on Christmas morning.
Hastily, she pulled off the sheet and let it float to the floor where it sat face up, looking at her. She drew him again, smaller this time, with the same expression, the same desire, but this time he clung desperately to his possessions, arms spread wide protecting them as his wife stood off to the side, indistinct, almost in shadow, a tiny point of light on her left ring finger picked out with a twisted point of her gum eraser. This time she recognized the drawing as art, something she could sell to a gallery. Tonight her fingers were magic. Again she pulled it off and let it float to the floor just askew of the first, overlapping a little.
She drew their house with the rosebushes, then flung it to the floor. She drew three children with curly hair and indistinct features playing in the sprinklers, then copied the room where she sat, focusing on the interplay between light and shadow. Then she designed a room of her own, unlike the navy and gray room she’d designed to share with her husband, but only shared with his clothes. She drew a big four poster bed and comfy chairs with good reading light, a bookcase with leaded glass doors like windows and a big roaring fireplace. In her mind’s eye she could see the colors: dark, rich mahogany for earth, green walls for growth, cream for breath. She held up her drawing. The room looked so free and open, a place she could breathe, but it didn’t look finished. She put the sketchbook back on her lap and added a vase of tall grass and peacock feathers, then looked at it from all angles. Finally, she drew her treasured kimono on the wall opposite the bed. Satisfied she pulled it from the pad and let it slip among the others.
She put down her charcoal and pulled out a brush and a bottle of black ink, extricating it from the almost nuclear war proof wrapping. This was a secret pleasure. She loved the feel of ink on paper, the watery drippiness far scarier than paint because an errant drop could ruin everything at the last moment. She painted rapidly, mostly fashion poses in fanciful dresses, the faces blank except for lips, audaciously large because of the runny ink. She didn’t let these slip to the floor, but laid them carefully flat on every hard surface so they could dry without dripping on the carpet.
Dawn began to lighten the sky and she closed her sketchbook, corking the ink and putting her brush in the glass of water her grandmother had left by her bed. She went around the room gathering her drawings and laid them neatly side by side in three rows. Then she picked out the very best and lined them up together. They were good, she knew it, hard evidence of her worth, the smoking gun. She could hang them on the walls of her living room and when colleagues came over, her husband could say, “My wife’s an artist moonlighting as a receptionist until her career takes off.” When she could feel him tire of saying that, she could commission a private recording of her voice that would play softly for their guests. “My wife’s a singer moonlighting as a receptionist.” Maybe then there would be the piano.
She sat cross legged on the floor leaning against the end of the bed. looking at the drawings for long moments, considering them carefully and thinking of all the adults who had pulled her pigtails and chucked her chin, seeing something when she had never accomplished a thing.
Eventually she gathered the drawings and padded out to the family room, her pajamas stained with ink and charcoal. Even the housekeeper was still abed and the house was silent and chilly. She pulled two logs from the pile and built a teepee with splinters of kindling so the fire could breathe. She took the top drawing, crumpled it and stuffed it under the kindling. The first match caught the paper, the flame licking along the edges, turning them black. One by one she fed the drawings to the fire, allowing them to be consumed individually, in the order they’d been produced.
Halfway through Grandma Porter came in, shrugging on her robe and sitting in the squashy chair near the hearth. “I haven’t seen you up this early of a mornin’ since you were a little bit and sneaking candy.” Her accent was always less polished before her first cup of coffee, more like her own mother’s.
Grandmother and granddaughter sat looking at the drawings, gauging the moment, the appropriate thing to say. “Speak up honey, this is the time. You weren’t ready last night, but now you are.”
“My husband wants a divorce.”
“Do you?” Her grandmother’s clear green eyes held her steadily.
The question hung in the air as the fire ate through an inky dress.
“Do you want your freedom?” grandma asked, making no move to stop the destruction.
“I already have my freedom,” she said, rubbing the heel of her hand briefly over her chest, scratching the itch. “I got charcoal on that bedspread.”
“That counterpane laid over my mother when she birthed every one of her children. It’s hardy.”
Neither woman spoke as the last drawing went into the fire. The biggest log had already caught, popping and crackling, warming the room.
Board Game Packaging Blurbs
By Paula Hiatt
Hide
2-5 Players Ages 10 up
Box Back
Be the Legend
Even cold-blooded secret agents whisper code name: The Legend.
