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 Embracing Uncertainty

ISSUE Plus: Writers of color talk about working with

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FALL 2018
68 $10.00
era; making the most of vulnerability on the
page; tiny truths; and more.
From the Editor What’s the Story?
LEE GUTKIND
it might seem, to the outsider, that writers live pretty safe lives. Yes, there are
some, mostly journalists, who immerse themselves in troubled and war-torn
countries, and they can and do get hurt. But most of us who write sit at key-
boards or notepads every day and create stuf—poems, plays, stories, essays—
mostly from our heads.
Still, although we may be safe from physical harm, all of us who write know
that every hour we devote to our notepad or keyboard, every moment we stop
and think and dwell on the thoughts and ideas that will, in one way or another,
find life on a page or computer display, involves monumental risk. Think about
the writer’s life. Whether we write for an hour or eight hours every day, whether
we write before sunrise or late into the night after the kids have been tucked into
All of us who bed, we are often toiling in limbo and with ongoing hope—and doubt. Will I get
it right, we wonder—and How long might that take? It is all so isolating.
write know It is not as if we can discuss our writing with friends and colleagues and
that every hour neighbors. Talking about what we are writing, the essence of what we are trying
to say, can and often does leave us empty when we eventually sit down to write
we devote to it. Writing is often spontaneous. Ideas are often inspired by the sheer act of
our notepad or writing—even if we have done a ton of research and even if we have mulled
ideas over in our minds repeatedly. The act of writing is like catching a fly ball
keyboard involves or swinging a golf club. We wait for the opportunity—the time and place—and
monumental risk. then we go for it. Sometimes it comes out all right. But mostly, alas, it doesn’t—
not the first time or the second time or even the third time. We do it again and
again, sentence after sentence after paragraph after page, fighting the frustration
and our own demons, and the fear of failure.
And maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about the economic risks. It is certainly
true that writers can become rich and famous, like, say, James Patterson or John
Grisham, but let’s get serious. If we are writing for a magazine or website, we
may be paid a few hundred dollars if we are lucky—or we may be paid nothing
at all, or only in contributor copies and “exposure.” And for books? While six-
figure advances are possible for commercial properties, authors of literary fiction
and nonfiction are fortunate to receive advances of $5,000—and often much
less. After working four or five or more years on that novel or memoir, risking
time and energy that might have been more financially fruitful, don’t even think
about breaking down your efort into an hourly wage!
I have been writing all my life, and I learned early on not to mention what I
do when I meet new people; I try to keep my primary profession, my obsession,
private. I say I teach at a university or edit a magazine, but rarely that I am a
writer, for then they inevitably ask: “Have I ever read what you have written?”
Or “When will it be published?
The risks we take at the keyboard are only the beginning. We finish our essay,
poem, memoir, and send it out. Then we take a deep breath and try to move on to
the next thing because, then, all we can do is wait—months, in the case of most

Continued on Page 3
EDITOR READERS (CONTINUED)
Lee Gutkind Dusty-Anne Rhodes
Cate Root
MANAGING EDITOR Jordan Snowden
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Ty Sassaman
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 THIS ISSUE OF
CREATIVE NONFICTION
What’s the Story? Continued WAS MADE POSSIBLE
BY SUPPORT FROM:
literary magazines. And then? Maybe you get an acceptance, but most likely you
get a curt rejection. No feedback. No comment.
And even when we do get something published, most of the people we know—
even really good friends—won’t read it. They might read our review in the New
York Times or listen to our interview on NPR, should we be so fortunate, but
actually buying (and reading) our book? Not often. And what happens when the
reviews are not so good? I have been zinged in my career, more than once.
Or, perhaps worse, everyone will read it—which is terrific, though also poten-
tially uncomfortable, particularly if we’ve bared our souls on the page. Maybe
This project is supported in part by an award
our family members will object to the way we’ve described them, or they’ll from the National Endowment for the Arts

disagree with the way we remember a certain incident. Maybe readers will feel
free to judge us harshly based on the stories we tell. Or they’ll feel entitled to
question or criticize our decisions—how we behaved, how we parented, how we
brought problems on ourselves.
In this issue, writers ponder the various ways we balance the threat of loss or
failure against the promise of gain, both on and of the page. Anne P. Beatty’s
“You Don’t Have to Be Here”—winner of the $1,000 best essay prize sponsored
by the Risk Innovation Lab at Arizona State University—considers, among
other things, the very diferent expectations parents in Nepal (where Beatty
served a Peace Corps tour) and the United States have of their children. Sarah
Kasbeer recalls the thrill and terror of going of the high-dive, and Jeferson
Slagle goes skiing alone (though he knows he shouldn’t) in avalanche country. In This publication is funded by Pennsylvania
other stories, writers impulsively invite famous chefs to dinner, set of on poorly Partners in the Arts, a program of the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts,
planned road trips, and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of medicating administered in Allegheny County by the
Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.
their children.
As you’ll see, braving all these risks can (and often does) lead to magnificent
rewards, not only in real life but also on the page. There’s nothing quite so
satisfying as seeing your words and ideas come to life in your writing, though a
close second is the elation when people reach out to us by e-mail or letter, or stop
us on the street, and say they appreciate what we have said and how we said it. Consortium for Science
Our stories can make an impact. This is, in the end, why—despite everything— Policy & Outcomes,
School for the Future of
we write. Innovation in Society and
the Hugh Downs School of
Human Communication at
 ISSUE

68 CONTENTS

From the Editor

1 WHAT’S THE STORY?

Then & Now

6 POLITICS IN PROSE
Jennifer Niesslein
A litmag editor reconsiders the role of personal essays in the Trump era

Between the Lines

12 WADING THROUGH THE WHITESTREAM
A roundtable discussion about writing and publishing when you’re not white.
With Tanushree Baidya, Jennifer De Leon, and Jonathan
Escoffery, moderated by Jenn Scheck-Kahn

Essays
17 RISK
Embracing Uncertainty
 Writers at Work
72 NO GUTS, NO GLORY
Vulnerability is the key to connecting with an audience, but it’s easier
said than done. Allison K Williams offers tips learned from 20 years
of getting naked on the page. Jenny O’Connell looks to songwriting
to see how lyrics, tone, and persona affect listeners’ hearts

Required Reading
80 MASTER CLASS
Shannon Reed
A first-time memoirist finds a roadmap for structure and more in
John McPhee’s Draft No. 4

Exploring the Boundaries

83 THE GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP
CAREER (NON-) NARRATIVE ESSAY
Ira Sukrungruang
What if being a writer isn’t a career choice at all, but a state of mind?

AfterWords
96 TINY TRUTHS
A collection of Twitter micro-essays
 Politics in Prose
Traditionally, literary magazines aren’t especially partisan. But
in the wake of the 2016 election, sometimes it seems everything
has been politicized. JENNIFER NIESSLEIN considers the
role of the litmag editor in the Age of Trump.

e’ve all been to good parties and bad parties.

JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the is
the editor and founder of Full
Grown People, editor of two FGP
anthologies, and author of one
W The best parties have interesting guests, respect-
ful and thought-provoking conversation, and a goodly
memoir. She’s currently on hiatus
to write a book.
amount of laughter. The bad parties are filled with awk-
ward small talk. The worse parties are ones where people
make asses of themselves. The worst parties are the ones
where you are that ass.
For almost twenty years, I’ve been editing literary
publications with the philosophy that it’s like hosting a
good party, and I thought I had it down pat. For the past
five years, I’ve been editing Full Grown People (FGP), an
online literary magazine about the thick of life. Twice a
week, I publish essays that explore the kinds of moments
and experiences that make even adulthood feel like
another awkward age: looking for love at midlife, caring
for a parent with memory loss without robbing him of
freedom, dancing the line between two cultures. Stories
about grown-ups navigating the world.
Then came the run-up to the 2016 presidential election,
and the election itself, and, well, life ever since. In my
personal life, I had heated political
Facebook debates with my cousin
about the truth in media; I downright
shunned others in my life. (I’m liberal in
my politics but old-order Mennonite in
my grudges.) I shudder to think of the
Thanksgiving dinners mixed-politics
American families endured in 2016.
Given that the right has been growing
steadily more extreme for decades,
these interpersonal messes didn’t
surprise me, but I was blindsided by the
realization that the era of Trump was
going to force me to re-examine my
professional life.
after trump won the electoral col-
lege, I initially fell into the default mode
I’d followed after 9/11—the last time I
remember the news cycle being so com-
pletely dominated by one subject. Back
in 2001, I was co-editing—with my
friend and cofounder Stephanie Wilkin-
son—Brain, Child, a literary magazine
about motherhood. It was a quarterly
magazine, and after some discussion, we
decided that the terrorist attacks at the
World Trade Center weren’t really ours
to cover. They didn’t have, on the face
of it, much to do with motherhood, and
whatever hot takes we would publish
would be stone cold by the time the
next issue came out, anyway. Stephanie
and I had both started our careers as
journalists, and we respected the jobs
that journalists do. More to the point,
we understood that our jobs as literary
magazine editors were diferent.
In the days after 9/11, when I had
binged on too much TV and taken in too
much visual horror, I longed to escape
into essays and short stories about regular
life, which was—despite everything—
still going on. Love lives and careers
still had to be nurtured (or abandoned);
kids still left home; loved ones still died;
friendships still transformed.
In 2016, I initially worried about
alienating readers who, like me in 2001,
had their own views on politics but, as
lit-seekers, just longed for good essays.
And what about the politics of Full
Grown People’s readers? I believe FGP’s
core readers share my values, gener-
ally, but I’m not delusional enough
to believe that all readers believe as I
do or have lives anything like mine;
a publication is always bigger than its
I considered the readers who weren’t
really jazzed about Trump but
weren’t about to get behind the
Democratic party. Would invoking
the Trump name invite them to
flee? What was the risk?
editor. I considered the readers who
weren’t really jazzed about Trump
but weren’t about to get behind the
Democratic party. Would invoking the
Trump name invite them to flee? What
was the risk?
I also considered how much to worry
about the Trump supporters among
Full Grown People’s readership. I knew
we had some—my Trump-voting
step-grandmother has liked a few posts
on Facebook, casual reader though she
may be. I didn’t know how large an
intersection existed between our read-
ers and conservatives/Trump voters.
I watched what other magazines
were doing, too. The Sun—a magazine
that surely slants liberal in its reader-
ship—went full-on anti-Trump
immediately after the election, dedicat-
ing first almost an entire issue, then
a recurring section, to “One Nation,
Indivisible,” quotes of their previously
published liberal thought, and I read a
goodly number of letters to the editor
from readers who declared they were
canceling their subscriptions.
FGP doesn’t rely on subscriptions for
cash influx, though I do hope readers
are moved to buy our anthologies or
stuf a little in the online tip jar. Most
publications are businesses, albeit not
very lucrative ones. FGP was already
a niche market—did I want to narrow
that niche further? And yet, even
before Inauguration Day, refusing
to publish damn fine essays on the
grounds that elements in them might
be politically divisive—touching on,
say, immigration or a sexual assault
survivor’s flare-up of PTSD sparked
by Trump—started feeling to me like
pandering. And, really, I’d published
essays by members of populations that
Trump mocked, dismissed, and/or
demonized on the campaign trail; if a
more traditional conservative or Trump
voter hung in for all those essays,
would taking the extra step to connect
those narratives to policy really be such
a big whoop?
and anyway, editing is always
political. Editors get to decide whose
viewpoints see print and become public
consumption, and if those editors and
the voices they publish are powerful
enough, those voices get inducted into
the canon of literature.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 7
 Just have a look at the VIDA counts.
Since 2010, VIDA, a nonprofit feminist
organization, has been tracking the
demographics of writers published and
reviewed in what the organization deems
“top tier” publications. Originally, they
focused on gender, but they’ve since
As an editor, I want work that
addresses the effects Trump has set
into motion. Those stories get to the
heart of what it’s like for regular
citizens to live in the United States
these days.
taken a more intersectional approach and
expanded their counts to include race,
disability, and other types of diversity.
What their work has made visible is the
extent to which top tier publications still
mostly favor male writers, white writers,
cis writers, abled writers.
Whose voice gets space? Whose voice
is worthy of space?
I started publishing essays that
addressed GOP policy directly, like
J. J. Mulligan’s essay about how his
stress from working as an immigration
lawyer afected his baby daughter; Sarah
Einstein’s essay about her fears of this
administration; Catherine Newman’s
essay about her not-at-all-inexplicable
constant anger since the election.
It troubles me now that I ever consid-
ered these subjects politically charged.
For the most part, Full Grown
People’s community ate these essays up.
Because, as Catherine Newman says in
another essay, “There’s a nasty woman
joke in here somewhere, but I can’t bear
to put Trump in this essay. He is its
missing center.”
8 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
That’s the key, at least for me. The
essays I have been publishing about this
cultural schism actually have very little
to do with Trump the man. Like any
well-informed citizen, I’ve kept up with
the Russian collusion investigation, the
anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, the
unending tweets. But as an editor, I want
work that addresses the efects Trump
has set into motion. Those stories get
to the heart of what it’s like for regular
citizens to live in the United States these
days. J. J. Mulligan’s baby holds her
father’s stress in her small body. Cath-
erine Newman’s mood touches every
relationship in her life. Sarah Einstein has
legitimate worries about the sovereignty
of women’s bodies, worries large enough
to inspire her to write publicly of the
existence of an underground network.
These aren’t things that will go away
when Trump does, whenever that may
be. This is how we live now.
There’s a box on the Full Grown People
website where readers can subscribe
to a newsletter that alerts them to new
essays. After I started publishing more
politically engaged essays, I watched
the newsletter gain subscribers by the
bushel. I didn’t lose any. Any publisher
knows that’s a feat.
i guess someone could make
the case that if I’m truly publishing
essays that get at the heart of how the
political climate afects us in the United
States, I could also publish essays from
both Trump supporters and more
traditional conservatives.
Yeah, I could. But I won’t.
I’ve received some submissions that,
while not explicitly endorsing Trump,
endorse the zeitgeist he brought to the
fore, as if it’s now OK to publicly be
an ass. I’d categorize them as “victim
of privilege” essays. Men who think
they’ve faced discrimination simply
for being men. Siblings of people
with disabilities who can’t see the
humanity in their brothers and sisters.
White people who have encounters
with black men . . . and nothing bad
happens. (I’m never sure if the point
of this last type of essay is to showcase
the white person’s epiphany that black
men are people or if it’s a racist version
of breaking Chekov’s rule about the
pistol onstage. If there’s a black man in
the first act, he has to go off in the next act.)
What rubs me the wrong way about
these essays is their lack of self-
awareness. What separates them from,
say, a David Sedaris essay is the sense
that you know Sedaris is, on some
level, mocking himself, that he knows
damn well he’s not the victim in any of
the shenanigans he writes about. These
writers, though, truly believe they’re
victims of their own privilege, if I take
their writing at face value. Politically
engaged or not, any good writer knows
that essays don’t exist in a vacuum—
anticipating the readers’ reaction is
part of the job. Otherwise, you’re just
publicly spewing your thoughts.
Lack of self-awareness isn’t only a
GOP-leaning problem. I also see it in
the spigot-blast of think pieces that
have appeared since the presidential
election: a (usually well-educated) lib-
eral visits a rural area and harangues the
white blue-collar people who live there
about their votes. Always, the subtext
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is Can you believe these dumb-asses? This
also drives me nuts. I have coal country
deep in my maternal line, and I can’t
bear the scapegoating. I have no doubt
that racism, sexism, and other isms
contributed to Trump’s electoral win,
but it’s not as if these biases exist only
in rural areas. (And these pieces don’t
even begin to touch on the subjects of
gerrymandering or who won finan-
cially with the GOP tax bill.)
Regardless of political bent, and even
if the writing is competent, I’m not
going to accept an essay that punches
down with claims that a privileged
writer is a victim of "reverse" dis-
crimination. It’s not my job to assure
writers or readers about their status in
our country. That’s work people have
to do on their own, and I’m not going
to reward someone with publication
before they do it.
The United States fell from a “full
democracy” to a “flawed democracy”
in 2016, according to the Economist
Intelligence Unit, a British research
group connected to The Economist
magazine (not exactly a cauldron of
socialist thought). History will look
back on all of us, including editors
of literary magazines. Under these
changed circumstances, what kind of
parties should we be hosting?
A literary magazine is not a democ-
racy—full, flawed, or otherwise. And
now, I believe, we’re at a point where
not taking an editorial stand—even in
the subtlest of ways—is, well, taking
a stand.
I live in Charlottesville, a com-
munity that, for most citizens,
unwillingly played host to a white
supremacist rally in August 2017. Over
that weekend, the white supremacists
killed a woman, Heather Heyer, and
inflicted debilitating injuries on several
other citizens. On the day of the rally,
police finally made them disperse;
from my back porch, I watched them
walk, armed, to the park where my
son once played Little League. Trump
looked at the trauma of my city—Je-
sus, right where I park my car when
meeting friends for lunch—and said,
“We condemn in the strongest possible
terms this egregious display of hatred,
bigotry, and violence, on many sides.
On many sides.”
There are many sides that don’t get
to come to Full Grown People’s party.
Frankly, I feel protective of our readers.
I’ve tried hard to make the magazine
feel inclusive and intersectionally
welcoming, and I’m not about to betray
readers who feel as if someone out
there finally gets it—whatever that
specific it may be in any given essay—
by publishing anything that denies my
readers’ and writers’ essential humanity.
i don’t know what the nation will
look like by the time you read this. As
I’m writing this, in June, our allies no
longer trust us. We’ve started a trade
A literary magazine is not a
democracy—full, flawed, or
otherwise. And now, I believe,
we’re at a point where not taking
an editorial stand—even in the
subtlest of ways—is, well, taking
a stand.
war that rewards some domestic in-
dustries and punishes others, including
small newspapers. Our president is still
under investigation for colluding with
Russia, and, unless legislators step up,
he’ll likely appoint a Supreme Court
justice who will tip the court firmly to
the right—and have the decisive vote
on whether a sitting president is above
the law. Environmental protections
have been peeled away. Thousands of
migrant children are still in concen-
tration camps, separated from their
parents. The executive branch lies to
us daily.
I don’t want silence on my conscience.
I’m lucky enough to edit a literary
magazine, and I would bet my bippy
that some of my writers will eventually
enter the canon of literature. Future
generations will look back at this era in
US history and wonder how the great
literary minds were processing it as it
happened. There’s room for essayists
and writers of creative nonfiction here
among the op-ed writers, the journal-
ists, the polemicists.
Editors of literary magazines aren’t in
charge of the hot take or the fire-and-
brimstone. But we are in charge of
the personal stories that show how the
Trump era is shaping our lives, Ameri-
can by American. We are in charge of
making sure the worst of our country
doesn’t get to own patriotism. We can
ofer something newspapers can’t: com-
fort, solidarity, maybe a little levity, a
reminder of humanity. Something to
raise a glass to in our trying times.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 11
 B E T W E E N T H E L I N E S

O
Wading through the
Whitestream: A Conversation
about Writing and Publishing
When You’re Not White
A roundtable discussion with TANUSHREE
BAIDYA, JENNIFER DE LEON, JONATHAN
ESCOFFERY and JENN SCHECK-KAHN.

n november 30, 2017, about thirty writers assembled in

Boston at the headquarters of GrubStreet, one of the largest writing centers in
the country, for an event organized by the Boston Writers of Color group. The
night’s event, called a Local Editor Panel, featured editors of Massachusetts-based
literary magazines and a nervous volunteer moderator: me. Despite my eforts
to contact magazines that employ an ethnically and racially diverse staf, none
of the editors who had accepted my invitation to be on the panel were people of
color. Should the event be cancelled? Shouldn’t representation be a prerequisite
for a conversation that was to center, in part, on inclusion?
Despite my misgivings, we didn’t cancel the event that night because I received
advice from writers of color not to, and, of course, they were right. Too, the optics
that night reflected a truth about the literary community: the vast majority of
editors are white, and so are the writers whose work their magazines publish and
promote. And so, what began as a night intended to educate writers summoned a
candid, dogged, and sensitive conversation about the delicate relationship between