In Hide agents abound, but few truly excel, and fewer still are worthy to be called legendary. Study The Legend, think calmly and strike fiercely, but even the best of the best will need a little luck. Keep your eyes open and choose wisely because you are surrounded by enemies who have studied as well. Will you quickly raise your rank by eliminating competitors, or safely complete your mission by tightly safeguarding your identity and gathering money?
Watch your enemies, use your skills.
Good Hunting.
Coconuts
1-5 Players Ages 10-up
Monkey Magic Monkeys with You
Box Back
Long ago the Monkey King left his peaceful kingdom in the care of his children while he took a great journey which took him far and wide, and kept him away longer than he had intended. He returned to find his children fighting and his beautiful kingdom in chaos. The wise old king sighed and gathered his children. “I have seen much, and learned that successful rulers keep one eye on the present, and the other on the future. I have decided that the first Monkey to collect enough supplies for the winter will replace me as ruler.”
The king’s children bowed and dutifully filed out, but one by one each whispered to the other, “Beware, I have magic.”
Shoot your coconuts straight and true to collect them in the basket, but beware the monkey magic that might monkey with you.
Voodoo
3-6 Players Ages 8-up
Box Back
Mix magical ingredients to cast powerful curses on your adversaries, making them hop on one foot, oink like a pig, or sing a silly tune! The one who prevails must endure every enemy curse, and show no mercy in return. Are you brave enough to accept the challenge?
Warning: you may laugh until you cry!
Board Game Rule Books
By Paula Hiatt
Hagoth: Builder of Ships
Audacious explorers have ignited a stunning shipbuilding boom in the land of Bountiful. Under Master Shipbuilder Hagoth, apprentice craftsmen contend to design, build and sail the best combination of vessels for the daring voyage to the uncharted Land Northward. Beware of sabotage as opportunistic rivals race for the prestigious title: Builder of Ships.
Components
1 Instruction Booklet
1 Game Board
1 Four-sided Die
4 Victory Point Markers
8 Ship Tokens
50 Wood Tokens
100 Playing Cards
Object and Scoring
Players compete to design, build, and sail ships from Bountiful to the Land Northward. Each time a new ship is launched in the Bountiful harbor, the player immediately gains the number of victory points indicated in that harbor, earning additional victory points at the end of each successful voyage. The first player to accumulate 25 victory points wins the game!
Setup
Each player chooses a color and receives two corresponding ship tokens and one victory point marker. To choose first player, shake all victory point markers together and drop one at random. Play will proceed clockwise from first player. The board is positioned in the center of play and all victory point markers are placed at zero. Each player is dealt five cards and the remaining deck becomes the draw pile.
Game Play
During a turn, a player may Play Two Cards OR Perform One Action without holding the necessary action card.
Play Two Cards
Selecting two cards from his or her hand, a player may:
Begin a new ship design or add to an existing blueprint
Go Wooding
Build a completed blueprint
Sail
Attack an opponent
Play one card and discard the other
At the end of a turn, a player must draw two cards, bringing the total back to five. When the draw pile is exhausted, the discard pile is turned over and shuffled. Cards may never be drawn from the discard pile.
Perform an Action
A player may opt to play no cards and choose one of three actions:
Go Wooding
Build one segment of a completed blueprint using previously stockpiled wood
Sail a ship token one space closer to the Land Northward
At the end of the turn no cards may be discarded.
Designing Ships
Ship segment cards can be arranged to complete five different blueprints, but no player may produce more than two ships at any one time. Once a design segment has been laid on the table, it may not be removed except by an opponent’s remove card. However, it may be rearranged within the design, or moved back and forth between two designs, even if it leaves one design empty or does not touch another card. Once a ship’s blueprint is complete, the player may build the ship.
Building Ships
To build a ship, players must first collect wood by taking the Go Wooding action, rolling the four-sided die and receiving the number of wood tokens indicated by the number at the top peak. A player may begin building a completed blueprint before stockpiling all the wood necessary to finish. Using Build cards or by choosing the build action, one wood token must be placed on each segment of a ship’s blueprint.