12 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

editors and writers when they come
from diferent racial and ethnic back-
grounds and levels of privilege. From
the writers, editors heard how their
eforts of inclusivity were interpreted—
which were meaningful and which
were not—and after the night was over,
several writers expressed how empow-
ering it felt to share their concerns and
skepticism with people in prestigious
positions. How it felt to be seen.
While we were nibbling from the
cheese platter, I chatted with two
Boston writers, Jennifer De Leon and
Tanushree Baidya, whose questions
during the panel had intrigued me.
The three of us wanted to continue the
conversation begun that night so we
could explore the truths about publish-
ing that disproportionately afect
writers of color. We invited Jonathan
Escofery, a local writer I’d never met
but whose writing I admired, to join
our conversation.
Conflicting schedules and far flung
locations made coordinating an
in-person meeting a challenge. Video
or phone conferencing as an option
felt both too formal and too casual
for our intellectual and emotional
pursuit. What we needed was to write
our way into group discovery, so I
created a shared Google Doc. There,
we simultaneously pounded away at
overlapping questions and answers in
a chat-style of correspondence that
allowed for rants and emojis, cheering
on and interrupting. The result was
both messy and honest. Here it is, all
cleaned up.
SCHECK-KAHN: Let’s start this conver-
sation with the mission of diversity.
How do magazines run predominantly
by white editors get it wrong?
BAIDYA: What I’d like to know is how
editors define diversity. I’d like white
editors to expand what it should mean.
Because “people of color” is a broad
group, the generalization tends to box
us up in a way that emphasizes white
voices further. That is a problem no
one really seems to talk about. In most
platforms where diversity is discussed,
we get the usual white versus the
generalized people of color, instead of
Whiteness versus African American,
Whiteness versus Korean, White
versus South Asian (Pakistani, Indian,
Sri Lankan), East Asian, etc. How
often do panels or discussions bring
up the nuances of an immigrant story
versus stories by immigrant writers?
POC (people of color), WOC (writers
of color), and Diversity: these terms are
too broad to be useful, beyond talking
points. If the nuances of diversity and
representation are not completely or
properly addressed or understood,
how do editors portion judgment and
decisions in terms of selecting stories?
Because I think there might be quotas,
consciously or subconsciously, and
they diminish diverse voices.
DE LEON: I was on one committee
where we were choosing a writer to
award a $20,000 grant for work on a
novel. In the twelve-year history of the
award, there has only been one winner
who is a POC. So here we were, in
year thirteen, and I thought it was a
no-brainer. Choose finalists who are
WOC. Nope. It came down to two
writers: one white woman and one
Black woman. The white woman had
a Harvard pedigree, multiple degrees,
etc., and the Black woman was willing
to commute from another state for this
fellowship. Her story was fascinating. I
advocated for her. It was like 12 Angry
Men in there. I won over some people,
but ultimately, I felt run over when
another POC committee member said,
“But if we pick the Black woman, then
everyone will think we picked her
The Panelists:
TANUSHREE BAIDYA is a graduate
of the Yale Writers’ Workshop and
a member of the (GrubStreet-
supported) Boston Writers of Color
group. Her work has appeared or is
forthcoming in Kweli Journal, 2040
Review, London Journal of Fiction,
the Wrong Quarterly, GrubWrites,
and Half the World Global Literati.
Born in India, Tanushree has lived
in Boston since moving there from
Bombay six years ago.
JENNIFER DE LEON is the editor
of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher
Education. She is a member of the
GrubStreet board of directors and
an assistant professor of English
at Framingham State University.
Her novel, Don’t Ask Me Where
I’m From, is forthcoming from
Atheneum/Simon & Schuster.
JONATHAN ESCOFFERY is a
Jamaican American writer from
Miami. He has received awards
and honors from Prairie Schooner,
Passages North, Solstice Literary
Magazine, Kimbilio Fiction, Bread
Loaf Conference, the Somerville Arts
Council, Wellspring House, Writers’
Room of Boston, and elsewhere. He
holds an MFA in fiction from the
University of Minnesota.
JENN SCHECK-KAHN (moderator)
is a writer, instructor, and the
founder of Journal of the Month, a
subscription service that delivers
an assortment of print literary
magazines. Her prose has placed in
contests hosted by The Atlantic and
Glimmer Train, and has appeared in
a number of literary journals.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 13
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comPASSION.
because she’s Black.” What I’d like to
know: who is “everyone”?
ESCOFFERY: Jennifer, this reminds
me of when I was the fiction editor at
Dislocate during my MFA program in
Minnesota. Most of what we’d receive
were dozens of stories about deer
hunting—some brilliant, most not—all
with default white protagonists, but the
one time we received a story that took
place in Chicago, featuring two Black
characters, presumably written by an
African American woman, one of my
readers accused me of moving the story
forward unfairly. Specifically, she said,
“You only like it because . . . you know
. . . well, you know. . . .” The story was
solid and deserved to get as far as it did
in our selection process, but look what
we’re up against. Even my subordinate
felt empowered to air her belief that
stories about and by POC only get
included as part of a diversity initiative.
Imagine what happens at magazines
with zero POC on staf.
BAIDYA: Stories like these make
me wonder if there is an unspoken
presumption that publishing a WOC
somehow means compromising on
quality or signaling tokenism. Does the
fact that POC are already so under-
represented create a subconscious and
regressive mindset that selecting them
confers some unearned representation
at the expense of someone more
deserving? A vicious, flawed cycle. I
worry that diversity is going to become
a genre, or already is, and a magazine
can easily say, “Yeah, we don’t do that
particular genre anymore.”
SCHECK-KAHN: If we can circle back to
the event at GrubStreet that started this
conversation we’re having: what was
your initial reaction when you entered
the room for a WOC event and saw a
panel of all white faces?
BAIDYA: Strange as it sounds, I was glad
to see an all-white panel. WOC events
tend to happen in a bubble. They are
curated, facilitated, represented, and
attended predominantly by people of
color. Even though they are an impor-
tant and safe place for writers of color
to discuss challenges and how to efect
change, what is lacking in these con-
I worry that diversity is going to become
a genre, or already is, and a magazine
can easily say, “Yeah, we don’t do that
particular genre anymore.”
versations is the participation of white
editors, the ones making the majority of
editorial decisions in publishing.
DE LEON: Maybe it’s a bad thing, but it
didn’t exactly jump out at me. I guess
I’m used to most editors being white.
ESCOFFERY: We should get to hear from
white editors what they are looking
to publish, since they are so often the
people to whom we are submitting our
work. I don’t know that it would have
been more helpful to assemble a panel
of editors of color, who already know
there’s a diversity problem in the field.
An all-white panel closely reflects the
demographics of the publishing world,
although the lack of POC in editorial
positions is problematic and represents
the uphill battle that WOC face.
DE LEON: Everyone needs to be a part of
this important conversation.
BAIDYA: But it tends to become our onus.
DE LEON: And it shouldn’t be.
SCHECK-KAHN: Have white editors
responded to your writing in ways that
have surprised you?
DE LEON: White editors, in my
particular experience, respond well/en-
thusiastically to stories they are familiar
with, stories with themes and plots and
settings and situations that ring “true”
to them because they have some ainty
for the characters or other aspects of the
story. It’s really eye-opening.
BAIDYA: In a way, diversifying literary
magazines has to be a movement.
Editors need to challenge and change
perceptions. They need to encourage,
expand, extend—hell, redefine—liter-
ary excellence and aesthetics, narrative
styles, and the art of storytelling.
These questions need to be asked time
and again to raise awareness that we
all have implicit biases that need to be
interrogated; there are no easy answers
or solutions.
ESCOFFERY: There are two concerns
here, as I see it. Editors value the
familiar, both in content and form, but
they also lean toward publishing safe
stories, the ones least likely to challenge
the status quo. It’s risky for a writer like
me, whose stories and essays confront
and criticize current power structures,
because I need people in power to
put my story out. But there’s also the
question of whether white editors feel
Continued on Page 90
 ESSAYS
18 RISK: AN ACCOUNTING
Brenda Miller and Julie Marie Wade
There’s a cost to every decision, but how can we measure it?

25 MOTHER APOTHECARY
Susannah Williams
A mother makes tough choices following her son’s ADHD diagnosis

32 FAITH HEALING
Kelly Beard
They told her she’d be able to throw away her glasses on the way out of the service

37 THE DIVING WELL

Sarah Kasbeer
The ten-meter platform is not for everyone

43 COOKING FOR JAMES

dee Hobsbawn-Smith
Our heroes make lasting impacts … even when they disappoint us

50 YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE

Anne P. Beatty
An earthquake in Nepal shakes up a former Peace Corps volunteer’s memory

58 BOTTOMLESS
Jefferson Slagle
A backcountry skier weighs uncertainty against elation after every snowfall

64 THE GETAWAY CAR

Jenine Holmes
Fear, escape, and magic on the open road

BRENDA MILLER is the author
of five essay collections,
most recently An Earlier Life.
She also co-authored Tell
It Slant: Creating, Refining
and Publishing Creative
Nonfiction and The Pen and
The Bell: Mindful Writing in
a Busy World. Her work has
received six Pushcart Prizes.
She is a professor of English at
Western Washington University,
and associate faculty at the
Rainier Writing Workshop.
JULIE MARIE WADE is the
author of nine collections
of poetry and prose, most
recently Same-Sexy Marriage:
A Novella in Poems. She
is also the co-author, with
Denise Duhamel, of The
Unrhymables: Collaborations
in Prose, forthcoming in
2019. Wade teaches creative
writing at Florida International
University. She is married
to Angie Griffin and lives on
Hollywood Beach.
18 RISK: AN ACCOUNTING | BRENDA MILLER & JULIE MARIE WADE
Risk: An
Accounting
BRENDA MILLER & JULIE MARIE WADE
*
Like a flower at first, all daisy face and fairy blossom. Or a star,
if you prefer, supernova of cellular splits. Aster. Suggestion of
beauty, hint of growth. The risk comes next: little aphid on the
pistil, little dust mote in the cosmos, little nucleus caught in the
act of dividing. It’s the ending that signals Results not typical, Side
effects may include . . . Warning!  Little caveat. Little button at the
collar. Little jacket snap and tie clip.
Put them both together to form the section break: tiny raft
adrift on a wide, unpunctuated sea. Asterisk. Little barnacle on a
rock. Little hole in the wall, peering out, peering in. Little pip
on a die. Little jewel in a shell. It’s impossible to tell what the
risk will yield. Little coin toss. Is it a loss . . . or a win? Little eye,
unblinking. Little mole on the skin. Could be malignant, could
be benign. Little navel. Little nostril. Little knot in the wood of
longing.
The entry is always easier than we think, not knowing what
we’re getting ourselves into. It’s the exit that requires a risk.
Little Tell me everything. Little Not in a million years. Little I held
the door open, but she didn’t walk through. Little story hour at the
library. Little champagne clink on the ship. That which reminds
us nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in
the grass, of glory in the flower. We admire the aster
in the English garden, and so we pluck. The risk
is what follows: s/he loves me, s/he loves me not.
Brimhall, Traci
“And we want the stricken pleasure of intimacy,
so we risk it.”
Business
Risky Business premiered in 1983. In the film, a
youthful Tom Cruise, in one of his first big roles,
plays a teenager on his own for the weekend.
At first, it’s all fun and games—don’t we all
remember that iconic scene: Tom Cruise in his
underpants and socks, lip-synching and air-
guitaring his way through the house?—but then,
of course, mischievous hijinks ensue, the stakes
growing larger by the minute.
I can’t remember if I saw the movie in a theater
at the time, since in 1983, I had embarked on
some risky business of my own out in the coun-
tryside of Northern California at a hot springs
community. I lived with a man fifteen years my
senior and was involved with another couple
in a polyamorous fling. Soon, the wife became
pregnant with the couple’s first child, and we lay
together with my hand on her belly, breathing
into each other’s mouths. I wanted to believe the
baby was my baby, too, somehow controverting
all laws of biology. What was I thinking? Not
much, not much—only following the bright,
dangerous trail of the body’s desires.
Calculated
For thirteen days in 1962, John F. Kennedy
played roulette with the Russians and ordered
a naval quarantine of Cuba in response to the
United States’ discovery of Soviet nuclear
missile sites on that island nation. These missiles
were capable of striking targets from Canada to
Peru. JFK appeared on national television, his
face grave, and promised full retaliation for any
perceived aggression. We will not prematurely or
unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war,
he told us, in which even the fruits of victory would be
ashes in our mouths, but neither will we shrink from that
risk at any time it must be faced. Americans crowded
their televisions and radios, waiting to see if this
presidential action would, indeed, spark the end
of the world.
I was only three years old at the time, but I
have vague memories of my parents watching
the president, holding their breaths, tapping their
cigarettes but forgetting to smoke them. Years
later, in high school, I would write a report on
what came to be known as the Cuban Missile
Crisis, imagining the president in his ExComm
meetings, calculating the risks and rewards of
such determined actions. He couldn’t know the
outcome—only that the consequences could be
deadlier than those of the great wars the country
had already known. I imagined him listening to
his advisors, but with his face turned away, gazing
out the window of the Oval Oice to the wide
expanse of green well-tended lawn—thinking of
the country, yes, mapping in his mind the waters
around Cuba, but also of his young children, his
wife. It could all disappear in a flash.
Eliot, T. S.
“Only those who will risk going too far can
possibly find out how far one can go.”
Factors
Before any surgery, or before taking a new
medication, the doctors tell us the risk factors.
Or they don’t tell us but hand us the informed
consent sheet, or the pharmacist slips in the
folded paper that has all the adverse side efects
listed in 6-point font. When we watch a com-
mercial for the latest arthritis drug or treatment
for depression, the risk factors go by in a blur,
the announcer’s voice sped up to get them all in
before the minute is done: Do not take if. . . . So
many things can go wrong.
Toward the end of my father’s life, as he lay in
the cardiovascular unit of the hospital, he asked
his cardiologist for a heart transplant. He was
eighty-five years old, his heart pumping at 15
percent capacity, diabetic, with essential tremor.
Dr. Daniels sat down, unbuttoning his white
coat; he did not laugh, did not even crack a smile.
He explained the hospital’s policy—that anyone
over the age of seventy was not a candidate for a
transplant—and said that even if the prohibition
didn’t exist, my father’s body wouldn’t be able to
take the long surgery and recovery. Too risky, the
CREATIVE NONFICTION 19
 doctor said. He listed other procedures that might
be able to help, but each one came with a long
list of possible unfavorable outcomes, including
death. My father nodded and closed his eyes.
The heart display would soon be disconnected,
and he’d need to go back out into the world
unmonitored. No one listed the risk factors for
that particular condition.
Gamble
My parents used to go to Las Vegas at least once a
year, for their anniversary. My mother saved her
“coupon money” all year for the trip. It was an
easy drive from the San Fernando Valley—where
we led what appeared to be risk-free lives—and
then, later, from their retirement home in Sun
Lakes, Arizona—another community that did its
best to appear placid and serene, with its artificial
lakes and immaculately tended golf courses.
They always bought tickets for a big show and
whiled away the afternoons at the bufets and
casinos. My mother played the slots, jiggling her
cup of quarters, pulling down the arm of the
one-armed bandit with deliberate care. His game
was blackjack, and he sat at the low-stakes table.
I imagine him whistling through his teeth as he
tapped the cards in his hand. He’d researched the
game and the odds, made a cheat sheet he studied
in private to determine the best time to stay or
when to take a hit.
He never lost much, but he didn’t win much
either. They often broke even, that in itself a
victory. My mother wore a dress, stockings,
and low heels. They ordered Asti Spumante
with dinner and toasted to their good fortune.
I like to think of the two of them in the Circus
Circus—the timeless light, the chatter of the
dealers a comforting hum, the omnipresent cloud
of cigarette smoke, the rolling thunk of all the
slots falling into place.
Game of Strategic Conquest
We try to play Risk once—the board game “for
ages 10+”—but I know I’ll forfeit just from study-
ing the box. Who are these men in plumed helmets
anyway, scowling atop their steeds? In a single
scene, I note two swords raised, a rifle cocked, a
cannon loaded with wick aflame—so many ways
to inflict pain, so many weapons of rage.
20 RISK: AN ACCOUNTING | BRENDA MILLER & JULIE MARIE WADE
“It’s just a game,” my father says, patting my
hand, before he turns back to the game materials
and reads aloud: “The goal is simple: players aim to
conquer their enemies’ territories by building an army,
moving their troops in, and engaging in battle.” I am
shaking my head already, tipping back in my
chair, an acrid taste filling my mouth as if I have
swallowed a penny. “C’mon, Smidge, lighten up.
This exciting game is filled with betrayal, alliances, and
surprise attacks.”
But why is betrayal exciting? I can’t fathom the
audible thrill in his voice or the series of tender
inspections that follows—first the artillery, then
the cavalry, then the infantrymen with their
sharp, austere faces.
From the kitchen sink, where she stands scrub-
bing dishes, my mother declares, “You should
have seen your father in his Air Force uniform. So
handsome!” By now, we’ve unpacked the dice and
the rest of the cards: “Remember . . . when it comes
to taking over the world, it’s all about who is willing to
take the biggest Risk.”
I tell them I need a bathroom break. My mother
asks, “Already?”
I tell them I’m not feeling so well. My father
says, “You’ll snap out of it after a round or two.
Here, have some ginger ale.”
By now I am scowling, but my parents don’t
see. Take over the world? I just want to find my
place in it.
Mansfield, Katherine
“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of
others. . . . Do the hardest thing on earth for you.
Act for yourself. Face the truth.”
Nin, Anaïs
“And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.”
Not worth the
There is no easy way to say I’ve never wanted
children. It’s not the same as saying I’ve never
 wanted to ride a motorcycle or Zip-lining just isn’t
for me. The simple disclosure of chosen non-
maternity seems to threaten a sacred status quo,
to imply I’m passing judgment on all the parents
and prospective parents I know. For years, I’ve
side-stepped this question, saying in my upbeat
way, “Sure! Eventually. . . ,” or, “When the time
is right, you’ll be the first to know!” Why risk
ofending anyone?
As a teenager, I tried to tell my mother I wasn’t
interested in motherhood. She dropped every-
thing and drove to the video store to rent Baby
Boom with Diane Keaton. “She thinks she doesn’t
want a baby,” my mother railed. “She thinks
she’s happy with her high-rise apartment and her
big-city job and the man she lives with but isn’t
even married to!” I couldn’t risk a comment, but
it all sounded pretty sweet to me.
Then, our protagonist inherits a baby from a
distant relative (credible premise?) and ends up
isolated in a ramshackle farmhouse in Vermont—
single; struggling; the baby, adorable of course,
but consuming all her time, money, and energy.
I didn’t want to make applesauce. I didn’t want
to warm bottles on the stovetop or worry about
sharp corners, outlets exposed.
Now that I’m over thirty-five, people volunteer
comments like Clock’s a ticking! or What are you
waiting for? A colleague’s wife whispered once in a
hallway, “I wasn’t sure if you had a fertility issue.”
A guest at a party informed me with a cheery
wave of her hand, “Lesbians can have children,
too. It’s not so taboo anymore.”
Years later, my mother writes, “I risked every-
thing to have you, and now you’re going to throw
it all away.” As if my life means nothing on its
own terms. As if my high-rise apartment and my
big-city job and my married life with a woman I
love are just the preface to some more real story. I
have yet to reply.
of Smoking
The first Surgeon General’s report on the risks
of smoking came out in 1964. In a subsequent
report, dated 1990, an Advisory Committee con-
cluded that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer
and laryngeal cancer in men and a probable cause of lung
cancer in women. (The discrepancy between certain
and probable causes most likely arose because
22 RISK: AN ACCOUNTING | BRENDA MILLER & JULIE MARIE WADE
women have never been as closely studied, in this
way, as men.) It was in 1966 that the warning
labels began to appear. At first, these warnings
remained fairly abstract—Caution: Cigarette
Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health—and
only over time became more specific—Smoking
Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and
May Complicate Pregnancy. (In other countries,
the warnings can be more blunt: Smoking kills;
Smoking causes fatal lung cancer; Smoking seriously
harms you and others around you.)
My family must’ve believed the reward
(pleasure?) was greater than the risk. My mother
smoked Benson & Hedges 100’s, the long cylinder
supposedly more feminine, while my father stuck
to Marlboros in the familiar red flip-top box.
(Another warning, in Albanian: Protect Children:
do not let them breathe your smoke.) I stole cigarettes,
one by one, so the theft wouldn’t be noticed, not
knowing then how carefully a smoker keeps track
of the cigarettes left in a pack.
Smoke surrounded us: at dinner, after dinner, at
breakfast. My parents must have seen the warnings
hundreds, thousands, of times, but the message
didn’t hit home until their heart attacks—several
of them. That’s when any warning takes full
efect, right? After the damage has been done.
Perceived
It didn’t seem risky to smoke that first cigarette,
despite the Surgeon General’s warning. I tapped
three times like Dorothy’s ruby shoes, made a
wordless wish, and struck a match.
It didn’t seem risky to let a stranger buy me that
drink, thinking nothing of what he’d want in return.
Barely legal in a foreign land, I wasn’t concerned
about the bottomless glass on ladies’ night.
It didn’t seem risky because he loved me, and I
was on the pill. I didn’t worry because everyone
in grad school bought weed from someone with
a tuxedo on his T-shirt. I ate that gas station
gumbo because I was hungry. I slept at that rest
stop because I was tired. And what about all
those degrees in the humanities, the student loans
creeping close to a hundred grand? I was follow-
ing my heart, of course, and it’s plain to see I have
no head for business.
The doctor said if the gash had been a
quarter-inch deeper on either side. . . . The X-ray
technician called it a clean break. . . . The nurse
suggested no more greasy spoons. . . . I never got
cold feet when I said, “I do,” though close to half
of marriages end in divorce. I hold the steering
wheel steady when I drive on I-95, one of the
deadliest freeways in America. Sometimes I think
I’m the luckiest person alive. And sometimes I
wonder if I’m balanced on a plank, more precari-
ous than I’ve ever realized. If my only skill is not
looking down.
Professionals
Over the last few decades, the field of risk
management has grown exponentially. In our fast
paced world, the risks we have to manage evolve quickly,
says the Institute of Risk Management (IRM), a
society that provides resources to thousands of
“risk professionals” around the world. Through
the IRM, you can find jobs in the insurance
industry, healthcare, cybersecurity, or law. You
can take classes and webinars on such topics as
“Developing Risk Appetite Statements” and
“Root Cause Analysis.”
I’d like to think I’ve become a pro at personal
risk management, carefully calibrating my life so
that nothing unexpected can occur; the variables
of risk have gradually decreased over the years.
I live alone, so have complete control of my
routines. My dog and I exercise regularly. I have
insurance of all sorts. I recently had workmen in
my home, bolting the house to the foundation in
case of earthquake; other workmen are, at this
very moment, scraping and banging on top of my
house, ensuring that the roof over my head will
last at least another thirty years.
But even so, I’d love a Risk Professional to
appear at my door, superhero cape fluttering (on
the IRM website, they show a photo of three
risk professionals dressed, bizarrely, in helmets
and rocket packs). I’d like my Risk Professional
to close my laptop and turn of my phone, on
which news of fresh risks seems to appear every
hour. Don’t worry, she’d say, I’ve got it handled, and
I could go to bed, sleep like a baby.
Risqué
Which sounds like risk-A, a risk of the first order,
but risk a what? A daring act? Elicit a kiss? Upset
an oxcart? Return a library book eight years
overdue? (Done, done, done.) Even the word has a
quality of risk about it: an accent tossed skyward
like a scarlet beret. As if risk, which is always red
as a fresh wound, has coupled with gold lamé to
make this portmanteau—risqué—flirty, torchy, a
bit too much.
In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked
on as something shocking! At twelve years old, I
auditioned to sing this song while a group of girls
about my age tap-danced in sailor suits cut short
and brightly spangled. The teacher said, You’re
either a dancing sort or a singing sort, so this was my
chance to see if singing suited me, as dancing
never had. I wore my white cap askew. I held the
microphone like a lollipop, just as she told me to,
my other hand akimbo on my hip. Now Heaven
knows—. But when the curtain rose, I didn’t
know how to occupy the spotlight, how to turn
wily and coy as I belted out the tune. Instead,
I backed slowly ofstage into the shadows. A
canned recording soon piped through—Anything
goes! (Gone, gone, gone.) I left sequins like
breadcrumbs all over the floor.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth,
the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need
we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our
country today. . . . So, first of all, let me assert
my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed eforts to convert
retreat into advance.”
Second Chance
In 2007, This American Life aired an episode
called “Reality Check.” Viewers were intro-
duced to Ralph and Sandra Fisher and their pet
Brahman bull, Chance. Ira Glass recounts how
the couple lovingly described Chance sleeping
under a tree in their front yard, the peace they
felt peering at him from the kitchen window.
As Chance grew old, the couple couldn’t bear
the thought of life without their gentle giant,
so they approached researchers at Texas A&M
about the possibility of cloning him. The result
was “Second Chance,” the spitting image of his
predecessor and the first bull ever successfully
cloned by scientists.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 23
 I’m watching this episode with my partner,
listening to the Fishers describe their joy at seeing
the new bull kneel down under the same tree in
their front yard. My eyes are wet, and I can’t wipe
the tears away fast enough. Angie says, “This is
going to go all Pet Sematary on them, isn’t it?”
I fear she’s right. And then it happens: Second
Chance, so easily mistaken for the first one, regal
and ghostly white, gores his owner—not once,
but twice. From the hospital bed, Ralph insists
he’ll give Second Chance another chance. He’ll
risk it—the way love doesn’t just engender a risk
but ultimately demands one.
You know what happens next—what has to
happen—if mortality is to remain our eternal
impediment; if all loves are to remain, in their
way, irreplaceable. “Art and life turn out to be
equally strange,” Angie and I decide, as Ralph
and Sandra grieve the second bull and then again
the first, the earlier sorrow nested inside the
second. Our cats, still so young then, lounge on
our laps. We have already crossed a threshold
over which we can no longer imagine our lives
without them.
Years later, when Oliver dies in our arms, we
keen for him, wet-faced and inconsolable.
In that moment, we would do anything to have
him back, even the mere semblance of him, his
perfect black shadow. We know better, but we
don’t care. In our impossible grief, we would bury
his body in the pet cemetery, carry his DNA in a
delicate vial to the lab, if we could.
You’ve been there, too, or you will be soon—
desperate for any chance to touch your beloved
again. We are all the Fishers.
Taker
There’s a word I love, from the Greek: ilinx,
meaning “whirlpool.” When I hear it, I think risk.
I think thrill. I think dizziness: teacups spinning
too fast at Disneyland or the giddy tilt of a plane
toward the sky. (Take-of, the thrill; landing,
the risk.) Sociologist Roger Caillois wrote that
ilinx involves “the pursuit of vertigo,” the way
children will run in circles for hours, tug and twirl
each other, until they collapse on the grass.
My favorite phrase in Caillois’s text is this
one: we perform acts of ilinx to “inflict a kind
of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid
24 RISK: AN ACCOUNTING | BRENDA MILLER & JULIE MARIE WADE
mind.” What makes panic “voluptuous”?
Should I ask skydivers and mountain-climbers,
tightrope-walkers and lion-tamers—or anyone
who rides the Zipper at a fair? I have a feeling
they’d tell me something glib though—just for
the thrill of it—nothing about the risk at all. How
much pleasanter to recount the rosie and not the
all fall down.
I courted ilinx in private ways: hours on the
trampoline in the basement, on the pogo stick
in the yard. But every year at summer camp, I
couldn’t scale the rock wall, despite the harness
and the helmet and the string of strong-legged
girls who found their footing before me. Our
counselors insisted I needed to be more adventur-
ous. The other campers peered down from the
summit, flush-faced and pleased with themselves.
“It’s fun,” they said as one voice. “It’s easy.”
Thirty feet below, unconvinced, I dangled from
an orange rope, the tips of my sneakers scraping
the ground. I hadn’t yet met a voluptuous panic,
which is another way of saying I was still a long
way from falling in love.
Unanticipated
A few weeks ago, a gunman sprayed a country
music concert with automatic weapons from his
perch in a four-star hotel. Can you picture it?
(It’s too easy to picture it these days.). Imagine
the music, American as all get out—twang of
Southern vocals, trill of electric guitar. The crowd
swaying, or two-stepping, or swinging a partner
in the cramped space they carved on the floor, a
sea of baseball caps, cowboy hats, kerchiefs, jeans.
The music kept playing during those first few
shots, a soundtrack to the carnage.
They didn’t think it’d be dangerous, but these
days, you know, it’s all a risk: movie theater or
McDonald’s; school or library; nightclub or
church. Years ago, snipers picked of people at
random on the streets in and around DC—while
they filled up cars at a gas station or sat on a
bench, anywhere they might be sitting ducks.
Maybe we’re all sitting ducks now. It turned out
the killers lived in my hometown for a while, at
the Lighthouse Mission, walking among us like
any other pedestrians. It’s been said: Where two or
more of you are gathered, there am I, but you have to
wonder: who is the I now?
Mother
Apothecary
SUSANNAH WILLIAMS

I t is october and hot, midway through the slow

bleed of summer’s end in North Carolina. We park the
car in a strip mall. My husband takes our two sons to browse
SUSANNAH WILLIAMS is
a freelance writer living in
Raleigh, North Carolina.

a temporary Halloween shop. I go into the adjoining Harris

Teeter grocery store and drop of a prescription for Abilify, an
antipsychotic, at the pharmacy.
I wait in front of a shelf of Pepto-Bismol and its lookalikes.
We’ve decided to tell our older son that Dr. S. has given us all
new vitamins. His is clear, and Dad’s, mine, and his younger
brother’s are pink, and they all taste terrible! My armpits grow
slippery; I fear that the smell of my body is insulting the metal-
lic purity of the store. Everything is lined up perfectly and
clearly labeled. It is a very neat place in which to be a failure.
The pharmacist scans the bar code of the package, and I
wonder if she plays a game with herself during these after-
noons, deciding how well prescriptions match the people
picking them up. She has never seen my child, but she knows
his date of birth—that he has just turned five years old and will
be taking a powerful psychiatric drug. She looks at me, but I do
not look back.

CREATIVE NONFICTION 25
 Four weeks later, I need to buy a pregnancy
test. I don’t go to the Harris Teeter for it. I do
not want the pharmacist to look at me again, to
politely not say what we would both be think-
ing, which is that I am clearly not a person who
should have another child.
it began when sperm and egg met, and there
was a skip in the bind and the weave got a pull,
one piece of one thread not tight enough. Or
it began in the genetic code of sperm and egg
themselves, some pus pocket of wrong along a
chain of right. Risk genes, they’re called. Or it
began when my son tried to squeeze his bones
through mine, and his heart rate dropped to the
50s. It had already been down five minutes when the
nurse came and got me, the doctor wrote in the
medical record. Or maybe it never began. Maybe
there is no it. Maybe I am delusional or a liar.
Maybe I am simply a Bad Parent or my son a
Bad Kid.
he is our first baby. He is born, and we
spend two days in the hospital gazing at him. We
bring our son home to our duplex in Nashville,
Tennessee. We lay him on a blanket on our bed
and pull him around on it as if it’s a sled. My
husband props him up on his knees and reads
to him from old college French texts. I lose all
of the baby weight in weeks—not because of
breastfeeding, I don’t think, but because I don’t
feel the need to eat. Elation, it turns out, is
caloric.
Our son doesn’t feel the need to sleep. Or, he
does, but not like any newborn I’ve ever been
around. Instead of dozing of and on all day, our
son sleeps for an hour or two and then is alert for
long stretches. By four, five, or six straight hours
awake, he grunts and flails his arms as if he’s
a puppet. I know babies can be hungry, tired,
uncomfortable; can they also be agitated—rest-
less—so early?
One night, when he’s been awake for hours
and rocking, pacing, and driving in the car will
not put him to sleep, my husband and I call the
baby hotline at the hospital. “Try the dryer,” the
nurse says. “Put him in his car seat next to the
washer and dryer, and run both of them at the
same time.”
My husband and I do as she says. We sit on the
floor across from the baby and wait. My husband
falls asleep, and, terrified, I want to wake him.
Please don’t leave me alone with this need I cannot
meet, cannot place! My son looks at me, his eyes
red-rimmed, arms pumping, as the floor vibrates
under him. He is five days old.
for years, I feel his needs in my body with-
out having words for them, like a consciousness
that has not yet evolved to meaning-making. I
develop a layer of vigilance without thought; it
is simply what is required of me.
Much later, I will realize how well-suited I am
to this situation, building structures to cope and
adapting them to something uncaged and ever-
changing. Raised in an alcoholic family, I knew
at a young age there was something in my home
that demanded I plan around it. I learned how
both to protect and survive it without knowing
that it was something separate from normal, that
it had a name.
This is like that. But for a long time, I assume
it is just part of being a mother, in the way I
assumed it was just part of being a child.
in ADHD NATION, journalist Alan Schwarz
explores the legitimacy of the explosion of
ADHD diagnoses in America over the past three
decades. Experts believe the condition afects
about 5 percent of children, yet today, 15 percent
of American children are diagnosed with ADHD.
One reason for this, Schwarz explains, is that
ADHD cannot be diagnosed with a blood test
or CAT scan; instead, a doctor must determine
“whether the severity of the behavior warrants
a diagnosis. After all, we all are distractible
or impulsive to varying degrees.” Dr. Russell
Barkley, author of Taking Charge of ADHD and
one of the leading authorities on the science of
ADHD, corroborates this, asserting that “ADHD
represents the extreme end of the distribution
of several highly correlated normal traits in the
human population.”
Over the years, the rapidly increasing number
of ADHD diagnoses dilutes the seriousness of
the disorder. As Schwarz writes, it becomes “to
some, literally laughable,” eliciting jokes by The
Simpsons, The Colbert Report, and The Onion. If
CREATIVE NONFICTION 27
 there was a stigma associated with ADHD, it
“didn’t prove very dissuasive. . . . Today, one in
seven kids leave high school having been told
they have ADHD—no longer a niche minority
but a sprawling swath of America’s future.”
Schwarz devotes his book to telling the story
of how “ADHD has become, by far, the most
misdiagnosed condition in American medicine.”
Outside the purview of ADHD Nation is the
story of individuals who have the legitimate
brain disorder. It is no easier to identify them
than it is to find the misdiagnosed. Despite the
fact we all possess its traits to some degree—that
we are familiar with distractibility and impulsiv-
ity—we do not recognize ADHD as such when
it is in our faces. And despite hearing jokes
about it in popular culture, we find nothing
funny about ADHD when we encounter it.
When we are faced with the disorder in its early,
severe form, it is as other as the melted flesh of a
burn victim.
our son is three years old, bright and
exuberant. He takes gymnastics and has a knack
for rhyming words. His tufts of baby hair have
grown into a cap of white-blond curls, so
perfectly wound they look like a wig. We call it
his Betty White Period.
Our son is three years old, and we know
something is not right—that it hasn’t been for
a long time—but everyone around us says this
is not true. He never outgrows his severe sleep
issues; throughout his infancy, it took us hours
to get him to sleep at night, and at age three, he
often wakes for the day at 4 am and cannot go
back to sleep.
“My daughter did that,” people say. “We just
ignored her, and she got the message.”
He could not be busied with toys as a baby.
Now, he cannot settle into any activity on his
own, and he can’t seem to handle any material
appropriately. He will use all of the paint, whole
tubes of it, in two minutes. I tell my mother it
seems as though nothing can satisfy him, that there
is some need in him that cannot be stufed up.
“You know boys,” people say. “You’ve got to
keep them moving!”
He has begun to be highly resistant to the
bathtub. He screams when we lead him there—
28 MOTHER APOTHECARY | SUSANNAH WILLIAMS
not a tantrum scream, but one of gut terror.
My husband and I have each shed involuntary,
instinctual tears while wiping him gently with a
washcloth as he wails. He lies on the couch in his
footie pajamas afterward, curled up in a tight ball
like a just-beaten animal.
“It’s just a phase,” people say.
And then, the most troubling thing: our
second son is born, and our older son cannot
seem to keep his hands of of him. It begins as
squeezing the baby too tightly when holding
him. We have to pry his hands of his brother, or
he won’t let go. Over time, it worsens. He will
enter the room and seem to be drawn to the baby
by magnetic force. He tries to lay on top of him
or press down on his chest, palpating his heart
like an EMT. He seems to understand when we
model appropriate touch, and he seems ashamed
when we put him in time out, but five minutes
later, he will do it again. It seems to me he is
seeking sensation, that too-close touch, rather
than acting out for attention.
“It’s definitely attention,” people say. “He’s
just jealous. They all go through it.”
The problem with describing the depth of
a child’s struggle is one of ownership. Nearly
everyone’s child is diicult sometimes.
You think that’s your special story? people wonder.
You should meet my niece/neighbor/cousin/brother.
After a while, I find it easier to stay quiet.
in one of the ADHD fact sheets on his website,
Dr. Barkley discusses cases of children who do
not present “the exact number of symptoms or
age of onset demanded by the DSM,” but who
are still highly symptomatic. In his opinion, Bark-
ley writes, “children should still receive treatment
even if ‘subthreshold’ in their symptoms, because
they are impaired (sufering) and it is impairment
that we exist to treat.”
I am struck by the parenthetical suffering—the
need to explain to the reader that when we talk
about symptoms of this disorder, we are talking
about sufering. There would be no need for
parentheses were we talking about leukemia
or Tay-Sachs; none of us needs to be told the
word for what happens when a child is courted
by death, his body ravaged. Barkley chooses to
be explicit because we think we already have a
word for a child whose behavior, not body, is
distorted: bad.
by the time he is three and a half, people stop
telling us it’s normal. My son has trouble at his
first preschool; he can’t sit for snack and makes
silly, unwelcome sounds close to the other chil-
dren’s faces. At the park, he is no longer satisfied
by going down the tunnel slide and instead scales
the outside of it, yelling, “Boo!” at the children
waiting atop. I begin to get narrowed eyes and
pursed lips from other parents. “Stay away from
that kid,” a mother says, yanking her child away
as mine runs of, making no efort to lower her
voice. She wants me to hear that this is my son’s
fault and my fault, our shared failure.
The first psychologist we see is a woman with
decades of experience working with very young
children. She has a soft voice and a pillowy,
grandmother’s body. She tries to entice our son
into therapy by noisily playing with toys like a
large, gray-haired toddler. When he won’t take
the bait and join her, she comes to our home to
watch the bizarre nightmare that has become
our reality: our older son buzzing around and
intermittently attacking the baby.
After the home visit, she calls me. “I want you
to know I am very conservative when it comes to
these things, but I think you should take him to
see a psychiatrist and consider a trial of a stimu-
lant.” Fear prickles over the slopes of my body,
knees up to ears. Did she just suggest putting our
three-year-old on medication?
She emails me the diagnostic criteria for
ADHD. Inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity.
Unable to play quietly, doesn’t follow through on
instructions, does not seem to listen, often runs about
or climbs where it is inappropriate. But what three-
year-old doesn’t display each of these symptoms
at times?
There isn’t a whif of what ADHD feels like,
or what it’s like to live with, in those bullet-
points. It’s not the fault of the bullet-points or
the doctors who worked to delineate them, but
the diagnostic cannot reflect our exhaustion,
pain, confusion, and helplessness. To be physi-
cally ill is to hold within you a range of medical
terminology; to be mentally ill is to hold within
you a range of human experience. It does not
articulate what I will come to think of, much
later, as the defining impetus for medication:
the realization that nothing else we’re doing is
helping him, or us.
But I am not there yet. At this point, I am
terrified by the thought. I look anew at the
psychologist, cast her now as the old witch in a
fairy tale, holding out a potion to my son: Drink
up, dearie! I take him and run.
For nearly two years, we avoid giving our son
drugs to make him better suited to the world
and instead outfit the world to better suit him.
It is a strange journey through paths of alterna-
tives. I become acquainted with naturopaths,
biochemical crusaders, and autism recoverees.
This is not in keeping with my social leanings
heretofore; I like Tylenol and Lysol and vac-
cines. But I’ll do anything.
We take our son to an occupational therapy
clinic, where a therapist works to give him the
sensory input he craves. She has him leap of a
six-foot platform onto a giant pillow she calls
“the crash pad.” She spins him fast in a cocoon-
like swing suspended from the ceiling; though
I would vomit from it, my son is calmed. We
buy similar therapy equipment for our home, to
give him something to do at all times. We hire
a handyman to drill holes into our ceiling and
install metal bolts. Our son hangs upside down
from a double trapeze in the living room, like a
bat unafraid of daylight.
We put our son on a gluten- and dairy-free
diet, and we avoid food dyes as though they are
rat poison. We try therapeutic horseback riding
and therapeutic swimming. Finally, we drive
two hours to a town on the coast—it feels like
a pilgrimage—where there is a neurodevelop-
mental pediatrician known for her commitment
to treating “the whole child.” Dr. S. works
with sensory disorders, autism, and ADHD, and
medication is never her first line of treatment.
She spends two hours with us and sends us home
with a list of neurological supplements with
names like GABA and theanine. We buy them,
grind them, whir them into smoothies.
All of this helps a little. None of it helps enough.
i hear a moving interview with the
scholar John O’Donohue. I purchase his Eternal
CREATIVE NONFICTION 29
 Echoes and read it, looking for wisdom, for
someone to speak my experience. “Sufering,”
he writes, “is raw, relentless otherness coming
alive around you and inside you.”
our son grows aware of his own difer-
ences. His occupational therapist teaches him
the “engine” system, helping him identify when
his engine is “low” or “high” and how to get it
“just right.” She begins this when he is having
trouble interacting with a particular child at
preschool, who revs him up then settles back
down himself while our son remains at full
speed, unable to do the same. She tells me she
talked to him about this, that she asked, “Does
anyone else at preschool have a high engine
sometimes?” and he’d replied, “No, everyone
else is just right.”  I call Dr. S. and say we cannot handle the ag-
Our neighbors do not like us. They’ve seen
our son ram his bike into our mailbox, desperate
for the impact. For years, they’ve watched
him shimmy up our front yard trees, in his
underwear, but he is five now, and their glares
communicate that he is now too old for this.
One afternoon, while my son is riding his bike in
our driveway, the neighbors’ little girl rides her
bike alongside him. My son asks if she can come
play in our backyard. “Sure,” her babysitter says.
“I’ll just text her mom to make sure it’s OK.” A
few minutes later, she shakes her head, surprised.
“She said, ‘No.’ That’s weird.” My son asks,
“What about tomorrow?”
i try to be quiet and patient with him most of
the time, but one day, something brittling in me
finally snaps. Our older son stands on the couch
and suddenly dives onto his little brother on the
floor, body-slamming him with the entire force
of his weight, and the mother instinct rises in me
like a beast with bared teeth. As I pull our older
son of, I could send him through the ceiling, the
strength and rage I feel is so monstrous. I take
him by the shoulders and shake him, screaming,
“This has to stop! This has to stop!” He falls to
the floor. Both of my sons look up at me, scared
and sobbing.
Maybe you’re thinking, Just hit him, for God’s
sake, but I knew early on that if we started, we
would not stop. We’d beat him senseless, because
30 MOTHER APOTHECARY | SUSANNAH WILLIAMS
though he knows what is OK and what is not, he
cannot quell his urge for the latter.
Still, I can hold my hands down at my sides to
keep from throttling him, but I cannot help the
expression on my face. He understands he is not
right, that it cannot be right to make his mother
look animal—I know this as surely as I knew,
when I heard his cry from down the hospital
hallway, that he was mine.
That night, I find him asleep in his bed, with
an umbrella open above his head. He had asked
for it one night, trying to wind himself down.
He keeps it in his room and pulls it out on harder
nights. He is so bad at this, at finding a way to
nestle into the world. I climb in next to him,
under its spokes, and weep silently. The umbrella
shields us but cannot hold us.
gression and explosiveness, that we cannot reach
him. She sends in the prescription for Abilify.
in a five-year-old, Abilify is a bomb; it
obliterates indiscriminately. The first morning,
he falls asleep in the car on the way to preschool.
“He worked on an art project for forty minutes,”
his teacher whispers, her eyes wide, amazed.
At home, he doesn’t want to play outside. “I
just want to rest,” he says, lying on the couch
and looking up at the ceiling.
My parents visit. Our son sits on the floor
for two hours, doing a puzzle. He speaks little,
laughs less. He is a ghost of himself, but he is less
frightening to me than everyone else’s reaction
to him. “Is it so bad?” my parents ask. They are
not monsters; they simply know how hard daily
life is. “He’s so peaceful.”
In the end, I can’t do it, can’t say goodbye to
him so as to live with this placid shell. We take
him of the drug after ten days.
It’s at this time that I find out I am pregnant
for the third time. It’s shocking, almost comi-
cally so, after previously needing heavy doses
of fertility drugs to conceive. My husband and
I sit in our living room, stunned, as though
we’ve just received word of a death. Should we
terminate? Is it irresponsible, immoral—cruel,
even—to bring another person into this? We are
not religious, but I’d been educated in Catholic
schools, was the winner of the 1998 Diocese of
Metuchen Respect Life essay contest. I believe
in choice now, but I never expected to have to
make one.
“What if it is another child who does not
have this, another child from whose ease we can
derive joy and fulfillment?” my husband asks. We
consider an equation: 2 who do not struggle / 1 who
does = less total pain than 1 who does not struggle /
1 who does. We weigh it: the fear, the pain, the
hope, and bet on hope. Two flares thrown into
darkness make more light than one.
i am six months pregnant when a
five-year-old boy tells me what I have to hear. I
am volunteering at a carnival event at my son’s
preschool, helping to run the beanbag toss station.
This boy takes a turn then asks whose mother I
am. When I answer, he’s of to the races.
“He’s bad,” this child tells me. “Really, really bad.
He’s the worst. He messes up everybody’s stuf. He
knocks down our block towers all the time.”
This child, I know, is the son of two college
professors. He’s been brought up by skilled
lecturers. He wears collared shirts and sweaters,
has an air of class about him. He knows how to
get to the point.
“That’s why he doesn’t have any friends. Not
even one. No one likes him. My mom says maybe
he needs a friend. Maybe he doesn’t know better.”
The other parent at my station cuts him of,
embarrassed for me. I go to the bathroom and cry
on a low toilet meant for preschoolers, trying to
think up comebacks to a five-year-old. Then I
think that this story he has told me might be the
only story, and it is a sad one. And maybe I have
not yet done everything I can to make it less so.
I think of our son’s little face. For a long time,
I’ve thought maybe I could protect the core of
who he is by padding everything around him. I
begin to understand that this mission has about
the same chance of success as sending a teacup
down a waterfall and expecting to see it bob up
in the whitewater, intact.
I make an appointment with one of the heads
of the ADHD clinic at Duke University.
on the second day that my five-and-a-half-
year-old takes Dexedrine, a stimulant medication,
he goes outside and comes back in twenty
minutes later. He is flushed. “Look,” he says,
taking my hand.
My son has used sidewalk chalk to write the
alphabet in a multicolored circle on our driveway.
He usually struggles to sit long enough to write his
name. “You practiced the whole alphabet!” I say.
He tries for a small smile, but his teeth push
his lips open, let the beam crack across his face.
We have never championed schoolwork or set
this achievement as an ideal. Yet somehow, deep
within him, my son knows this is objectively
good, in that same way we recognize beauty
as young children before anyone has defined it
for us. I can’t explain to him that this is not my
goal—for him to fit into anyone’s or everyone’s
standards of “right.” All I want for him is the
chance to stay a person, rather than a problem.
our third son is born one sweltering July
morning. My husband leads our two older sons
into the hospital room, their faces full of Christ-
mas-morning hope. We place the baby in our
oldest son’s lap. The stimulant calms him, keeping
the motor that seemed to drive him for years at
a low rumble, but we still watch nervously as he
cradles the baby. When he lifts his chin up, there is
hot pride on his face.
One of the tenets of Dr. Barkley’s theory of
ADHD revolves around the concept of time.
“The organization of the individual’s behavior
both within and across time is one of the ultimate
disabilities rendered by the disorder.” Kids with
ADHD lack the capacity of other children
“to sense and use time” to direct their behavior to-
ward the future. The now, in short, is everything.
As I watch our oldest son hold our youngest, I
take that on for myself, let that distortion fly free
within me. I feel as if I grafted my son’s central
nervous system over mine for years; wasn’t it
possible for me to adopt some of its wiring?
“When you stop resisting sufering, something
else begins to happen,” O’Donohue writes. “You
begin slowly to allow your sufering to follow its
own logic. . . . There is in sufering some hidden
shadowed light.” It feels as if ten years have
passed in darkness, not two, but I can hold this
moment in the hospital and let it take up just as
much space, let time glow open. Somewhere in
the brightness is a beginning.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 31