Launching Ships
Once every segment is “built” of wood, the player’s ship token is immediately lowered into the Bountiful harbor in the blueprint’s corresponding shipping lane. The player immediately advances the number of victory points indicated by that harbor. Once a ship is in the harbor, its entire blueprint is placed in the discard pile, and its wood tokens returned to stock.
Sailing Ships
Each of the five shipping lanes from Bountiful to the Land Northward corresponds to a specific ship. The markers along each shipping lane designate the number of increments each ship must sail before arriving in the Land Northward.
Each Sail card or sail action advances a ship token one increment closer to the Land Northward. If two Sail cards are played, the movements may be used on one ship token or split between two. Multiple ship tokens may occupy any space on the board.
When a ship completes a voyage to the Land Northward, the player advances the number of victory points indicated in the final harbor, thereby gaining victory points for both the launching of a ship and at the end of a successful voyage. No single player may sail more than two ships at any one time.
Hint: the largest ship is worth 5 points at launch, and an additional 6 points upon arrival at the Land Northward. In contrast, the smallest ship is worth only 1 point at launch and only 1 additional point upon arrival because it completes the journey in a single sail. The key is to build the fastest combination of ships.
Playing Cards
| Ship Segment
Seven separate segments combine to create five different blueprints. |
| Go Wooding
Roll the four-sided die and collect the number of wood tokens listed at the top peak, either for stock pile or immediate use with a build card. |
| Build
1 Build one blueprint segment out of wood. 2 Build two blueprint segments out of wood. ? Roll the four-sided die and build the number of blueprint segments indicated by the top peak, provided enough wood has been stockpiled. |
|
| Sail
Sail a ship token one space closer to the Land Northward. |
| Skip
Skip the next turn of one opponent. |
| Remove
Remove and discard any segment from an opponent’s blueprint as long as no part of it has been built out of wood. |
| Delay
Push one opponent’s ship back one space in the shipping lane, no further than Bountiful harbor. |
| Destroy
Remove one wood token from an opponent’s partially built blueprint. Return to stock. |
King’s Vineyard
2-4 Players Ages 10+ 45 Minute Play
The King is searching for the apprentice with the cleverest way with grapes to become the new Master of the Vineyard. The wily King will pay three surprise visits, judging the grapes for color, sweetness and size of the vine, dispensing gifts of goblets, bottles and barrels to demonstrate his appreciation. After the final visit, the apprentice with the most valuable gifts will become Master of the King’s Vineyard.
Components
- Rulebook
- 60 Single-Variety Grape Cards
- 36 Double-Variety Hybrid Grape Cards
- 16 Special Action Cards
- 3 King Cards
- 80 Vine Tiles
- 1 First Player Card
- 70 Point Tokens
Goblet = 1 Point Bottle = 5 Points Barrel = 10 Points
Object
Players vie to impress the King who judges each vineyard according to the number of ripe grapes, adding bonuses for sweetness, fruits of the same color, and the uniformity of the vines. At the end of each royal visit, players tally their scores and collect the King’s gifts as point tokens. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.
Setup
Two Player Game
Before beginning a two player game, choose one grape color to be completely removed from the deck. For example: Should players choose green, remove all 15 single color green grape cards and all 18 hybrid grape cards containing green grapes. Once one color has been removed, proceed with normal setup and play.
Three or More Player Game
Setting aside the 3 king cards, thoroughly shuffle the rest of the deck and deal 6 cards to each player. Once all cards have been dealt, the deck is turned face-down to become the draw pile. Insert the three king cards into the draw pile at roughly equal intervals starting a few cards from the bottom and working up no higher than the upper third. Vine tiles are a shared resource and should be in reach of all players. To begin play, the first player takes the first player card, which will rotate clockwise at the end of each round.
Playing the Game
The game is played as a series of rounds, each comprised of seven phases accomplished in order: Draw, Discard, Wilt, Harvest, Plant, Grow and Ripen.
Draw and discard are completed in order beginning with first player and moving clockwise around the board. After draw and discard, the next phases may be performed simultaneously by all players. However, each player must wilt, harvest, plant, grow and ripen in order. Once all phases are accomplished, the first player token moves clockwise to the next player.
Draw Beginning with first player, players refill their hands up to 6 cards by drawing from the draw pile, the discard pile or both. Note: This phase is skipped for the first round since all players begin with 6 cards.