KELLY BEARD practiced
employment discrimination
law in the Atlanta area for two
decades before returning to
college to study creative writing.
In 2016, she earned her MFA
in Creative Writing from the
Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Her work appears in the Santa
Ana River Review, Five Points,
and Bacopa Literary Review. Her
memoir, An Imperfect Rapture,
won the 2017 Zone 3 Press
Creative Nonfiction Book Award.
32 FAITH HEALING | KELLY BEARD
Faith Healing
KELLY BEARD
I t might not have occurred to my parents to send me
to a faith healer if it hadn’t been for my sister’s accident. Barb
had been throwing rocks in the parking lot of the Desert Chapel
Foursquare Church with some of the other church kids when
Sister Busby’s son, Lester, threw one that accidentally hit Barb in
the eye. Blood seeped between her fingers while Lester cringed
on the asphalt, taking his mother’s blows without a sound. By
the time Dad brought Barb home from the emergency room, her
left eye was swaddled in a thick white bandage. Mom spent the
next two weeks reminding her not to play with it, not to pull it
of, that the doctor said no light in that eye.
We went to a prayer meeting the night before the doctor was
scheduled to remove Barb’s bandage. She’d had it on so long it
had turned black, the gummy edges curled. At the end of the
service, Barb went to the altar with the adults. Brother Morrow
knelt in front of her. He dabbed oil on her forehead while our
parents and other adults hovered in a ragged arc behind her.
They prayed, sometimes in unison, sometimes in turn, some-
times in tongues. People waved their hands in the air, flagging
God for a healing. Hallelujah, Jesus!
 I want to take my bandage off now, Barb said.
The air went still as a sealed jar.
Dad knelt in front of her and peeled of the
bandage. He cupped her face in his blunt hands and
covered her uninjured eye. What time is it, baby?
She looked at the industrial clock on the back
wall, her mouth a small “o.” Then: 10:45!
Everyone erupted. I watched from the
second-row pew as Dad wove through the knot
of believers, holding his dainty miniature on
his shoulders like an icon. He was King David
dancing into Jerusalem before the Ark of the
Covenant, carrying physical evidence of the
Lord’s singular blessing. People reached for my
sister, touching her leg or arm. People cried and
said, Praise you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord, while
she bobbed above us, beaming, her perfect eyes
translucent with light.
Several years later, my sixth-grade teacher was
the first to catch on to the fact that I couldn’t
see the chalkboard. Maybe he noticed how I
couldn’t answer the questions he’d written unless
he read them aloud first, or how I spent an
inordinate amount of time sharpening pencils
and dawdling at the front of the room, or how
when I volunteered to wipe the board and clean
the erasers after class, I went more slowly than
the other kids, trying to read what I’d missed
earlier in the day. He insisted my parents take
me to an optometrist. The week after the visit, I
heard Dad tell the story a dozen times. The kid’s
legally blind, he’d say, shaking his head, smiling
or chuckling as though I’d done something
remarkable by hiding my myopia for so long.
Mom chafed at the flaw. How could I be so blind
when she had perfect eyesight? Dad had perfect
eyesight! Barb had perfect eyesight—even after
the accident! For her, or maybe for both of
my parents, I must have seemed damaged, and
the damage, in our church, reflected on our
faith. Maybe Barb’s earlier experience made my
half-inch-thick glasses seem an afront rather
than another kind of miracle, though it felt like
one to me when they transformed the wholly
obscure world into focused sight. In the wake
of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong planting
an American flag on the moon, anything must
have seemed possible to my parents. Now, in a
long glance back, I see what followed as an act of
cleromancy to suss God’s favor and will—both
of which already seemed random and indeci-
pherable to me.
My parents called me into their bedroom one
night. They sat on the edge of the bed, Dad in
his standard white T-shirt and boxers, Mom in
a pilled lavender gown. They asked if I wanted
to be healed like my sister. Did I want perfect
eyesight, too? I said, Yes. I must have been
thinking they were going to pray for me, maybe
cover my eyes with gauze for a week or two
then pull of the bandages at church. Instead,
they told me they were sending me to a healing
service in Los Angeles. If I had enough faith,
Mom said, I’d be able to throw away my glasses
when I left the service.
I rode the hundred or so miles from Palm
Springs to Los Angeles with Sister Dietz, one of
my least favorite sisters at the church. A middle-
aged divorcée with silver-framed cat-eye glasses
and a crush on Dad even a twelve-year-old
could see, she’d cleansed the sins of her former
life by graduating from L.I.F.E. Bible College,
the seminary ailiated with the Foursquare
denomination. After several hours in traic, we
arrived at the Angelus Temple.
I’d never been to Los Angeles—or any big
city—so nothing could have prepared me for it.
Situated a block away from LA’s iconic Sunset
Boulevard, the Temple had been built almost
fifty years earlier, during the faith’s halcyon days.
Founder and failed Hollywood starlet Aimee
Semple McPherson oversaw the construction.
Its columns were reminiscent of the Colosseum,
and the length of the building spanned half
a football field. Arches graced the seventeen
entrances, sweeping the eye upward. The dome
top, 110 feet high and 107 feet wide, was
constructed from cement mixed with crushed
seashells, which turned it blinding-white in
sunlight. When McPherson consecrated it on
January 1, 1923, the dome was the largest in
North America, a fact that wouldn’t change until
the Empire State building was constructed seven
years later. At its peak stood a large cross flanked
by two latticed radio towers. It could have been
lifted from ancient Rome. Or The Twilight Zone.
The day we visited, a red banner hung at the
entrance, proclaiming, Kathryn Kuhlman Miracle
CREATIVE NONFICTION 33
 Service! Sister Dietz pulled me inside and pointed
to various photographs. McPherson posing in a
slinky white gown at the top of a staircase, her
head thrown back, eyes half-closed, framed in
an ecstasy of light. McPherson clasping a girl of
seven or eight to her chest, an empty wheelchair
behind them. McPherson in aviator goggles and
leather cap, waving from her personal plane.
On another wall, framed newspapers: the Bridal
Call Foursquare (“An Aimee Semple McPherson
Publication”) and the Foursquare Crusader
(“Oicial Organ of the International Church
of the Foursquare Gospel”), published from the
1920s through 1944, the year McPherson died
of a drug overdose. In one, dated September 16,
1936, the banner headline read Reds Ham-
mering at Our Gates. Along the left margin,
under the caption Miracles at Temple, I saw
two first-person accounts of healing. One from
cancer. One from blindness.
I thought about asking Sister Dietz if she’d
ever seen anyone get healed, but I was afraid
of seeming skeptical. Even though everyone at
church believed Barb’s mended eye had been a
miracle, I wasn’t so certain. I knew my doubt
might kill any chance for healing, but I couldn’t
help it. If I could see a kid in a wheelchair stand
up and walk again, I knew I’d believe. Or if I saw
a missing limb sprout from its empty socket—the
kind of miracle that regularly happened at these
services, according to church members—that
would clinch it. I’d heard that Aimee Semple
McPherson had healed thousands of people when
she was alive, and her protégée, Kathryn Kuhl-
man, had already healed hundreds, but I couldn’t
help thinking that if all these miracles were really
happening, surely they would be reported in
papers circulated outside the church. I’d seen
articles about current events in My Weekly Reader.
It covered the shooting of Martin Luther King
Jr. and the presidential election. Those were big
stories, I knew, but if someone was growing a
new limb and tossing away crutches, wasn’t that a
big story, too? Was the silence part of the media’s
conspiracy of ignorance, as Brother Morrow called
it? Could be—I’d already witnessed grownups
outside our church conspiring in mass delusion
in other ways. Like the time I got in trouble at
school for telling other kids Santa didn’t exist.
34 FAITH HEALING | KELLY BEARD
My second-grade teacher excoriated me in
front of the class before documenting Santa’s
existence with newspaper articles and an entry
in the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the media were
perpetuating outright lies, who was to say they
weren’t also suppressing truth?
Sister Dietz elbowed us through the crowded
foyer and into the auditorium, where ushers
handed us tracts and pointed to the balcony.
We climbed two flights of carpeted stairs
and wedged ourselves into two of the 5,300
crushed-velvet theater seats. While the audi-
torium filled, we watched a pictorial montage
of the church’s history. It consisted primarily
of scenes from Aimee Semple McPherson’s
famous illustrated sermons, starring McPherson
dressed as a motorcycle cop (Stop! For Jesus!);
posing in a milkmaid outfit; feeding the poor;
and holding a white Bible in her left hand, her
right fist raised to a towering cardboard gorilla
(Keep Darwin out of our schools!). The final image
dissolved as though eaten by acid, and the screen
retracted to the ceiling. Lights dimmed. A figure
floated from the dark wings to center stage.
Beloved, she whispered into the microphone
she cradled with both hands. The acoustics were
so perfect, we could have heard her even if the
crowd hadn’t gone quiet.
A spotlight snapped on, revealing a pale,
wraith-thin woman with curly hennaed hair,
wearing a bridal gown reminiscent of those in
McPherson’s earlier photographs. Kuhlman’s
sleeves trumpeted lily-like around her wrists;
she resembled an angel when she reached her
arms toward the crowd.
She brought the microphone to her lips.
Bent double.
Jesus. Her scarlet mouth nearly touched
the microphone.
Jesus. The last ess sizzled to silence.
She told us we were perfect. Already whole.
She spoke in a raspy whisper, stressing every
other syllable in a way that gave her voice a
chant-like cadence that comforted but didn’t
convince. Was I broken and damaged—the reason
I’d been sent here—or already whole?
I tried to work out whether it would be worse
to admit I didn’t feel the call or to go forward,
hoping to hear the call on my way or to find it
there, at her feet. Sister Dietz glanced at me,
her forehead holding a tiny furrow. She might
have felt complicit in my failure. All I could do,
though, was watch other people pour down
the aisles, wipe their eyes, and straggle up to
the stage. Kathryn Kuhlman paused in front of
each trembling person. Do you want healing? she
whispered into the microphone. When they
nodded or said, Yes, she placed her hand on their
heads and said, Then you have been healed. At those
words, some people fell to their knees, others
staggered backward, and a few slipped to the
floor, boneless as eels. Those on the floor lay slain
in the spirit while men covered them with Army
blankets. A few people in wheelchairs slumped
sideways. Men wheeled some away and helped
others to their feet, holding their elbows as they
stumbled to the dark wings ofstage, making
room for more people to scuttle into the light. At
the end, I remained rooted to my seat, wonder-
ing if I’d missed a miracle or a humiliation.
Decades later, studying the mystics Meister
Eckhart and Julian of Norwich, I wonder
at the thread of heresy woven into Kathryn
Kuhlman’s words that day. When she told the
despairing, broken bodies lined up in front of
her that they were already healed, was she trying
to tell us about a God who finds perfection
in our imperfection? Was she suggesting the
absurdity of a God who favors perfect bodies
while continuously creating imperfect ones? Was
she commenting on how sadistic it was, really,
for that God to heal some people but not others?
Was she whispering out of fear or sorrow, the
way I imagine Meister Eckhart did when facing
papal inquisitors: How long will grown men and
women in this world keep drawing in their coloring
books an image of God that makes them sad?
I didn’t think about mystics or esoteric ideas of
God on the silent drive home with Sister Dietz,
though. Instead, I stared out the sand-pitted
windshield, dreading the moment I was headed
for, when I’d walk through the front door to
face my parents, my glasses revealing what I
could no longer hide: my faith was even weaker
than my vision.
The Diving Well
SARAH KASBEER

W e stood in line behind the diving board, our blonde-

haired legs touching at the knees and ankles, hands
clasped across our red Speedo racing suits, as we waited our
SARAH KASBEER lives in New
York. Her essays appear or are
forthcoming in the Normal
School, Elle, Guernica, and
elsewhere. Her work has
turns at acrobatic feats. Each time I entered the cool water, I received notable mention in
would swim downward, my ears popping as I approached the The Best American Essays.

drain, before suddenly realizing my oxygen was running out. A

prickle of fear sent my little body kicking back to the surface.
During the long, hot summer days, almost as far back as I can
remember, my best friend Natalie and I went to swim practice
in the mornings, ate grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and
then spent the afternoons flying into—and climbing out of—a
square pool known as the diving well. Every August, I’d return
to school, my light hair tinged green, damaged from soaking all
summer in chlorinated waters.
Natalie was my first friend. My mother worked as a physical
therapist in Natalie’s father’s sports medicine clinic. As babies,
we were due around the same date, but born three weeks apart.
She showed up early, and I arrived two weeks late.
We grew up in a suburb smack in the middle of Illinois, with-
out any real urban anchor to tether us. The Nancy Drew books

CREATIVE NONFICTION 37
 I acquired biweekly from our local library
lasted only a few hours—my own primitive
form of binge-entertainment. My parents
decided to join the same country club that
Natalie’s parents had, when they learned it
would keep my older sister and me occupied
during the months of from school. While
our adult counterparts played tennis or golf
or drank Arnold Palmers, Natalie and I spent
hours at the pool.
“You’re not going to sit around the house all
day,” my mother said on weekends when we
didn’t have swim practice. She rounded up my
swimming gear and told me to call Natalie so
we could pick her up on the way. She dropped
us of in the pool parking lot, towels around our
waists, sometimes without shoes, the asphalt
burning the soles of our feet. We waddled
through the front gate, ready to meet whatever
adventures awaited us.
A regular, or “big pool,” as we called it,
stretched between the diving boards and tennis
courts. The big pool was painted royal blue and
ofered only measly depths of nine feet. We
swam laps back and forth in its monotonous
lanes during morning swim practice, and then
took a splash in the two-foot baby pool, which
had been painted white and was separated from
the others by a chain-link fence. Natalie and I
agreed that because it was so warm and shallow,
it was likely filled with pee, which became a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
But—save for maybe the snack bar—the
diving well was by far our favorite amenity.
Painted the pale blue of an Easter egg, the well
boasted depths of fourteen feet. It was also
surrounded by chain link and required its own
lifeguard. If Natalie and I showed up to find it
empty, a teenager in a red swimsuit with a white
cross would sulk toward it with the key, giving
up a nap in the guard room to make sure neither
of us was gravely injured on his or her watch.
Natalie and I could out-maneuver most
people in the diving well. If it was already in
use when we arrived, we would shame away the
cannon-ballers by showing of our high skill
and stamina.
“Check this out,” Natalie would say before
flying of the springboard, grabbing her leg
38 THE DIVING WELL | SARAH KASBEER
behind her back with one arm and placing her
other hand behind her head, as if posing for a
photo midair.
“Better?” I’d ask, after executing the same
back dive six or seven times. The diving well
was the only place I found discipline comforting
as a child.
It was also a place where we pulled pranks on
each other—an extra boost on the board from
behind as you were jumping of or a smack from
one of those super-absorbent mini sports towels.
It was a place where bodies large and small went
splat, where oohs and ahs rose from the crowds that
had gathered to watch the performance.
People especially loved to see Natalie. Even
as a little girl, she was solid muscle, a masculine
kind of beauty. She was also a fearless diver,
who would belly flop of the high dive for
props alone or complete as many flips as possible
before smacking the water mid-rotation. She’d
then emerge, her face frozen in an open-
mouthed smile, her expression half-covered by
strands of wet hair, which was thick and blonde
and had long since refused to be tamed by any
ponytail holder.
Natalie and I were about the same size, but
I was lankier, having inherited my mother’s
form, including dainty lower legs and toes that
pointed nicely. My strength was finesse. Because
I was deathly afraid of heights, I lingered on the
one-meter springboard, perfecting simple dives:
a backflip with a twist, and an inward, the latter
of which requires you to jump of backward and
then dive forward, entering the water headfirst.
I trained relentlessly for upcoming swim meets,
where I collected blue ribbon after blue ribbon.
My mother had also been a diver growing up,
and would sit for hours in a chair under a tree
giving me tips. I’d see her there every time I
emerged from the depths. “You’re leaning back
too much on your approach,” she’d say to explain
the less-than-perfect entry on my back dive.
I was trying to avoid knocking my heels on
the board, which had happened once before.
The real dangers of swimming hadn’t even
registered as a possibility in my mind. I knew
we weren’t supposed to run, horse around on
the ladders, or leave the gates open, but I didn’t
fully understand why—until one afternoon.
 A little boy who had been with his mother
in the locker room wandered out past the baby
pool and into the diving well, where the gate
had been left open. No one saw him floating
facedown at the far end until our swim-team
coach, standing on the three-meter, dove in
to rescue him. The coach handed the toddler
to my mother, who was certified in CPR, and
as he went to call an ambulance, my mother
performed compressions on the boy's sternum.
Fearing his lungs had filled with water, she
turned him on his side on the concrete before the
lifeguards and then the paramedics took over.
The boy survived, but I felt a shift. Suddenly,
the diving well was no longer a source of
delighted shrieks, but more like the cold, sterile
hole in the ground it appeared to be when you
drove by in winter.
the summer after sixth grade, Natalie and I
went to diving camp at Indiana University, just
three hours east of our hometown in Illinois.
The college was known for its Olympic-grade
facilities and top athletic program, and we were
its youngest recruits—too young, even, to
make use of our newfound freedom alone in
the dorms. Instead, we trained constantly for
the two weeks we spent there: at the pool, in
weight rooms, and even outdoors.
My favorite activity involved a trampoline
with a harness. It combined fun with safety,
allowing you to isolate parts of dives that are
simply not important enough to your survival
to think closely about them in midair. I worked
a lot on my twists. One of my best was a
back dive with one and a half somersaults and
one and a half twists. The dive was tricky; it
required a sequence of arm and body move-
ments that happened at split-second intervals.
Drop your arm but not your head, and you
wouldn’t get enough spin. Start your twist
too early, and you’d kill your vertical rotation.
To experiment with timing and form in the
pool, you had to be a masochist who enjoyed
climbing out of the water over and over, with
thighs bright red and smarting from smacking
full-force against the surface. Instead, I did it
twenty times in a harness.
“Now you’re getting it,” the coach told me.
I beamed—a twelve-year-old girl being
trained by a college coach. Diving had, by
process of elimination, become the sport of my
dreams. It was the only thing I was really good
at. I thought for sure I would dive my way to
collegiate greatness.
“Whoa there,” I heard him say after I
finished my time on the trampoline. Natalie
was supposed to do two flips in the harness
but had rotated almost four times instead.
We weren’t particularly competitive with one
another—our strengths and tastes were so
diferent that it was almost a surprise we were
even good friends at all.
To fill in where I lacked, Natalie had male
friends. In fact, she buddied up with one of the
guys at camp. He was an eighth-grader and a
daredevil himself. The rumor was they’d made
out in a grassy field one night, and he might
have “gone down her pants.” I didn’t really
know what this entailed—Natalie wasn’t the
type to kiss and tell—but it sounded danger-
ous, and so it made sense that she would test it
out first.
I still had my girlhood crush on Greg Lou-
ganis, who was, at the time, the most famous
diver in the world. He was long and lean and
filled out his Speedo in a non-threatening
but curious way. That year, he came out to
the world as gay, and the following year, he
came out as HIV-positive. Because he’d hit
his head and bled into the pool during the
1988 Olympics seven years earlier, it became
controversial that Louganis had failed to tell
the Olympic Committee about the status of
his disease. It would lead to heated debate at
swim camp, though the extent of most of the
campers' knowledge of HIV was likely similar
to mine—the minimal information gleaned
from a video I’d been shown in health class,
titled Blood-borne Pathogens, which explained
how a virus could live for multiple days on a
dry surface. The same class had briefly touched
on abstinence as a form of protection.
To have one foot in childhood and another
in adolescence is truly terrifying. You know
of things, but not about them. I hadn’t yet had
any talks with my mother about sex—I only
knew I wasn’t supposed to do it. In the height
CREATIVE NONFICTION 39
 of the AIDS panic, sexuality had been spun
to me as some sort of external lurking force,
waiting to corrupt (or even kill) children. It
was my responsibility to occupy myself with
“wholesome” activities like sports, which
required discipline and a kind of vigilant
self-guardianship. But sustained mastery over
one’s body is nearly impossible. I couldn’t
dive forever.
at camp, every evening after dinner, we cut
across a field of yellow grass in our flip-flops,
our swimsuits under our clothes, towels draped
over our shoulders like togas, and headed
toward the outdoor pool for the five-, seven-,
and ten-meter platforms.
Part of camp tradition was to launch a dive
of the highest platform during the first week. I
begrudgingly followed Natalie up the slippery
metal ladder, trying not to look down. As a
competitive event, platform diving is literally
called “tower,” and the three-meter diving
board I’d always avoided at home now seemed
puny by comparison.
As we passed the five-meter platform, time
seemed to slow to a crawl. Rung by rung, we
climbed higher and higher, past the seven-
meter, and the people on the deck got smaller
and smaller. From the top, a few stories up,
the water in this unfamiliar ultra-deep diving
well reflected the yolk-orange sky of the
setting sun.
“If you land flat, the impact can break your
back,” one of the older divers told us.
As I tried to hide my internal panic, Natalie
ran by me on the platform, impulsively throw-
ing herself into a dive with multiple flips before
entering the water, her arms outstretched
above her head. How she intuited precisely
how much to rotate from a ten-meter platform
escapes me still. I didn’t have to see her face to
know she came up smiling.
“C’mon Sarah,” I heard her yell from below
I inched to the front of the platform, which
was covered in black rubber tread and droplets
of water.   you out. The farther you lean forward, away
Once, as a little girl, I followed Natalie up
to the rafters in her family’s tool shed to play
clubhouse, and then cried because I was afraid.
40 THE DIVING WELL | SARAH KASBEER
Her mom had to come out with a ladder to
get me down. I had probably been up only
nine feet.
This time, I was up thirty-three feet. Who
would come for me? The fire department? I
couldn’t simply jump feet first, because the
drop was so far I knew I’d rotate forward and
end up smacking my face. Crawling back
down the slippery ladder seemed equally
treacherous. The only way of was to dive.
Since I had no other choice, I let the platform
slip away from my toes and reached for the
horizon line. I held my body as tightly as
possible, squeezing my hands together above
my head. The drop was disturbingly long.
When my hands finally broke the surface, I felt
my shoulder blades and back scrape the water
behind me. It was like trying to penetrate
concrete. When I re-emerged, I could hear
Natalie cheering.
“I knew you could do it,” she said, before
heading back up the ladder.
Never again, I thought, shivering. I rested
one elbow over the side of the pool as the
water lapped past it and into the drain. I hadn’t
conquered my fear; I’d just momentarily
suspended it.
when we were sophomores in high
school, the same coach from Indiana University
used our town’s indoor college pool once a
week to coach possible recruits. He was much
tougher on us than I’d remembered.
At camp three and a half years earlier, I
learned a dive I had never been able to grasp
on my own: the reverse. To do it, you jump
of forward and then dive backward, aiming
your head back toward the springboard. In
order to land an almost vertical entry and get
a good score, you need to stay relatively close
to the board. This presents an inherent danger
with any dive, but because the reverse is blind,
it’s a literal leap of faith. Not only do you have
to trust your own body, but also the physics of
a springboard, which is engineered to throw
from the board out of fear, the more diicult it
is to initiate a backward rotation. Don’t throw
yourself out far enough, and you’ll end up like
Greg Louganis in the qualifying round of the
1988 Olympics. He was attempting a reverse
two-and-a-half, his body folded in the pike
position. As he opened up after two rotations
to prepare for entry, the crown of his skull hit
the board.
At diving camp, I’d learned the simplest
version of the reverse, a dive, which I did
while wearing a safety harness that resembled a
chastity belt. In the years since, I’d upgraded it
to a reverse one-and-a-half, tucked into a ball.
But because diving is scored by a combination
of how diicult a dive is and how well you
execute it, once you perfect your list, you can
only up your score potential by continually
learning new dives with higher numerical
degrees of diiculty. Now, in our second week
of practice, the Indiana University coach tried
to help Natalie and me do just that.
“I want to see a reverse one-and-a-half, in
the pike position,” the coach commanded.
It was significantly harder than rotating in a
ball, as I’d practiced. In fact, I was pretty sure it
would be impossible. For me, anyway.
“Of the three-meter,” he clarified.
For the fearless, attempting this dive from
higher up actually made it more feasible—
you have more time to rotate. Natalie
delivered on the request in about twenty
seconds, although it resulted in a rather large
splash. I simply declined.
“If you can’t get past your fear, then I don’t
see the point in you being here,” the coach
told me.
My heart hit the bottom of my stomach
and sat there like a clump of debris that had
gathered on a drain, waiting to be collected by
a pool skimmer.
I couldn’t do it. I was too scared. But the
threat of failure loomed even larger. Failing
my coach. Failing Natalie. Failing my mother,
who sat dutifully in the stands. I had no idea
being good at something would come with
such pressure always to be better.
The following week, I climbed straight up
the ladder to the three-meter springboard.
Dark blue waves lapped between the red and
white lane markers of the Olympic-sized
CREATIVE NONFICTION 41
 “big pool” stretching in front of me beyond
a bridge of tile. White caps bobbed down the
lanes as bent arms sliced through the surface.
I took a deep breath and somehow managed
to block it all out: my fear of heights, of
slipping on the board, of splitting my head
open. All of these fates seemed better than
running crying into the locker room. But
when I successfully completed the dive, I felt
exactly the same way I had after diving of the
ten-meter platform at camp: proud, relieved,
and terrified that someone would make me do
it again.
“There you go!” said the coach.
This time, I did not beam. I knew I couldn’t
keep it up.
there is a concept for failure in diving
called a “no dive,” which is equivalent to a
zero. No matter how hideous your entry,
if you fulfill the necessary rotations and
positioning, even if you go in kicking and
screaming, you should get at least half of a
point. If you are unable to complete—or
simply attempt—the dive, you do not receive
any points.
In the end, at fifteen, I took the “no dive.”
I didn’t go back to the indoor pool with its
delicate balance of warm, humid air and cool,
chlorinated waters. When it demanded more
from me than I was able to give, I quit altogether.
I was steadily learning that some risks, in
small doses, barring any immediate conse-
quences, could be fun. If striving for perfec-
tion was pointless, I could at least belly-flop
into abject failure. So I turned toward other
ways of filling the widening gap of unmet
expectations—from my parents, teachers,
peers. A nicotine addiction to distract from
my AP-level homework, which just kept
getting harder. A marijuana habit to dull the
constant sting of not being skinny enough,
pretty enough. Drunk sex with boys I didn’t
even like. Instead of a clear focus on achieve-
ment, I settled for the muddled avoidance of
my own humiliation.
Natalie stopped diving that same year to
focus on other sports. We still hung out, often
finding ourselves engaged in activities that
42 THE DIVING WELL | SARAH KASBEER
required little verbal communication. We’d
become used to our silent partnership at the
pool, where a shake of the head, a laugh, or a
thumbs up said everything. At sixteen, we hit
the ski slopes together, Natalie taking long
jumps on her snowboard and me trying to
keep my skis properly paralleled through the
maze of icy moguls. That night, we went to
a bar that didn’t check IDs. Natalie held her
liquor, but I had to excuse myself to throw up
in the bathroom.
I saw drugs and alcohol as a way of relieving
my insecurities, fears, and anxieties, although
sometimes they exacerbated them. At seven-
teen, I got into Natalie’s car on a Friday after
school, and she unloaded her bra to reveal a
bag of psychedelic mushrooms. We went back
to her house and ate them on pizza before go-
ing to the mall, where I froze in panic, because
how the hell are we going to park between all of these
cars? Of course, Natalie was in the driver’s seat
and nailed a perpendicular entry into a parking
space on the first try.
Our senior year in high school, Natalie
moved to Orlando to become a semi-pro
wakeboarder. She eventually injured her knee,
switched sports, and relocated again—this
time to row crew at Berkeley. I stayed closer to
home, attending the University of Illinois the
following year. I lived in a dorm right across
the street from the campus recreation center.
When the weather was warm, I would lounge
at the outdoor pool and look longingly toward
the water. Sometimes I’d see the women’s
swim team leaving in athletic warm-ups, their
hair still wet from morning practice.
It wasn’t the activity itself that I missed, but
the sense of camaraderie, the joyful release of
energy, and the utter exhaustion I’d once felt
after diving my heart out. I knew I could never
have my sport—or my friend—back the way
things had once been. Even though college
ofered the promise of new adventures, part of
me preferred the familiar lull of childhood to
the uncharted waters of life as an adult.
Some people thrive of the adrenaline rush
that comes with danger. I, on the other hand,
would have stayed in the light blue diving
well forever.
Cooking for James
DEE HOBSBAWN-SMITH

V ancouver’s streets were slick and wet, the pavement

disappearing under iridescent puddles, the sky closing in
on a Saturday afternoon in September 1982. I was avoiding my
DEE HOBSBAWN-SMITH's former
life in the culinary world flavors
some of her poetry, essays, and
fiction. Her work has appeared
in newspapers, magazines,
cooking school homework, soaking in Kitsilano’s shabby-chic and literary journals, including
ambiance, shop after shop blurring like their reflections in the Gastronomica, The New
Quarterly, Canadian Literature,
puddles as I idled along West 4th Avenue on my bike. When I and The Malahat Review.
She lives west of Saskatoon,
stepped through the door of the kitchenware store, the room was Saskatchewan, has authored
redolent of garlic and damp wool; the aisles, crowded. All faces seven books, and prefers cooking,
quilting, and running half
were turned to the chef behind the stove. marathons to practicing guitar.
James Barber was already really famous in Vancouver. His raspy
voice had become familiar to Canadians over the CBC’s radio
airwaves, first as culinary tutor to Don Harron and then, more
recently, to Peter Gzowski, on Morningside. But within the de-
cade, James would become a global figure. Following TV culinary
pioneers like Julia Child and Graham Kerr, The Urban Peasant—as
James called himself—would broaden the horizons and palates of
his audience while championing simple, local cooking.
I took the last seat in the store’s small demonstration area, mar-
veling at how James made everything seem so easy and straightfor-
ward as he chatted and chopped his way through a brunch menu.

CREATIVE NONFICTION 43
When he finished cooking, I joined the snail-like
queue to meet him, clutching my courage like a
wrinkled apron. Finally face-to-face, I tripped
over my words but somehow remembered to
tell him I was a culinary student, then surprised
myself by spontaneously inviting him to dinner
that evening.
When he raised his eyebrows and inquired,
“What will you be making?” I blurted out a lie.
In as airy a tone as I could muster, I said, “Oh,
you know, crepes.”
But I hadn’t planned to make crepes. For
months, as a newly minted vegetarian, I’d been
investigating Indian food, entranced by the layers
of flavor and color as beguiling as Indian women’s
clothing, those flowing pants and tunics called
salwar and kameez. As a preface to each meal, I
grated ginger; pounded galangal, coriander, and
fennel; and dry-roasted and ground cumin. I was
slowly learning how to build subtle curries and
refreshing raitas and spicy chapatis—all messy but
delicious and worlds away from the restrained
roast beef, pork chops, and mashed spuds of
my childhood. For my supper that evening, I’d
planned on simmering carrots in coconut milk
with Indian spices, then grilling a few chapatis
in my black cast-iron pan to mop up the juices.
But crepes were French. Surely they had more
cachet than curry, especially to this man about the
world. There was a contradiction buried there,
between James’s fondness for simplicity and my
sense that he’d like something more nuanced than
curried carrots, but I didn’t see it then, and Indian
food did not yet have much culinary currency.
James had been raised on his English mother’s
dreary overcooked stodge, then discovered the
wonders of peasant food while he served as a
corporal in the RAF, gathering military intel-
ligence in France during the Second World War.
French country folk served him simple stews,
lip-smacking roasts, succulent vegetable gratins,
and crusty breads, all made with inexpensive,
locally grown ingredients. Their textures and
robust flavors astounded the young Englishman.
In Vancouver, he created a patchwork career as a
theater critic, restaurant reviewer, and cookbook
author before venturing onto the radio. There,
James served up a potent homebrew of slightly
outré French food and uncomplicated English
pub-grub leavened with humor, a hint of sex,
and an uncomplicated pleasure in cooking and
eating. He somehow managed to bypass what
would emerge as the curse of cooking shows: an
audience glued to their chairs in the living room,
not in the kitchen cooking.
“Hmmm,” James said to me, turning back to the
young woman who was waiting for an autograph.
“And will you be cooking anything else?”
Each word was Dover gravel on a patch of Old
Country lawn, his teeth like a white picket fence.
I’d only seen photos of him, and his forehead was
more pronounced in person, his receding hair
more tonsure-like, his laugh lines deeper, his nose
more obviously pug. He was not as attractive as
he’d seemed in those stills, but he still possessed
a magnetically devilish smile that made me want
something I’d never had: glamour.
I was a naive twenty-something, insecure as all
young people are, with no faith in my own judg-
ment, or the impartial judgment of my mirror.
Looking down at my muscular cyclist’s thighs,
I was convinced of their unappealing breadth;
looking at my nose in my mirror, all I saw was
its pronounced bridge. I was plain. And I was
lonely. I’d grown up in a large family, cooking
bland prairie fare for a tribe, sharing a bedroom
with my sister, jostling for my share of everything
from space to second helpings. When I’d arrived
in Vancouver straight out of high school to
discover coastal cuisine and enroll in culinary
studies, I’d settled into a bachelor apartment and
a string of unsuccessful afairs, latching on to
whomever looked at me twice. Learning how to
be a grownup was harder than I had imagined.
“Crepes,” I said again, feeling that familiar
desperation as James Barber stood behind the
counter, clicking his pen and winking at the
young woman, who’d taken back his book with
slow hands. I didn’t even like crepes. Their flabby
texture made me think of a chapati that had failed
at achieving selhood. “And dessert crepes, too,” I
added, “filled with chocolate.”
“All right then,” James mumbled as he signed a
book from the stack the store clerk had thrust at
him. I scrambled in my backpack to find a scrap
of paper, wrote down my address and his arrival
time—seven o’clock—almost kowtowing as I put
the paper in his hand.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 45
 James would go on to write an impressive
number of best-selling books to keep pace with
his TV show, but he already had a reputation for
prodigious and varied appetites. On my frantic
pedal toward home, I tried to remember what
else I had said to him during our brief encounter.
Something about hoping I’d become as quick-
thinking a cook. Liking his food. Appreciating
his uncomplicated and casual style, his unabashed
use of whipping cream and butter. A fan’s inane
blatherings. Why couldn’t I have said what
I meant without sounding like a total geek,
opinion-less, and innocuous as a day-old quiche?
And why had I said I’d make crepes?
We’d made crepes two months earlier in class,
shortly after I’d read James’s ohanded account
of making crêpes Suzette in his first book, Ginger
Tea Makes Friends. At school, my first attempt
had torn when I tried to flip it, the tender batter
overwhelmed by hands that had not yet learned
grace or subtlety. Chef René Jolicoeur, the head
of the hot kitchen, had shaken his head, his
immaculate apron lifting like a bellows across his
rotund belly as he sighed.
“Slow down, mademoiselle. I keep telling you:
the world is not a race.” He ladled melted butter,
then batter, into the hot pan, swirled with a flick
of his wrist, and set the pan on the flame. “Now,
you wait. So. And now . . . you flip.” Another
graceful motion, too quick to analyze, and the
crepe lifted in a slow parabola and fell back into
the pan. He watched me make a mess of another
attempt, then pursed his lips and shrugged, that
Gallic multipurpose self-absolution. “Encore une
fois, mademoiselle. I require of you six crepes before
class finishes today.” I had persevered, but the bell
sounded before I could show Chef any more than
two, both flawed.
it was still raining when I locked my bike
outside the liquor store. Inside, I agonized for
twenty minutes, knowing I was about to spend
most of my month’s grocery budget. I finally
sprang for a famously expensive French white
burgundy I’d never felt quite up to trying before,
intimidated not only by its hefty price tag, but
also by its reputation and high score with the
wine experts, unconvinced my student palate
would do it justice. But those attributes—and
46 COOKING FOR JAMES | DEE HOBSBAWN-SMITH
its provenance—seemed perfectly aligned with
tonight’s endeavor.
The wall clock read three when I maneuvered
my bike through the building’s awkward entry
and jammed it into the narrow hall of my tiny
apartment. I found the crepes recipe in my class
binder and clutched it in one hand as I pulled
ingredients from the fridge with the other, then
groaned. I was out of eggs. The clock’s hour
hand was a spur, and my nerves were already
wound tight.
The trip back to 4th Avenue and the health
food store took just a few minutes, but the lineup
at the only open cashier’s till was the normal
weekend logjam. The woman in front of me had
two whining kids, a cart full of frozen soy-cheese
pizzas, mini-yogurts by the case, and a dozen
school-sized bottles of juice. I saw her eyeing my
carton of eggs, perched alone on the conveyor
belt, but then she looked away and concentrated
on picking lint of the hood of her daughter’s
rain jacket. I vowed again never to have kids, to
concentrate on my career and become a famous
chef, to give all my change to panhandlers, to let
people cut in front of me at the video store and at
the grocery with impunity and a gracious smile.
“Will there be anything else?” the cashier asked
when my turn finally came.
I hesitated, then snagged a handful of chocolate
bars and flung them on the conveyor belt.
“Can you wait just a sec?” I asked. I bolted to
the back cooler and grabbed the last glass pint
bottle of whipping cream. “I’m cooking a French
dinner,” I said to the scowling clerk when I
returned. “Crepes.”
“That’ll be fifteen dollars and fifty cents.”
“What? For eggs and cream?”
“Organic eggs. And that’s Avalon Dairy
whipping cream. Six bars of dark Ghirardelli
chocolate. Fifteen—”
“All right, I got it.” I counted out coins and
tightly folded bills sequestered in my wallet. The
last of my food allowance and my month’s bus
fare as well.
The batter looked flawless. The cream sauce
bubbled on the back burner, waiting for the car-
rots to be sautéed in butter. But my imagination
kept intervening, smearing James’s pen-and-ink
drawings from his cookbook into a bizarre live-
action cartoon. “Crepe filling,” I heard him say in
that gruf tiger’s purr, “is a vehicle for improvisa-
tion. Make a cream sauce, fry some sliced aspara-
gus, add diced chicken or smoked trout. Snazzy.
Sexy. Simple.” In my mind, he invited a young
blonde who looked a lot like me onto a stage set
up as a kitchen—similar to the store earlier that
day, and to the television set when he’d host The
Urban Peasant several years later—and grinning,
he fed her enormous mouthfuls, cream dripping
down the fork to his cuf.
Peeling and slicing carrots in a frenzy, all I could
think about was the look of pleasure on the real
James’s face as he ate my crepes. As the carrots
softened in a bed of butter on the stove, I picked
up four chocolate bars, smashed them down on
the counter, pulled of the wrappers, and dropped
the broken bits into a small pot with the rest of the
cream—chocolate ganache for the dessert crepes.
On the radio, John Cougar was singing: “A
little ditty about Jack and Diane. . . .” The whole
world was caught up in love, infatuated with the
idea of coupledom, wheels spinning in tandem.
Cooks had the inside track—James Barber’s
success proved that people invariably let down
their guard while enjoying a yummy meal cooked
for them. Tonight, I was boarding the train.
I made a fresh pot of cofee, lit the front burner,
tossed a knob of butter in my pan, attempted that
insouciant swirling motion I had so envied, added
the batter, and swirled again.
The batter didn’t swirl.
It set, in jagged arms and indentations like the
inlets along the Georgia Strait. I tried to loosen it,
recalling Chef ’s admonitions—that the pan had
to ready itself, that the first crepe was invariably
spoiled, to make enough batter to account for loss.
To account for loss. I was only twenty-three,
but I’d been struck by the phrase, wondered if
it extended to people, to families, to children,
to pets. To careers. How to plan your life with
suicient resources to account for loss? Who
would want to?
I tried again. Failed again. I added more milk
and tried again. The third crepe broke as I flipped
it. The fourth landed on the floor, as did the fifth.
Ten minutes later, I was sweating, my pulse up
again, my cofee pot empty, my hands shaking like
a junkie’s. Of twelve crepes that eventually made
it onto the plate, six were worth using. Six were
suicient. Maybe. I knew my guest’s reputation,
his famous appetite. I recharged the cofee pot,
refilled my mug, and set to work tidying up.
An hour later, I laid four crepes in a baking
dish, stufed them with the cooled carrots, poured
on the sauce, turned on the oven, and spooned
the chocolate ganache into the remaining crepes,
my pleasure at the finished result attenuated by
increasing anxiety. I paced the hardwood floor of
my apartment, looking out the window every five
minutes, trying to see through the dim twilight. I
could hear raindrops pounding on the glass, water
cascading down the cracked sill.
By seven, the doorbell hadn’t yet rung. When I
opened the fridge, the French burgundy waiting
all alone in its depths convinced me I had earned
the first glass. Survivor’s due. Forty minutes later,
the wine was half gone. By 8:30, my blood sugar
plummeting, a headache creeping up, I put the
carrot crepes into the oven then ate the last of the
chocolate cream sauce, dipping salvaged pieces of
crepe into the pot like a penitent before the grail.
I pulled the crepes out of the oven half an hour
later and topped of my glass. The clock read
9:30, then 10. At 10:30, I finally ate the meal
I’d prepared, alone, sitting on the floor with the
television on, my plate of soggy crepes balanced on
my lap, wine glass on the floorboards beside me.
I barely slept that night. At school, I didn’t
mention the fiasco, although I did tell Chef I’d
successfully made crepes.
a month later, I was at my stove before class,
radio blaring for company, and I heard James’s
growling baritone interrupt Gzowski’s voice:
“Nothing is as seductive as cassoulet.” I imagined
him stirring a pot of cannellini beans and crook-
ing his finger at an attractive brunette working the
soundboard in the radio studio.
You fraud, I thought.
I added ginger and cumin to my lentils, and
turned of the radio before I ate.
the crepe incident haunted me for years. I
mostly blamed myself, although—in my thirties
and living in Calgary, where I struggled to raise
my sons while running my restaurant—I thought
of James as a lecher. Then, in my forties, after
CREATIVE NONFICTION 47
 I’d sold my restaurant, I reinvented myself as
a successful and ever-curious newspaper food
columnist—much as James himself had done.
At first, I wrote about culinary celebrities and
chefs, then graduated to advocating for local
ingredients and sustainable food production. In
2001, I encountered James again when he came to
town, his latest book in hand, to teach two classes
at the city’s leading gourmet cooking school. He
didn’t remember that we’d met previously, when
I was still green, and I refrained from telling him
directly that he’d stood me up, but I made light
of the fact in my column. He hadn’t changed: life
was still a series of seductions, and over noodles
and barbecued pork in my favorite Vietnamese
joint, he told stories of his fondness for women
and of his long courtship of one in particular.
During our conversation, James wildly para-
phrased a quote often attributed to the poet Rainer
Maria Rilke: “Passion is more than four legs in a
bed.” (Rilke had written about marriage, not pas-
sion.) Then he ascribed the aphorism to the English
lexicographer and writer Samuel Johnson—a
comment and attribution he would use more than
once in conversations with journalists. “I fall in
love regularly,” he went on, “with the sunshine,
a color, an ingredient, a philosophy. And I am
desperately in love with ankles.” Laughing—and
blithely ignoring the double-barreled insult he was
dishing out—he told me how he’d taught “a Virgo
woman to make love to a risotto” in the previous
evening's class. “It was the ultimate seduction,
cooking in front of all those people. She'll never
forget that. Food is always about seduction.”
Later, considering things over a cup of tea in my
kitchen, I bludgeoned myself with the enduring
conviction that back in Vancouver, I’d been a plain
young woman with little to attract a potential
lover. A few minutes later, tea cooling in the cup,
I changed tack and reiterated my suspicion that
nothing I might have cooked two decades ago
would have been suiciently uptown to draw the
Urban Peasant to my door.
the simple fare of the Urban Peasant and
his old-school attitude toward women in the
kitchen were only precursors of what was yet
to come. The Food Network launched into the
kitchens of the world in 1993. Within a few years,
48 COOKING FOR JAMES | DEE HOBSBAWN-SMITH
New Orleans chef Emeril Lagasse was shouting,
“BAM!” on TV screens across the continent. A
little more than a decade later, competitors on
Chopped were battling for supremacy in kitchens
designed as warzones, complete with sabotage.
By 2002, Anthony Bourdain, an irreverent New
Yorker with attitude and a taste for the world,
had inherited James Barber’s “sexy bad-boy chef ”
title, taking TV viewers into global markets and
restaurants with sardonic good humor. Bourdain
spoke openly about his double-edged rep as
a recovering drug addict who sufered from
depression, and his untimely suicide in mid-2018
left a large gap in the world.
On the plus side, though, before his death, and
partly as penance for how he had glorified the
professional kitchen’s “cowboy” culture in his
book Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain played a role in
exposing and hopefully ending the trade’s perva-
sive men-first/women-last, “bros before hoes,”
ethos. He wasn’t the only foodie keeping pace with
the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement: high-
profile Toronto restaurateur and author Jen Agg
has been loudly calling out abusive male chefs—in
public, in newspaper essays, on her Twitter feed,
and in her book, I Hear She’s a Real Bitch.
Agg is a rarity, though, as are the women chefs
working in restaurant and hotel kitchens. In
the early 1980s, when I was a culinary student,
less than 25 percent of students enrolled in the
Vancouver Vocational Institute’s cooking program
were women. In 2016, the Culinary Institute of
America in New York enrolled more than 50 per-
cent women. But a depressingly low number of
women stick with it, only to toil in professional
kitchens as prep cooks, line cooks, and sous chefs,
with only a few reaching the summit as chefs and
restaurateurs. Why? Agg and Bourdain had the
right of it, and TV’s portrayal of women chefs like
Nigella Lawson or Rachael Ray as sizzling and
sexy hearth goddesses doesn’t help. Things haven’t
changed so much since James’s time, after all.
But it’s simplistic to blame TV. Those
ubiquitous screens are symptoms of our col-
lective losses, not causes. Food and cooking are
complicated snapshots of our culture. Longer
work hours, the outsourcing of jobs in our work-
world, and the rise of the single-parent family,
coupled with fundamental changes in how we
view food and its production—as a commodity,
as cheap fuel, and as an overworked and under-
paid trade practiced by largely invisible hands, in
stark contrast to the star-chef culture—have led
to perhaps-predictable results.
On top of that, merely watching chefs cook on
TV does not teach a captive audience the textures
and smells and experience of actually cooking. Ra-
dio, with its room for the imagination to play, was
better. Regardless, too many modern diners prefer
to eat out or order in instead of tying on an apron.
That passivity means that home cooking is a dying
skill, and, with it, significant familial connected-
ness; when we give up control of our stoves, we
surrender the stove and kitchen table as fulcrums
for conversation and debate. On that score, James,
who made his bones teaching people how easy it is
to cook good food, would be appalled.
when i heard the news of James’s death in
2007, I sat down to take stock of his influence,
a glass of Riesling and a bowl of lamb curry in
front of me. I wish it was as simple as saying James
taught me to view cooking as something to enjoy,
as something worth sharing, but my feelings of
gratitude and loss were overlaid by my resentment
of how women continue to cope with the morass
of male approbation and disapproval. At nearly
fifty, I was single, with a broken marriage behind
me, and I had two almost-grown sons who
embodied the grace and appetites of athletes. I’d
taught my sons to cook and watched them go
through the same uncertainty I felt at that age.
I’d owned a restaurant, written cookbooks, fed
other chefs, served food to possible partners,
and learned how to mop up my heart when the
prospective dates didn’t take root. And, despite my
old chef-instructor’s warning, it never occurred to
me to plan for loss. It always seemed self-defeating
to me, as if it were too risky to bet on success or
happiness. Risk is a necessary ingredient in a fully
lived life. That, I learned from James.
Even after my years as a chef and restaurateur,
I prefer to turn up the flame and write the menu
fresh every morning. I’ve let go of believing
I was a failure because James didn’t come for
supper. I unhesitatingly invite strangers to dine;
there’s always room for another chair. I only
serve dishes that flutter my heart, and I still
swoon for a good curry.