When the king card is drawn it is placed in the center of the table, indicating that the king is on his way to inspect the vineyard. The player who drew the king draws another card to replace it and the round continues. All players have the rest of the round to prepare for scoring.
If the last king has been drawn and there are no more cards in the draw pile, complete the final round by shuffling the discard pile and laying it face-down as the new draw pile.
Discard Players may discard as many cards as they wish. However, no new cards may be drawn until the next round, and the rest of the phases must be completed with the cards in hand.
WiltWilt one vine segment of each ripe grape cluster. To wilt the vine, turn the vine tile to the brown, bare side. One vine segment will wilt each turn after the grapes have ripened. Do not wilt the vines of unripened grapes. Skip this phase if a player’s vineyard contains no ripe grapes.
Watering Can Special Action Card During the wilt phase, a player may use one or more watering can cards. Each watering can prevents one vine segment from wilting. Multiple watering cans may be used on one plant or divided among several. Used watering can cards are discarded to the game box.
Harvest All grapes with completely wilted vines must be harvested. The vine tiles are returned to common stock and the grape cards are placed in the player’s personal stock, held aside to determine the winner in the event of a tie.
Players may also elect to harvest grapes which are not wilted or ripened, but no longer desired in the vineyard. Unripened grapes are placed on the discard pile, and ripened grapes are added to the player’s personal stock.
Players with nothing to harvest may skip this phase.
Plant To plant place a grape card face-down on the table with the unripened grapes showing. Each player must plant 1 grape card during each round up to 3 plants. After accumulating 3 plants, a player may elect to skip the planting phase. No vineyard may grow more than 5 plants at any one time.
Shovel Special Action Card During the plant phase, a player may play one or more shovels to plant multiple grape cards. However, vineyards are still limited to 5 plants. Used shovel cards are discarded to the game box.
Grow Each player must add one leafy vine tile to each unripened grape cluster. Ripened grapes do not grow. Unripened grapes continue to grow one vine tile each round until the plant reaches the maturity range listed on the card, and the player ripens it by turning the grape card face-up. No plant may exceed or short change its maturity range. If a player’s entire vineyard is ripe, this phase is skipped.
Fertilizer Special Action Card During the grow phase, a player may use one or more fertilizer cards. Each suffusion of fertilizer grows one additional vine tile. Multiple fertilizer cards may be applied to one plant or divided among several. However, each plant remains limited to its listed maturity range. Used fertilizer cards are discarded to the game box.
Ripen Grapes may be ripened at their minimum listed length, but must be ripened at their maximum length. Grapes are ripened by turning the grape card face-up at the end of its vine. Once ripened, the vines will begin to wilt during the wilt phase of the following round.
Scoring If the king was drawn during the draw phrase, he will inspect each vineyard after the ripen phase, dispensing gifts according to the following criteria:
Grape Points
- Points awarded only for ripe (face-up) grapes
1 Point for each ordinary grape cluster
2 Points for each sweet grape cluster
Matching Color Bonus
- Dual color hybrid grape clusters score once for each color
2 Points for the most grapes of the same color (ties don’t score)
1 Point for 2 grape cards of the same color
2 Points for 3 grape cards of the same color
4 Points for 4 grape cards of the same color
7 Points for 5 grape cards of the same color
Matching Vines Bonus
- Ripened Grapes Only
- Wilted Vine Tiles Count
1 Point for 2 vines of the same length
2 Points for 3 vines of the same length
4 Points for 4 vines of the same length
7 Points for 5 vines of the same length
After the king’s first and second visits, players collect their gifts, the king card is discarded to the box and the game continues.
Winning the Game Following the king’s third and final visit, all vineyards are scored and gifts distributed. The player with the most points is declared Master of the King’s Vineyard.
In the event of a tie, tied players score the number of harvested grape cards in their personal stock. Should this also come out a tie, the two players should shake hands and share their esteemed title.
Credits
Game Design Sandeep Kharkar and Dave Haslam
Indulgence and Support Pallavi Ranade-Kharkar and Trisha Haslam
Graphic Design Kevin Keele
Editing Paula Hiatt
Play Testing Aaron Walker, Brad Worthen, Daniel, Greg Jones, John Sears, Phil Kilcrease, Kelly Murphy, Tyler Laing
Special Thanks Abby, Chase and Porter