WINNER!
Best Essay
Prize
ANNE P. BEATTY's work has
appeared in The Atlantic,
The American Scholar,
North American Review, and
R abin knew i was afraid to light the kerosene stove.
elsewhere. She lives with her
husband and three children in
Greensboro, North Carolina.
50 YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE | ANNE P. BEATTY
You Don’t Have
to Be Here
ANNE P. BEATTY
His patient instructions accompanied open-mouthed
delight at my ineptitude. This ten-year-old Nepali, wearing
only limp cotton shorts, loved being my teacher in the tiny
village where my Peace Corps training took place. My home-
work was to practice lighting the stove so when I set of to my
post in Biratnagar a month later, I could boil water and not die
of giardia (or so I said; one doesn’t die of giardia, it turns out).
Rabin knelt by the smudged brass canister, pointing. Here you
pump. Here you adjust the flow of gas. Here you hold the match, until
poof! A ball of fire. His elegant hands exploded in my face to
make sure I understood. That explosion was what I feared.
After several pantomimes, Rabin asked if I was ready. I
nodded. Rabin’s aunt, watching, serenely threaded the buds
of decapitated marigolds onto mala necklaces. Other family
members gathered to watch, too. I smelled acrid kerosene.
“Now,” Rabin said, “where are those matches?”
We looked. His two-year-old cousin sat nearby, playing with
the box labeled Safety Matches.
I often wondered, during my time in Nepal, why more injuries
did not happen in a place so riddled with danger. Back home,
children were admonished not to play with
fire; preteen Nepali girls used it to prepare
meals for the whole family. Six-year-olds in
the United States were not allowed to walk
to school alone; here, they were charged
with carrying younger siblings through dense
rickshaw traic in the bazaar. A preschool-
aged boy, who in my homeland might be
responsible for a sippy cup, shepherded the
family’s 1000-pound water bufalo in from the
fields in Nepal. Out bus windows, I often saw
such a boy reclined along the animal’s spine,
a switch dangling unused over the beast’s
massive flank. Perhaps we Americans were
obsessed with safety.
i joined the peace corps as a way out
of my safe white middle-class existence, one
that, at the age of twenty-one, struck me as
so insulated as to be numbing. I had taken
French, painting, Native American anthropol-
ogy, and literature courses in college, but I still
felt exiled in a hostile world of big box stores,
other people’s happiness, and keg parties to
which I was not invited. Few people my age
seemed to feel this sense of peril, and by the
end of my senior year, I felt utterly cut of
from my Frisbee-toting peers. Moving abroad
was an antidote to anesthetization.
Knowing almost nothing about Nepal
except what information the Peace Corps
had provided in a slim folder, I did not pack
well. My governing principle was not to be a
stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer, whom I
pictured as an earnest do-gooder with hairy
armpits and worn Birkenstocks or, worse,
Tevas. This dogma led me to pack things like
a faux suede bomber jacket with synthetic fur,
which I’d bought at Goodwill for five dollars,
and a pair of baby blue Adidas. I’d expected
to live in the Himalayas but was posted sixty
miles south in the Terai—the tropical strip
of land in southern Nepal that runs like a
lush hem across the bottom of the country.
The jacket was so heavy and cumbersome my
Peace Corps friends dubbed it “the pet,” and
the shoes immediately began sprouting mold
in the swampy heat. After a few humbling
weeks, I asked my mother to please buy and
ship me a pair of Teva sandals. They arrived in
Biratnagar, via diplomatic pouch.
Nearly every day, I visited a little shop
two blocks from my apartment that I called
the doodh pasal, or “milk shop,” because they
occasionally sold cartons of refrigerated water
bufalo milk. Two brothers in their twenties,
Kumar and Guru, ran the shop. Guru was
older, slightly rougher, and more handsome.
His shorts and white tank top, combined
with two days’ worth of stubble, gave him the
air of a frat brother who had just finished a
round of beer pong. Kumar, gawky and taller,
wore a pressed button-down shirt and was
clean-shaven except for a carefully trimmed
mustache. Only his bare feet, protruding from
gray slacks, suggested how hot it was—115
degrees—in the wooden shack where he sat.
They adopted me, insisting I not stand
outside the counter but set the kickstand on
my bicycle and come inside their shack. They
lounged on a pallet under shelves with neatly
stacked packets of dried noodles, laundry
powder, and cookies. Cloudy plastic jars
housed hard candies that Kumar promised I’d
like, only to laugh at the faces I made when I
tasted the flavors: spicy candy, pepper candy,
and the particularly stomach-turning dal bhat
candy, which was supposed to taste like the
national rice and lentil dish but seemed a blend
of fermented cabbage and tomato paste.
They asked me simple questions in Nepali,
and by flailing through answers, I learned to
say more than the basic phrases I’d learned in
training: It’s hot or I like fruit.
“Who lives in your house?”
“My mother, father, and brother.”
“Where do your grandparents live?”
“In a diferent building. A building full of
other old people.”
“Why?”
“In America, old people live in buildings full
of other old people.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know what to say. Because old people
would rather be around other old people?
Because Americans like their old people out of
sight? Because a little distance makes everyone
more comfortable? None of my answers
CREATIVE NONFICTION 51
seemed right, or I didn’t have the vocabulary to
articulate them. I shrugged.
I liked both brothers, but Kumar was my
special friend, patient and guileless. Guru
spoke too quickly, sometimes wedging in a
side comment to make Kumar laugh.
“What’d he say?” I’d demand.
“Oh, nothing, nothing.” Kumar would grin.
“Come, Annieji, sit down. Basnu na.”
They insisted I stop every time I passed by, if
only to inspect my purchases (“How much did
you pay for those oranges?”). One day, they
stopped me on my way to the bazaar.
“Annieji! How are you?” Kumar yelled.
“Not so good,” I said, straddling my bike.
“My new stereo broke!” I pulled the tiny
cassette player out of my backpack and passed
it to Guru, who already had his hand out.
“Of course it broke!” he said, turning it over.
“But I just bought it. It cost 800 rupees!”
“This,” Guru said, “was made in China.”
“This is use-and-throw,” Kumar said, insert-
ing the English phrase to mean “disposable.”
In Nepali: Yo use-and-throw cha.
They passed it around to several of their
buddies lounging in the shop. Everyone agreed
it was use-and-throw.
“Well, I’m going to take it back where I
bought it,” I said.
“And they will tell you”—Guru paused
dramatically—“that this is use-and-throw.
Whatever you do, don’t buy a new one from
China. Get one made in Nepal.”
“Nepal doesn’t make stereos,” Kumar scofed.
“Ke garne. Get one that is made in India!”
Guru called.
KE GARNE is one of the first Nepali expres-
sions foreigners learn. Literally translated as
“what to do,” the meaning is closer to “what
can you do?”
You’re mad about your new stereo breaking?
Ke garne.
You don’t like my joking?
Ke garne.
Ke garne, Nepalis said when the power
went out in the evenings. Ke garne, Nepalis
said when I complained about teaching The
Great Gatsby to twelfth graders who didn’t
understand English. Ke garne, they said when
I discovered a locked room in my school
with a new donated computer disassembled
in various cardboard boxes. We cannot let the
students use. They will break.
The refrain carries the implicit fatalism of a
nation notorious for poverty and corruption,
a textbook case of development gone wrong.
The expression also suggests the acceptance
of sufering, advocated by the Buddha, whose
birthplace is Lumbini, in southern Nepal.
This acceptance both frustrates outsiders in
Nepal—“Nothing ever gets done around
here!”—and appeals to us—“If only I could
be so content with the way life is.”
Most foreigners in Nepal appropriate this
phrase, first with irony, then whole-heartedly.
I found it then, as now, an enviable way to
live, as did the others in my cohort. It was a
relief, after an American childhood, to take
everything—even our own safety—less
seriously. Risk was everywhere, but this did
not make life precious. It made it thrilling.
How worldly it made us feel to toss around
the names of parasites we knew intimately.
Cyclospora? Roundworm? Hookworm? Ke
garne! How cavalierly we set out with our
medical kit, as if a plastic briefcase packed with
throat lozenges, dental floss, ciprofloxacin, and
rehydration salts would save us. Peace Corps
forbade us from riding on top of buses, as
was the local custom, though nearly everyone
did it at least once if only to say she had. A
seasoned volunteer warned us greenhorns dur-
ing training, “Only fly Buddha Air. They use
instruments; the others all use dead reckoning.
It’s called ‘dead’ for a reason.” His words were
serious, but his tone blasé. We all nodded as if
we knew that already. Duh.
Maoist rebels, who modeled their insurgen-
cy on the terrifying rhetoric of Peru’s Shining
Path, lurked in the hills and often called for
strikes to close stores and schools. Occasion-
ally, we saw busloads of them careen down
into the flatlands, where most Peace Corps
volunteers lived. Though newspaper photos
showed them in uniform, all of the rebels I
saw were seemingly nineteen years old, in
red T-shirts and with scraps of red fabric tied
CREATIVE NONFICTION 53
 around their foreheads, as if they were in a B-
grade movie about a Maoist insurgency. Radio
Nepal’s morning report included a body count
from battles the day before. Over 32-ounce
Kingfisher beers, volunteers discussed the
latest statistics, the merits and drawbacks of
the Maoists, the rumors we’d heard of how
kindly they treated villagers, their use of
child soldiers, and the impossibility of their
campaign. Such talk lent our capers gravitas.
Everyone knew if things got really bad, Peace
Corps would send us home.
Bravado led us to mock other volunteers
who were sent home for mental health
reasons, i.e. “wack-evacked.” We expressed
grudging admiration for those willing to eat
things that made others blanch: goat meat,
sometimes with tufts of wiry hair still at-
tached, or pigeon. (“What? Lots of cultures eat
it! In England, it’s called squab.”)
What we took most seriously were our
attempts to bridge the distance between our
culture and Nepal’s. We set up all kinds of
measurements to mark how much we had
absorbed. We all knew the Nepali word for
“rice,” but the volunteer who could also say
“rice” in Limbu and Newari won. It was a
point of pride to distinguish between the
Hindu gods Saraswathi and Parvati, or to
know that proselytizing is strongly discour-
aged in Hinduism, or to identify a rare type of
citrus and casually mention in which month
it ripens. People on the outside often view a
Peace Corps stint as service, but everyone who
has done it knows it involves more taking than
giving. We had enough sense to know we were
there to be schooled.
Nepalis’ genuine goodwill disarmed our
jaded irony. You don’t have to be here, they told
us, but you came. They accepted our sudden
presence in their lives without question, open-
ing their homes to us and protecting us from
whatever they deemed dangerous: unscrupu-
lous marketplace vendors, dirty water, eating
citrus when you had a cold. “The guest is
god,” my students often recited. Nepalis’ kind-
ness and curiosity toward Americans made
us want to sit through seven-hour weddings
or visit a dozen families on a holiday. We
54 YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE | ANNE P. BEATTY
complained about this privilege. We delighted
in the burden.
on april 25, 2015, thirteen years after I fin-
ished my service in Nepal, the Indian subcon-
tinent thrust its way farther under the Tibetan
plateau’s overbite. The glass beads hanging in
thick strands in the stalls of Rakhi Bazaar in
Kathmandu rattled against each other, blue
colliding into green, green into yellow, yellow
into orange, orange into red. The wooden stalls
began to collapse. People honked their horns
until they realized what had happened, and
then the sounds disintegrated into shouts of
terror. Afterwards, great silence.
Or so I imagine. April 25th was a rainy
day in North Carolina, where I lived with
my husband, Adam, a fellow volunteer I met
in Nepal. We let our kids watch cartoons in
the next room while we scrolled through
image after image on the Internet: buildings
reduced to brick heaps; Nepalis holding cell
phone cameras above three-foot fissures in the
asphalt; the 19th-century, nine-story Dhara-
hara Tower brought down to a mere mound,
like a sand castle smoothed by a wave; bright
saris spread to dry over rooftop walls that
lunged at forty-five-degree angles. Women
in shawls and men in woven topis peered
over bodies on the sidewalk. Marigold malas
encircled the feet of orange-shrouded corpses.
Survivors pulled from the wreckage and caked
with dust and debris looked like ghosts, and
children, haunted-looking, huddled with their
families. I recognized the golden hoops bent
crookedly through the earlobes of toddler girls
and boys alike. I recognized their eyes, ringed
with the kohl their mothers had smeared on
to protect them from evil spirits. And when I
read that all the Peace Corps volunteers were
safe in the US Embassy, I felt a twinge of envy
that they were there and I was home. Safe. I
had an urge, absurd and misguided, to jump
on a plane.
My five-year-old son wandered in. “What’s
that?” he asked.
“An earthquake hit Nepal. The ground
started shaking, and buildings collapsed. A
lot of people were hurt. See?” I showed him.
“Daddy and I used to live there. Remem-
ber?—we told you.”
He studied the pictures then asked, “That
couldn’t happen here, right?”
Eventually, we closed the laptop and took
the children to Safari Nation, a room of
bounce houses, where machines light up
and blare and beep and occasionally dispense
prizes. Friendly inflatable snakes and gorillas
perch above the slides and tunnels. There are
nachos. There are Slush Puppies. Almost all
surfaces are padded. My children bounced as
I made a mental list of all we try to protect
them from: mosquitoes, bullying, peanut and
egg products, sunburn, traic, low self-esteem,
splinters, strange dogs. . . .
We spent thirty dollars in two hours—my
monthly rent while in Nepal. Surveying the
crushed chips underfoot, the parents peering
into screens, the children amped up on play
without imagination, I asked Adam, “Is it
morally bankrupt of us to be here today?”
Nepal had never felt so distant, or so close.
For a week, I was weepy. I checked the news
every fifteen minutes and gave Adam constant
death toll updates, which he politely toler-
ated. He is a mathematician, so when I said,
“7,000,” he said, “You know, over 200,000
died in the Haiti earthquake.” I conceded his
point. But I’ve never been to Haiti.
At the same time, my unchecked melodrama
embarrassed me. I’m not Nepali. I am hardly
in contact with any Nepalis these days. My life
was virtually untouched by the disaster. It was
puzzling, almost shameful, how when the few
people in my current life who remember my
connection to Nepal asked about it, my eyes
welled up. As if the earthquake was something
that had happened to me. As if my own life
had been in danger.
on september 12, 2001, I was a year
into my Peace Corps service in Nepal when
I saw the Twin Towers on the cover of the
Kathmandu Post: three grainy photographs
depicting the slow-motion sequence of the
second plane hitting the south tower. I first
heard of the attacks when my post mate, an
American from New York City, called to say,
“Something’s happened at home.” Now the
news was everywhere: in newspapers passed
around my school’s oice, on restaurant TVs, in
the mouths of Nepalis who called out to us on
the street. (Adam learned of it when a Nepali
student on a dirt path shouted to him, “An
airplane just hit the world’s biggest house!”).
This was my country, my homeland, under
attack. And yet, through the filter of Nepal,
the attacks felt far, far away.
On the streets in Biratnagar, people saw
me as America and ofered their condolences.
Strangers flagged me down to say I could come
in anytime to watch BBC on their televisions.
A few days after the attacks, my host mother
said, “Your parents and brother can come here.
We’ll love them like we do you.”
It didn’t surprise me that our country had
created such enemies. Adam, quoting Malcolm
X’s comment on President Kennedy’s assassina-
tion, said, “Chickens coming home to roost.”
But not everyone saw the same connections.
In October, a volunteer passing through
met me for morning rice and lentils. He
spread open a newspaper and thumped
the headline: the United States had begun
bombing Afghanistan.
“Let’s bomb the shit out of them,” he said
with satisfaction. Here was an American
abroad, a supposed champion of peace, who
couldn’t wait to start the war. If this was what
a Peace Corps volunteer thought, what were
people saying back in the United States?
I kept thinking how much the pictures of
Afghans reminded me of Nepalis—in their
eyes, their dress, their familiarity. Feeling
morose, on my way home, I stopped by the
doodh pasal.
“You need to call George Bush,” Guru told
me right away.
“OK.” I played along. They joked about
everything. Of course, a terrorist attack
wouldn’t be any diferent. “Why?”
“You need to call and tell him not to bomb
Nepal.”
“Nepal is very close to Afghanistan,”
Kumar added.
“He might get mixed up,” Guru said. “And
we’re scared.”
CREATIVE NONFICTION 55
 “Very scared! We don’t want to be bombed.”
“Who knows? America might bomb
anybody,” I said slowly, trying to get the
verbs right.
“Exactly.” Guru smiled. “So give him a
call. Please. Do it for us.” His tone was light,
but we all knew how dangerous my wounded
country was.
Many Americans expected me to come home
that year following the attacks. To them, the
foreign world seemed newly dangerous, an
indistinguishable hostile mass. But going home
never occurred to me. If anything, 9/11 and
the subsequent bombing campaigns gave me
another reason to stay away for thirteen more
months, no matter how clumsy an ambas-
sador I was. Nepal wasn’t dangerous. Nepal
went on exactly the same as it had before,
Auden’s horse scratching its behind against a
tree—only it was a water bufalo wallowing
in the mud. Whereas before, I might have
read Auden’s poem as a critique of the world’s
indiference to sufering, I now saw compas-
sionate pragmatism in the rest of the world’s
determination to keep going. Ke garne? What
else can you do?
my service with the Peace Corps ended in
October 2002. When I first got home, people
kept saying what a brave and admirable thing I
had done. This praise seemed ludicrous. All I’d
done was learn how sheltered and privileged
I was. I had been willing to sit with that
discomfort, and now I was back in the land of
safe drinking water and free public schools.
I spent a few months grading standardized
tests at a temp job and staring down from my
childhood bedroom window at the still, silent
street below. Then, to heighten our culture
shock, Adam and I moved to LA, where we set
about converting the price of everything into
rupees. This did not make us very fun to hang
out with.
After being home in the United States for
eighteen months, which felt like an unbearably
long time away from Nepal, we went back
for a visit. On the taxi ride from Tribhuvan
airport, I remembered how life is lived in
the open there. Already I had forgotten. A
56 YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HERE | ANNE P. BEATTY
man had created a barbershop by nailing a
mirror to a tree. In a chair propped in front
of the mirror, men tilted their necks to the
sky, trusting a straight razor, its edge meeting
lather. A boy walked along the roadside with
cucumbers as big as clubs, quartered and
displayed under a dusty glass case that looked
as if it should instead house antique watches.
A girl brushed her teeth as she eyed the traic.
Maintaining eye contact with me, she spit a
white beam of Neem toothpaste foam into a
patch of dirt. A young boy, bare-bottomed,
squatted just beside the road, a golden pile of
shit forming beneath him. But he was not the
spectacle. I was. He watched my blurred white
face, protected behind glass.
In Biratnagar, at the doodh pasal, I was
disappointed to learn Kumar was visiting his
uncle in Kathmandu.
“You’re going back to K’du, right?” Guru
asked. “Maybe you’ll see him.”
I pointed out that Kathmandu was a city of
almost a million people and without street signs.
Guru shrugged. “Maybe you’ll run into
him.” He wrote down the name of his
uncle’s neighborhood.
A week later, on our last night in Kath-
mandu, Adam and I went to the Buddhist
stupa Swayambhunath. Its huge white dome is
decorated with Buddha’s elaborately lined eyes
and a golden-topped tower. Strings of prayer
flags stretch from the dome to the surrounding
shops in the pavilion, like the spokes of a
wheel. At sunset, you can sit at the base of
the stupa and survey the hazy city as young
Buddhist monks in burgundy robes stroll past.
Swayambhunath is somewhat near Kumar’s
uncle’s neighborhood—but this is where my
memory and Adam’s memory difer. Did we
go looking for the uncle’s house? Did we even
know Swayambhunath was near his neighbor-
hood at the time? We cannot remember how it
happened, only that it did.
At twilight in Nepal, everyone is on the
streets, coming home from work or hurrying
out, plaid plastic shopping bags in hand, to
buy pumpkin vines for curry. The evening
settles like a benediction. You let go of
whatever has or hasn’t happened that day—ke
garne, go home, have some rice—and are con-
tent until morning. In this turmeric-scented
hustle, on a crowded street, Kumar appeared
just ahead of me. I was sure it was him.
“Kumar!” I called.
He turned around.
“Annieji!” He greeted me as if we’d last
met yesterday and he’d been expecting me
here around this time. Time folded neatly,
like a hanky.
“I can’t believe it!” I kept saying. “I can’t
believe I just ran into you like this!”
Kumar was as unfazed as I was incredulous.
His nonchalant acceptance of the improb-
able was characteristically Nepali, perhaps
borne out of living with fewer illusions of
control. For two years, I had witnessed how
people could rest easily alongside chance and
contradiction, but I am still an American.
Knee-jerk astonishment and indignation are
my birthright. After many handshakes, Kumar
strode of. I watched his dark head recede until
I was no longer certain I saw him anymore. It’s
as if he is still moving away from me, all these
years later.
I meant to return to Nepal, but life
intervened. A year in South America. Then
grad school. Babies. A mortgage. Somehow,
in eleven years, we hadn’t gone back. The
earthquake reminded me that to know another
country well is both a gain and a loss—for the
rest of your life, there is always somewhere
you could be but are not.
in thamel, Kathmandu’s tourist district,
you can buy souvenirs: Maithili paintings of
elephants; incense pellets; bootleg CDs of
the ever-present chant Om Mani Padme Hum;
a nose ring; sustainably made purses from
women’s collectives; a smoothie that may
or may not give you giardia, which, in any
case, won’t kill you; Tibetan singing bowls;
thangka paintings of intricate mandalas
limned in gold; wrapping paper stamped with
water bufalo; postcards of Mt. Everest; lapis
lazuli rings; pashmina shawls; knockof North
Face jackets and Mountain Hardwear tents;
Gurkha kukri knives; and quilts made from
vintage saris.
I shipped some of these things home
because I could not bring home the angular
hindquarters of cows that stand at dawn with
their heads inside storefronts, waiting to be
fed from nosebags. I could not take the tiny
glasses of chiya, sweet milk tea, sold at roadside
stands with a torn piece of newsprint covering
the glass and sealed by steam. I could not take
the mangy monkey on a chain, his earring
glinting in the sun. Or the lane of tailor shops,
tiny hovels where men operate their ancient
foot-pedal sewing machines. Or the bus park in
Kathmandu where ticket sellers grind tobacco
in their palms with betel leaf and slaked lime.
I have a trekking map of Nepal on my living
room wall and a green glass Buddha in my
bedroom, but most of the things I brought
home are folded in closets or boxed in the
basement. More than any souvenir, Nepal
gave me an idea of how big the world is and
how small my own place in it. My years there
gave me some distance from my own culture,
which seems obsessively, often to its detri-
ment, focused on protection, whether for our
children or for our borders.
When I remember Nepal, I realize that
earthquakes and fires and illnesses happen all
over the world, including in my country, and
that it may be better for kids to be brave and
happy than safe and bored. We balance the
risks of the physical world—malaria, plane
crashes—with the risks of an insular life, lived
underground, in fear. Too much safety creates
its own dangers. I’m still an American mother
with hand sanitizer in the diaper bag, but when
I remember that learning requires exposure,
I’m happier and calmer. I’m a better parent and
wife and teacher. I laugh more. It’s hard, joyless
work being so damn afraid all the time. This is
what I want to teach my kids.
While I’m kneeling on the tile to give my
infant son a bath, the memory of a water tap in
Nepal might well up unbidden, the shouts of
girls bathing together, no thought given to the
baby cobras gliding through the fields beyond.
These memories arrive like an expanding breath:
the scope of the world working on me from
within, as a stent widens an airway, creating the
space to make me feel safe. Or safe enough.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 57
 RUNNER-UP!
Best Essay
Prize
JEFFERSON SLAGLE is an
Oregon native exiled to a small
college town on the Idaho side
of the Tetons. When he’s not
writing or teaching, he can be
found in the mountains of Idaho
and Wyoming, skiing, climbing,
and biking.
58 BOTTOMLESS | JEFFERSON SLAGLE
Bottomless
JEFFERSON SLAGLE
I t’s early october. Fall storms have grizzled the high
elevations of the Tetons, and the hard-core skiers are already
in the mountains. Two people, a woman and a man, have died.
They were climbing a long, steep chute of snow in Montana’s
Madison Range when a weak layer in the snowpack broke and
kept breaking all the way to the top. The avalanche ran down
right on top of them. The man dug himself out of the snow and
searched for the woman, his girlfriend, for three hours before
marking the debris with his avalanche probe and hiking out to
his truck. Then he drove to his home in Bozeman, wrote a note
for the search and rescue team detailing where the woman had
been buried, and took his own life.
While I wasn’t skiing this day, the Madisons are an hour and
a half from my home in Idaho and are among the mountains I
ski frequently. I read the local avalanche center’s report on the
incident, which includes a photo of the peak the couple planned
to ski. The avalanche path and the pile of debris at the bottom
are visible in the picture. I find a map of the mountain and make
a note to ski it in the spring. I know there is something wrong
with this.
popular images of snow paint it as marsh-
mallow creme, homogenous from top to bottom,
soft and forgiving and miraculous. In reality, it’s
more like a skyscraper cobbled together with
whatever the builder found lying around: some
floors are constructed of steel beams; others,
of Styrofoam. That’s snowpack: the piled-up
remnants of storms conjoining with or warring
against those that come after. Fragile and knotty
and convoluted, and sometimes deadly.
late that october, I’m at a week-long
retreat at a cabin in Teton Valley, Idaho. One
afternoon, I take a break from writing and run up
a narrow dirt two-track, into the mountains. Not
a quarter-mile from the cabin, I hit the first patch
of snow. The road narrows to a trail that follows
a creek, then turns hard to the right. I follow it
up a ridge, and now the snow is everywhere. The
thin crystal glaze doesn’t look malevolent, just
out of place against the still-green brush. But it’s
already turning to sugar; the future of this snow
is easy to predict.
Take last year, a typical season: October snow,
warm days, rain, then, finally, in late November,
the storms we’d waited for. The snow fell light
and cold at first, then warm and wet and heavy.
All of these were danger signs, but a pair of skiers
on Teton Pass chanced a line through Wolf Trap, a
notoriously touchy spot, and set of an avalanche
that caught and carried both of them. They dug
themselves from the debris and walked out.
The local avalanche center had rated the
hazard that day as four on a five-point scale:
“Very dangerous avalanche conditions. Travel in
avalanche terrain not recommended.” What were
those guys doing up there? What analysis led
them to believe that slope was stable?
In retrospect, every decision seems easy, but
what’s easier is to convince yourself of what
you already want to believe. Snow scientists call
the psychological phenomena that lead us onto
snow we should know won’t hold our weight
“human factors.” Some experts say that nearly
all human-caused avalanches can be traced to
these phenomena. Though it doesn’t show up
in the literature, perhaps the biggest “human
factor” is the impulse that draws us to snow in
the first place.
I feel some magic even in the remnants of this
early season storm, and I climb higher on the
ridge, though the snow is slick and treacherous
and plasters my shoes so that I nearly fall. In
the coming weeks, new snow will bury the thin
layer I’m sliding on now, and storms after that
will bury it deeper, until, probably sometime
around the first of the year, the weight of the
snowpack will overwhelm the structure, and it
will all collapse. I just hope someone isn’t on it
when it does.
snow science is a black art.
The basic principles are clear. Weather, for
instance: one of the first things any backcountry
skier learns is to avoid steep slopes immediately
after a storm. Or terrain: ski a low-angle slope,
and it won’t slide except on the kind of day
where the danger’s so high you should probably
stay inside and tune your skis anyway. Simple
enough. But the days steep slopes are most
dangerous are also the days they’re most inviting,
a paradox that almost seems intended to bait us
into avalanches like fish to a lure. Plot danger and
desire as two curves on a grid; risk is the space
where they link.
As pure science, it’s easy. But translating it to a
go/no-go decision at the top of a clean bowl of
untouched powder when all your love is telling
you to go ahead and ski it despite everything
you don’t know about the fragile menace buried
beneath beguiling powder—that’s the art.
it’s january, and I’m on the Continental
Divide outside West Yellowstone, Montana,
breaking trail through deep snow toward a
ridgeline that marks the invisible boundary with
Idaho. I’m here to help a friend who teaches a
backcountry ski class—it’s the two of us, plus ten
students. We’re on wide, lightweight skis, with
carpet-like skins attached to the bases that allow
us to walk uphill without sinking into the snow,
but even with these advantages, setting a new
track in fresh powder is like running through sand
with weights tied around your ankles. During the
slog back up the slope, the student behind me asks
questions about snow science.
“Does an avalanche make a slope safer or less
safe for the rest of the season?”
CREATIVE NONFICTION 59
 “It depends.”
“Do you want a denser or less-dense slab?”
“It depends.”
“How does rain afect the snowpack?”
“It depends.”
Wind? Cold temps? Sun?
It depends.
Snow science, he’s learning, isn’t easy.
In some of these instances, the variable is time.
In others, it’s the direction the slope faces. In
still others, it’s the combined history of weather
and snowpack since the beginning of the season.
When a slope has already run, the equations are
so complex it’s hard even to begin to describe
them to someone whose avalanche knowledge is
such that they know enough to ask the question
but not enough to realize the impossibility of
touching a solid bottom of certainty—let alone
while you’re skinning through deep snow at
8,000 feet, gasping for air.
in hindu mythology, Kali is the goddess of
time and change, of power and destruction. She
could easily, I think, be the goddess of snow.
may is late season in Wyoming, and I’m in
the central Tetons with Braden. I spend the night
in a cabin with a view of the mountains and
watch rain fall on the high peaks until the sun
goes down. The next morning, we meet early
and drive to the trailhead and start to climb.
The surface of the snow is dimpled with fist-
sized cups melted away by sun and rain. The north
face of the mountain is a wall of clifs broken by
narrow, skiable chutes; a large bowl curves of the
summit into a long, glacial valley that runs along
the base of the clifs. Our plan is to ski the bowl,
but we stop at an overlook and take pictures of
the crags and the canyon before continuing up.
It’s windy on the summit, and cold. The
serriform peaks of the Grand, Middle, and
South Tetons splinter against the blue-gray sky.
We see no one else—for all we can tell, we are
the only skiers, the only humans, in the range.
The sun hasn’t yet softened the snow in the
bowl, so we stop to rest, napping at the top for
close to an hour.
When we finally peel the skins from our skis
and drop in, the snow is still hard, and my skis
60 BOTTOMLESS | JEFFERSON SLAGLE
scratch out turns against the crust. The valley
below the bowl descends past the clifs in a series
of steep steps. I wait for Braden to join me at the
bottom of the bowl, and together we ski the mel-
low stretch of the upper basin to the next step.
The scene from the edge is astonishing. The
lower half of the valley has slid, from the top
of the step, onto the flats, and around the
corner where we can’t see. It takes a moment to
reconstruct the scene: the overnight rain must
have softened an overhanging block of snow,
a cornice as large as a van hanging from the
top of the clif. It froze overnight, but as the
day warmed, so did the cornice, until its mass
overwhelmed the snow’s cohesion and it fell,
exploding onto the slope below with enough
force to trigger an avalanche. The snow that
slid had buttressed the steep chutes along the
wall of the canyon, but when that foundation
collapsed, so did the slopes it once supported,
and hundreds of tons of snow rolled down the
valley, snapping full-grown pines and gouging
chunks of rock from the clifs.
Avalanche Canada classifies the destructive
potential of avalanches on a five-point scale:
While D1 is “relatively harmless to people,” D5
“could destroy a village.” This slide, I estimate,
is a D4: large enough to “destroy a railway car,
large truck, or several buildings.” Friends who
hike the area late in July will tell me the debris
hasn’t yet melted away.
In the photo I send to the newspaper in Idaho
Falls, Braden stands near the spot where the cor-
nice landed, on an icy ramp that once anchored
the accumulated weight of the winter’s storms.
A sheer, bright wall of snow left undisturbed by
the slide rises above him. He holds his pole in
the air. The distance from his feet to the point
of his upraised pole measures the depth of the
avalanche. But that’s not the whole story.
When I get home that night, I upload photos
from my phone to my laptop and click through
them. In the pictures I snapped from the top of
the clifs on our way up, there is no avalanche
debris in the canyon. The cornice broke and the
whole valley slid between the time we stopped
for pictures and the time we skied to the top
of that step. Napping, we heard nothing. As
we’d watched rain fall on the peaks the night
before, we suspected nothing. The depth of our
ignorance is unfathomable.
a few weeks later, I’m skiing with Jaren in
Grand Teton National Park. Our objective is a
steep chute that rises out of Amphitheater Lake,
a blue glacial tarn surrounded by dark clifs, the
snow-dazzled summit of the Grand Teton loom-
ing above. But the nearest trailhead is closed
for maintenance, and by the time we reach the
lake, the sun is up, the air warm, and the hard
morning snow is softening to mashed potatoes.
We agree the safest option is to backtrack down
one of the gullies we traversed on the ascent.
The snow is fast and creamy-smooth, and even if
we haven’t skied the chute we’d aimed for, it’s a
beautiful day in the Tetons.
We stop where the gully narrows and steepens.
I ofer Jaren first tracks.
“Should we ski cut it?” he asks.
“I can if you want.” What I want is to descend
before the snow warms, and pausing to clear the
slope of unstable snow seems like an unnecessary
delay. I’d rather ski it fast and veer out of the
gully if it lets go.
“Do you think we should?”
I side with Jaren’s gut over my own impatience
and speed across the top of the slope, bouncing
on my skis, testing whether the top layer of
snow will break free and hoping I’m moving
fast enough to ski away from it if it does. I’m
halfway across when the snow beneath my feet
rips out and plunges down the gully, sluicing
back and forth, gathering more snow as it goes.
I wait on the opposite side of the chute until
the whole accumulation of collected disorder
finally settles at the bottom, then look back at
Jaren. He nods, wide-eyed, and we follow the
slide-polished snow into the gully.
then there’s a clear spring day in the Lemhi
Range—a dry, little-used spine of rock that runs
up the center of Idaho. Braden and I make plans
to ski Diamond Peak, the highest summit in the
range, a 12,000-foot pyramid that juts from the
sagebrush plain of the Birch Creek Valley. We’ve
both climbed the peak before, but we’ve never
attempted it on skis.
As the day warms and the snow softens, the
eastern slopes of an adjacent peak known as
CREATIVE NONFICTION 61
 the Riddler begin to shed snow in long white
showers that arc over the clifs guarding the base
of the mountain. Every quarter of an hour, a
new slide lets loose, the avalanches marching
clockwise around the cirque, each one hitting
closer to our position.
We huddle below a small clif band to reassess
our plan. I take of my skis to test the hardness
of the snow and sink to my hips. We’re at least
an hour and a half from the summit; by the time
we reach it, the avalanches’ eastward march will
have overtaken us. We decide to bail.
We ski a short slope into the basin below then
climb a shaded chute that still holds hard, stable
snow. From the top of the chute, we sit and eat
jerky and trail mix and energy gels, watching
the slides tick across Diamond Peak. Snow pours
down the face of a clif and onto the spot where
we stood ninety minutes earlier. Braden and I
look at each other and laugh like pardoned men.
stories like these are scattered throughout
avalanche literature and in the tales backcountry
skiers tell each other in the truck on the way to
the mountain on winter mornings while snow
frenzies the air. Stories of almosts, of just made its.
Of everything we didn’t know made visible in
surging, shattered snow.
Snow scientists love to talk about “managing
uncertainty,” but it’s hard enough to know
what’s happening when snowflakes are in the
air, isolated and individual; once they hit the
surface, the interactions multiply. Round
and warm, snowflakes bond together, gaining
strength. Cold and blocky, they weaken, lying in
insidious wait for a skier or a snowmobile, then
break. Rain turns the whole pack to paste.
To understand snow takes a mind both
diagnostic and analytic, both doctor and
coroner. Every avalanche tells a story about the
snow maladies endemic to that winter; skiers
read these clues to construct an epidemiology of
snowpack and predict where the next one will
release. But you’ve got to see what’s not visible,
too. You’ve got to feel where the sickness hides.
To take what we don’t know and act based
on that ignorance seems injudicious at best.
Every piece of information we need to make a
decision is hidden under the snow. When it’s
62 BOTTOMLESS | JEFFERSON SLAGLE
uncovered—if it’s uncovered—it will already be
too late for whatever story it tells to be useful to
whoever started the slide. And whatever story
they’ve told themselves may never be heard.
i’m at a family gathering one night when
a distant relative by marriage asks about skiing.
“You don’t ski alone, though, right?”
I pause.
I like to believe I’m more attentive when I’m
alone, that I take fewer chances. I keep to areas
I know, that are well traveled, which is an easy
thing to do on Teton Pass. But I know familiar-
ity is its own kind of trap.
Take the fog-hooded day on Mount Glory
when I set of down a ridge I’d skied at least a
dozen times, a line dotted with whitebark pines
I hoped would mark a path through the blank
of snow and clouds. But a hundred yards down,
the trees I had expected to follow were gone.
I knew from other, sunnier days that the ridge
falls away toward clifs on one side and a steep,
avalanche-prone bowl on the other, so I picked
my way through the fog a turn at a time, until
a radio repeater the size of a highway billboard
loomed above me. I had skied the wrong ridge,
south instead of east. That I’d so easily become
disoriented was unsettling.
“Yes,” I answer truthfully. I do ski alone.
The distant relative sighs. “Promise me you
won’t do that. You need to be careful.”
She’s talking about uncertainty, though
her uncertainty and mine are not the same
thing. What she understands of backcountry
skiing is the story she hears on the news—yet
another skier caught, buried, killed. To her, the
backcountry is a blank menace: avalanches just
happen, and if your partners dig you out, you
survive; if you’re alone, you don’t. For me, it’s
more complicated.
I know that most avalanche accidents happen
to groups, and not just the ones that make the
news: six caught, five killed outside Loveland,
Colorado; four caught, three killed on the
backside of Stevens Pass, Washington. Groups
can reinforce flawed thinking, or propagate a
fever for powder that leads them to overlook
signs of danger. Nine out of ten avalanche
accidents are caused by the victim or someone
in the victim’s group. And if you do set of a
slide, even trained, experienced partners are no
guarantee of rescue: in up to 29% of avalanche
fatalities, the victim is killed by trauma, not
burial. All of which is to say that the efects of
partners, like so much about backcountry safety,
are uncertain.
So I tell myself that being alone in the
mountains makes me a better person, more
thoughtful and aware. More full of awe. But my
explanations and justifications are nothing more
than pretextual fables. The truth is, uncertainty
is part of what attracts me to the backcountry: I
love the snow for what it refuses to confess, for
what remains inarticulable. The silence of the
winter woods, the solitude of skinning for hours
up a ridge, the heart-plunge-and-catch of a pow-
der turn, some alchemy of the physical and the
spiritual—these reasons lurk beneath the surface,
perceptible only when the snow is flying and I’m
floating, touching nothing solid beneath.
BOTTOMLESS. That’s the word skiers use to de-
scribe the best of conditions, those days when the
snow is so deep and light that, with every turn, it
rushes into your face and streams around you in
a pearly cloud, and skiing feels like nothing less
than flying. Pure, bottomless experience.
another may day, and I’m in the Snake
River Mountains. Jaren and I are skiing Mount
Baird, the highest peak in the range at 10,025 feet.
The route description says to follow the creek
drainage to the ridge, then turn right and ascend
the ridge to the summit, but we’re impatient and
climb the ridge early. This turns out, unsurpris-
ingly, to be a bad idea. The snow is too hard and
the slope too steep for our skins, and we take
turns sliding backward down the face as we lose
traction. We strap the skis to our packs and try
to climb in boots, but the crust is too weak to
support us, and we sink past our knees. But we
push a path through, and by some unforeseen act
of mercy, it has snowed overnight at the higher
elevations; our skins clamp tight to the new
powder, and the last thousand feet are a pleasant
tour through stunted pines dusted with snow.
When we reach the peak of Baird, we stop,
astonished at the ranges that fold themselves
around us in all directions: Tetons, Gros
Ventres, Wyomings, Wind Rivers, Snake Rivers,
Caribous, Big Holes, Centennials, Madisons.
Jaren and I have been in all these ranges, have
summited many of their peaks, but we’ve never
seen them like this—the sheer mass and variety
and spread of them, the way they fill the world
with wonder. Neither of us speaks. Both of us
are near tears.
Finally, we strip our skins and gear up and ski
back down the mountain. The descent is some
of the best skiing of the year, but it’s not what
I’ll remember of that day.
It’s been more than three years since that trip
to Baird, and still it may be the closest I can get
to explaining why I choose to ski the backcoun-
try. I’ve not yet been in the mountains on a day
that matched it. I don’t know that I ever will.
it’s early november. Four feet of snow
have fallen in the Tetons in the last week. The
highway over Teton Pass closed two days ago
so the transportation department could fire the
avalanche cannons that keep the road safe. This
morning’s avalanche report includes an ominous
warning: “Assessing the stability of these slabs
is problematic. Snowpack stability tests may
not be reliable.” Conditions today are far more
uncertain, more dangerous, than that tragic day
last month in Montana.
The snow that will take me may fall next
month, or next year, or in ten years. It may be
falling today. It may already cover the ground,
waiting to be buried, waiting to contort into
the small jeweled crystals that lie in ambush at
the base of the pack—invisible, elegant, lethal.
Snow makes no pretension to permanence. It
changes at a breeze, at the emergence of the sun
from behind clouds, at the half-moon bend of a
pair of skis. To embrace snow is to acknowledge
that nothing in this life lasts, but what there
is in this moment I will take and love, not in
spite of but because it will never come again. Its
transience is its danger, but also its beauty. And
what is a life without the possibility of that kind
of wildness?
Tomorrow, I’ll ski the backcountry. It will
be my first trip of the year. The snow should be
bottomless.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 63

JENINE HOLMES is an essayist
who writes about single parenthood
on her blog, The Single Baby
Mama. Her work has appeared in
the New York Times, the Detroit
News, Forbes.com, PMS, and How
Does That Make You Feel? True
Confessions from Both Sides of the
Therapy Couch.
64 THE GETAWAY CAR | JENINE HOLMES
The Getaway Car
JENINE HOLMES
1968
detroit
The moment I fell in love with the subversive nature of driving,
my mom and I were hurtling down the Chrysler Freeway in
the family Ford, the Detroit humidity welding my thin brown
thighs to the cerulean leather seat as the Rolling Stones blared
from the radio. My mom accompanied Charlie Watts, pounding
out the drum line on the steering wheel, her red nails flashing in
the sunlight.
“I can’t get no satisfaction! ’Cause I try, and I try, and I try,
and I try. I can’t get noooo!” Mom and Mick harmonized.
I marveled at her transformation. We were a James Brown,
Dionne Warwick, Aretha-loving family. Mom had gone from
caregiver-and-cookie-baker-in-chief to rocker-in-a-blue-
sundress in one song. At the age of five, I learned that cars were
more than transportation; cars were magic.
1987
manhattan
When I was twenty-four, my post-Parsons School of Design
life took of, but my first real relationship crashed. Though we’d
broken up our junior year, the guy and I found each other again
on a Brooklyn street shortly after graduation. I
thought it was fate. He did not. Now I needed
to put my heart in a wider place. I needed an
injection of that open road magic I remembered
and found so unavailable in New York City. Long
Island seemed like just the place, so I rented a car.
“Don’t drive there alone,” my mom said over
the phone. Her voice held a strange, jagged
tension—even more than during the negotiations
I’d endured to be allowed to walk home from
Thirkell Elementary with my third-grade pals.
Throughout my childhood, where other moms
saw the possibility of danger, Annie Holmes
took it as a forgone conclusion, a chained hound
waiting to snap its lead and attack. From her
leather sofa, my mother watched the evening
news lineup of lost, kidnapped, or raped children
not with shock, but expectation.
“I’ll be fine,” I said while lobbing a pair of
sandals and a book into the maw of my suitcase.
“I’ll call once I get there. I promise.”
I awoke at dawn, dressed, downed cofee, and
tucked the directions into my purse, ready for
my first big New York road trip. I was a few feet
from the door when my phone sounded.
Mom launched a volley of tears that leveled
me from three states away. “Honey, I’m begging
you. . . . Don’t go.”
Terrified, I froze in place. I had never heard my
mother beg anyone to do anything.
“Please, Jenine.”
It dawned on me that the source of her worry
was a combination of xenophobia and a lack
of faith in my navigational abilities. Long-haul
driving was never on her docket, and radio
sing-alongs notwithstanding, she couldn’t image
anyone wanting to drive for pleasure. As my
mom aged, she’d begun to limit highway travel,
sticking to the service roads. In time, she stopped
all together. Now she wanted to infect me with
her fear. I couldn’t give the virus time to spread.
“Gotta go, Mom.”
Once I found the courage to get behind the
wheel, I drove to Long Island, shifting between
choking sobs and tears, recalling my mom’s level
of emotion. Until that moment, she wasn’t much
of a crier. This trip had already changed us both.
I checked into my motel two hours later, called
my mom, and then downed beers and dove into
pages of Beloved on the beach. Since childhood,
I’ve taken refuge in books, and Morrison’s
well-crafted narrative served as a coolant to my
overheated mind. At times, I read aloud the
tale of a mother who risked everything for her
children, turning it into a benediction. Through
Morrison’s lens, I viewed my mother’s sendof
diferently. Mothers, literary and real, seemed to
see all the fissures in the world. I focused on the
solid places. The road took me back to my usual
view of the world, one of openness and warm
expectancy, and I left Greenport carrying the
optimal healing efects found in solitude.
2015
manhattan
Over lunch at Manhattan’s first Chick-fil-A
franchise, on Sixth Avenue and West 37th Street,
my friend Elizabeth and I deviated from true-
toddler-tales and moved into mommy wander-
lust. I told her about the gathering in Maryland
my friends and I had founded two decades ago.
“It started out as a bachelorette party, but now
it’s just an annual get-together—three days of
alcohol-fueled dance parties. I haven’t gone in
more than four years, since adopting Julia.”
“So this year . . . go,” Elizabeth said. Bank
managers have a talent for using their words to
full efect, even when money isn’t the topic.
“Nah.”
“Don’t say no yet.”
I shrugged and stared out the window at the
cars clogging Sixth Avenue. I thought it was an
efective method of changing the subject, but
Elizabeth wouldn’t let up.
“I know you’re worried about leaving Julia.”
She baptized a wale fry in ketchup. “But one
day she’s going to leave you. Then it’ll be too late
to rekindle those friendships.”
I returned to work, but thought of nothing
but Elizabeth’s words the rest of the afternoon.
While I had plenty of great friends in Manhattan,
the Baltimore girls were a diferent breed. They
turned me on to the freedom found in wearing
a bikini, holding all night chat-a-thons, and
exploring the culinary delights of junk food and
premium cocktails. I missed the level of intimacy
found each time we gathered: women announced
engagements or couples’ therapy appointments,
CREATIVE NONFICTION 65
 pregnancies or the move to adopt, imploding
careers and our parents’ retirements. Time stilled
in a cocoon of closeness.
1979
detroit
“Jenine, I need you to step outside, please.”
Between my dad’s businesslike demeanor and
Arkansas accent, simple requests were recast as
serious doings.
I clicked of the rerun of The Twilight Zone, my
favorite show. I loved the otherworldly creations,
the unique messages Rod Serling applied to life.
But now my dad had a real world message for
me, so I followed orders, tailgating him through
the kitchen and out the door.
My lime-green Chevy Vega sat in the driveway,
its hood yawning wide. Dad posted up beside the
car, tucked his arms behind his back, and studied
me. “Now that you have your license, there are
three things you need to know: always check the
oil, always wear your seat belt, and always look
out for the other guy. Because you can be right.
Or you can be dead right. First, the oil. . . .” He
peered into the belly of the car. He grabbed a
silver loop on the left-hand side and pulled, and
a long, thin, metal rod slid free, the end coated in
dark goo.
As Dad inspected the oil level, I reviewed his
edicts. My dad grew up on a farm, where he
operated combines and pickers. Machines were
serious business. Since passing my driver’s test,
I’d given little thought to the risk of getting
behind the wheel. Now I couldn’t wipe it from
my mind.
2015
manhattan
I decided to take Elizabeth up on her ofer. My life
needed an injection of something I couldn’t quite
name, but I thought I might find it in Maryland.
I grabbed my five-year-old daughter, her
favorite pink chenille elephant, and her overnight
bag, and then we hit the subway. An hour later,
Julia was settling down in Elizabeth’s Brooklyn
living room beside her four-year-old child.
“What are you going to do while I’m at the
sleepover, Mama?” Julia asked over a pile of Legos.
I gave her a slippery smile. “Have lots of fun.”
66 THE GETAWAY CAR | JENINE HOLMES
ny 9a south to nj turnpike south
I jumped into my rental and headed south on the
West Side Highway. The traic ran smooth. En-
dorphins flooded my bloodstream. I cruised past
ocean liners, an aircraft carrier-turned-museum,
and cyclists on the bike path near the water’s
edge. Then, around 44th Street, I smacked into a
massive traic jam.
Maybe I should turn around. Typically, once I
slid behind the wheel, I’d hit the gas and go. Yet
minutes into my four-and-a-half-hour drive, I
doubted my decision. I knew if I turned back
now, before I’d even left the city limits, I’d look
like a loser to my pals. Megan, the spunky host
and the originator of Girls Weekend, planned
the event months in advance. No doubt she and
Heather were already lounging on the deck,
cocktails in hand, toasting to their time-out from
husbands, kids, and work. My contemporaries
had locked and loaded motherhood ten years
earlier. They were well-versed in getting out of
town—sans children. I was late to the game.
I’d always done things a bit diferently than what
I’d grown up seeing. My mother had married and
bore three children and, once settled, never moved
from Detroit. I left home to attend college in
Manhattan, built a life there around my work in
advertising, and, in my forties, set out to create a
family out of paperwork, patience, and prayers. I
crafted the life I wanted.
But on my own, the constant alerts regarding
the care of another human blared non-stop. There
was no one to tap and pass the baton to at the end
of a long day. When strangers and friends asked
if single parenthood was hard, I retorted with the
same truth: “The only thing harder than being a
single mom is not being a mom at all.” As much as
I valued my life, loved it, I needed to put that part of
me—the responsible woman who kept all the balls
in the air and never took a break—in the rearview
mirror, at least temporarily. I needed a furlough.
Once free of the tunnel, powered by the music
of Fat Boy Slim and Talking Heads, my getaway
car reached the turnpike in minutes. As I entered
this gateway to nirvana, I snapped of the radio,
and the car entered a dense, delicious silence—a
sensation I hadn’t experienced since I became
a mother. I felt rooms within me give way to
secret passageways.
exit 2
The road, miraculously free of the big rigs and
speed freaks that had dominated the turnpike for
the decade I’d made the trek to Maryland, deliv-
ered me to the first Girls Weekend marker, the
Clara Barton rest stop—named for the founder of
the American Red Cross—in a little over an hour.
Megan, Heather, and I always savored spending
a little time with an accomplished woman. This
was the first time I’d made the trip alone, but
still I ordered a Whopper, fries, and a Diet Coke,
answering to the second mandate of the weekend:
junk food consumption. As I downed the food I
regularly denied Julia and inched into the gas line,
the feeling of decadence rose within me.
“Ten dollars’ worth,” I told the attendant.
Never miss a chance to fill up, I heard my dad say.
“No, actually, fill it, please,” I revised.
“Where you headed?”
“An annual all-girl weekend in Maryland. No
men allowed unless you’re trying to conceive.”
He smirked. “Must be some kind of party.”
“It is. A few years back, the neighbors called
the cops on us.”
His eyes crinkled. “Anyone get arrested?”
“No, but man, they were surprised to find a
house full of forty-something women playing
drunk Twister.”
He hooted so hard his belly rolled over his belt,
exposing a patch of pale skin. “Have fun . . . but
not too much fun.”
de sr 1 south
The Charles W. Cullen Bridge glimmered
against the purple sky, an elegant cat’s cradle
of engineering. For me, crossings had always
signaled the new and notable up ahead, evoking
the same feeling of adventure that arose every
time my family’s Ford crossed the Ambassador
Bridge to Canada, leaving Detroit behind. Now,
driving across the Indian River Inlet and feeling
the rubber on the road and the engine’s hum, my
getaway car felt like a moving meditation.
Then, past Bethany Beach and down a small
coastal fairway, lay Ocean City. The oicial fun
zone kick-of. Delights lined the road: miniature
golf, bikini shops, and Big Pecker’s restaurant
with its towering plastic model of a cartoon bird.
At a red light, I spotted a mullet-wearing dude
driving a Ford F-150 pickup. The clock read
8:30 pm. I could be drinking by 9:15.
Beyond the thin, steel fence along the road’s
shoulder, waves peaked like frosting. In the
console, I tapped my cell phone screen. The
Google Maps app wasn’t cooperating, and the
rental house phone number? Not in my contacts.
I turned onto a side street lined with large
pristine white houses, and then pressed Megan’s
mobile number. No answer. No doubt she
was mixing margaritas, making guacamole, or
organizing beer cup limbo.
I dialed Heather. After two days in the house,
she’d know the neighborhood.
“Hey, I’m close to you guys but can’t find the
new house.”
“. . .”
“Heather, you there?”
“You’re in Maryland?”
“Yeah.”
“Jenine, Girls Weekend is next week.”
Everything dulled as if my skull were wrapped
in cotton batting.
“It’s already 9:30,” Heather said. “Maybe you
should stay there for the night.”
But I was in utter denial. “Did the date change
on Facebook? I can’t believe. . . .”
“It’s late, Jenine. Head to Baltimore. Call some
of our friends.”
“No, I’m going home.”
“Home home?”
“Gotta go,” I said and hung up.
I sat there in a puddle of stupid, my anger
rising. I knew I had double-checked the invite.
Rather than talk to anyone, I’d gotten in the
car and driven of, as if the house, the party, the
fun were encased in a giant snow globe and just
waiting for me to show up.
I sat at a crossroads of crazed screaming and
instant action. I chose action. I wheeled the car
around due north and called Elizabeth.
“Having fun?” she asked. I could hear our girls
giggling in the background.
“The party is . . . next week,” I whispered.
Hearing that fact outside of my head made it
sound even worse.
“Dear God,” she said. “Are you going to get
a room?”
“No.” I worked to get my center calm. “I’m
CREATIVE NONFICTION 67
coming home.”
“You think it’s safe driving that far alone?”
“Adrenaline will get me through.” I clicked of
and hit the gas.
de sr 1 north
Maryland motels streaked by, the traic light.
With luck, I could hit Manhattan in three and a
half hours. My hand jabbed at the radio in search
of shotgun music.
I was dreaming when I wrote this. Forgive me if it
goes astray.
“You got that right,” I yelled back. I loved Prince.
So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999!
And just like that, I was five years old again and
back in my mother’s Ford, fueled by lyrics and
backbeats. My shoulders unhitched. Butterflies
of unease returned to their cocoons. Road magic
at work.
My cell phone broke in: Megan. I didn’t want
to hear how sorry she was that I drove down for
nothing. Sorry I don’t use Facebook like an IV drip. I
ignored the call.
Love shack! Baby, love shack!
The B-52s brought me to full party mode as
more of Maryland fell away. The Charles W.
Cullen Bridge gleamed against the dark curtain
of sky.
“I’m going to slow things down,” the DJ said.
A haunting electronic whine curved into the car.
Who’s gonna tell you when it’s too late?
Who’s gonna tell you things aren’t so great?
You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong.
Who’s going to drive you home tonight? Benjamin
Orr, bassist for The Cars, sang.
“I will,” I whooped.
Who’s gonna pick you up when you fall? he asked.
If you weren’t a young single woman in the
’90s, you can’t understand the destruction that
lyric laid down. But I had picked myself up
before, and I’d do so now. Sure, I was alone. Even
my GPS app was M.I.A. But I had the rental,
and it had me. I refocused on the road just as an
illuminated sign flashed:
detour.
bridge construction ahead.
The tang of panic flooded my mouth. I could
only navigate by the bridge. The road forked and
I had to choose—left or right? My mind hurdled
through memories, to road signs once seen, routes
previously ignored. I swung the wheel to the
right down a two-lane road. Soon the highway
luminaries grew as small as a line of fireflies in the
darkness, and that ancient worry—my mother’s
credo that the world was out to get me—clamped
down. The dash clock read 10:32 pm, the hour I
became truly lost.
1970s
somewhere in michigan
“Can you all just be quiet?” my mom barked at
the back seat where my brothers and I perched.
Outside the car, columns of steel belched plumes
of smoke. The road was grim, desolate, the type
of place where bad things happen to good people.
After what seemed like a year, my mom spotted a
car with a red police light. She pulled up beside it
and lowered her window.
The open air was an audio assault. Horns
wailed of-key against whining whistles and
thumping machines.
“Excuse me, can you please tell me how to get
out of here?”
The cop wrinkled his sunburned brow. “Sure,
ma’am. But first I have to ask: how did you get
behind this auto plant?”
“I have no idea,” Mom said, and began leaking tears.
A short while later, we arrived home. We hauled
our shopping bags and sour moods into the house.
The evening was still, except for the chatter of
crickets aiming their high-pitched laughter at us.
“How did the shortcut to the mall workout?”
my dad asked, pulling a bag from Mom’s hand.
She didn’t answer. Neither did my brothers or
I, complicit in the collective shame our mother
felt. Never had she become so uprooted with her
children in the car, and we’d all been alarmed to
find her fright could not be hidden from us. I’d
never known my mother to be afraid of anything.
Now I knew that fear had come from something
else, something she loved and was afraid of losing:
us. And once I knew, I could never forget it.
2015
somewhere in maryland
I made two decisions: 1. Keep moving. 2. Keep
the tears at bay. I failed to stick to the second one
when, after another hour on the road, I suspected
I’d made a wrong turn somewhere. This was
beginning to feel like a horror movie. And as we
all know, things never work out well for black
folks in horror movies.
An exit sign slid up out of the darkness.
Another town, another mystery. I could take that
ramp of the highway, cross the overpass, and
retrace the route back toward the point where
the highway split. Make a diferent choice this
time. Create my own do-over. But the truth was,
I wasn’t sure going back would be any better.
Don’t, Dad said in my head. Keep moving. I
pushed onward.
I’d always had a healthy amount of hubris
about my adventurous nature. Since those
early days seeking escape on the road, travel
had framed who I was. I’d gone as far abroad
as India, and I had sailed the Greek Islands by
private sailboat. I had once dined in a bleached
white taverna on an island that had more goats
than people. To meet my daughter and bring her
home, I’d traveled seventeen hours to Ethiopia
twice, alone.
Now I’d pulled the slot machine too many
times and found it broken—found I could be
broken. Women disappeared on lonely roads
with frightening regularity. As a black woman
traveling alone late at night, I knew I was at even
greater risk. If my life ended on this road, in this
car, Julia would be an orphan all over again. A
book cover flashed up from memory, forest green
with black type: The Negro Motorist Green-Book,
a guide originally published in the 1930s that
helped blacks travel safely. Too bad there wasn’t a
2015 edition.
But if black people have been disproportion-
ately targeted, they have also survived more than
being lost in a car. I drove under the same stars
that the abolitionist Harriet Tubman once used
to navigate her way to freedom from enslave-
ment, as well as leading as many as three hundred
others. Recalling that fact delivered a bit of balm.
somewhere on earth
I smeared tears from my cheeks under a renewed
mandate: I stay with the car, and the car
stays with me. I checked the fuel gauge. The
red-orange marker sat near the center line. I
CREATIVE NONFICTION 69
 remembered my empty Diet Coke cup resting in
the passenger seat. Two hours ago, trash. Now,
a gift—just in case. Black women don’t pee by
the side of the road, as decreed by the African
American Female Constitution I intuit each
and every day. Peeing in a cup in the car wasn’t
optimal, but it was safer. I couldn’t know who
or what was beyond the shoulder of the road,
hidden in the trees. I wasn’t leaving that rental
car unless it was on fire.
The Bible says to “walk by faith, not by sight.”
Now, on the Autobahn of the Damned, I drove
by faith and my high beams. I was struck with the
idea to pray. The writer Anne Lamott claims that
God help me is one of the greatest prayers ever.
So for more than ten minutes, my eyes held to
the white lines of the road, and I asked intensely,
earnestly, for assistance. I added the 23rd Psalm
as an addendum. As my speech found its rhythm,
my terror lessened. My mind felt altered.
The headlights caught a flash of green, a
broad sign to the left of the road. I blinked. The
last line read North to Philadelphia. Finally,
something familiar—I’d driven to Philly many
times to visit friends. I pointed the car toward
the exit ramp.
somewhere near philadelphia
The moon was a pearl against the night sky, and
its glow cut the black lace of the sleeping trees
against the blue-black sky. It created a sense of
endless expansion—the kind Buddhists speak
of during meditation—and my mind drifted to
poetic musings: When the sun changes places with the
moon, this desolate land must be ringed in beauty. The
car and I were one.
Soon, Philadelphia twinkled in the distance,
and I stole looks at the high-rises—markers of
civilization, bright and beautiful. Home was
less than two hours away. The clock read 1 am.
Maybe I could still find somewhere to pick up a
Philly cheesesteak. My last meal was at 5 pm.
Don’t press your luck, Dad said.
I followed decade-old breadcrumbs back to
familiar highways.
1984
somewhere in pennsylvania
Right after college graduation, I’d left New York
70 THE GETAWAY CAR | JENINE HOLMES
for a man I loved in Detroit. After three months,
I realized that love and marriage were, in this
case, not a forgone conclusion. While I worked
to save money to move back to Manhattan, I
missed the Big Apple enough to hitch a ride with
Detroit friends for a visit.
Just before dawn, I awoke when my head
smacked the roof of the car. The auto leaned at a
mean angle, hit a massive bump, and then came
to a stop, its contents shaken and stirred. Renita
started screaming.
“What the hell happened?”
“Must have fallen asleep,” her cousin said,
rubbing his skull with one hand, the other still
gripping the wheel.
“Why didn’t you wake someone to relieve
you?” Renita wailed.
“Dunno,” he said, full of sleepy remorse. The
anger set on Renita’s face must’ve delivered the
same crack as a starter pistol; her cousin flung
open the door and bolted.
As Renita took of after him farther down
the grassy highway median, I twisted around
to watch the scene. Through the back window,
the raw sun scratched at my eyes. I freed myself
from under a dule bag and climbed out of
the back seat. The dewy grass felt cool and
soft under my bare feet as I stood surfer-style
on the sloping hill. Columns of dawn light
glowed between purple-pink clouds, a mirror
image of the Sunday School prayer cards of my
memory—the scene adults used to shape the
idea of God for kids. I felt God that morning
along with the nearness of death.
I couldn’t resist the urge to hike up the
incline, cross the asphalt, and peek over the
guardrail. Seeing the field of boulders below, I
realized how close we’d come to dying. The fine
hairs of my forearms stood at attention in the
summer heat.
Renita and her cousin finally came back,
removed grass from the crankshaft, started the
engine, and returned the Lincoln to the road.
The car was fine, and so were its passengers.
Yet, four days later, lacking the courage for the
return drive to my parents’ home, I flew back
to Detroit. Once there, I said nothing about my
experience. I knew how my mother felt about
such things.
2015
i-95 north/nj turnpike north, exit 13
Forty or so minutes from Manhattan, my radio
search landed on a gospel station. I recognized a
hymn from my Baptist childhood.
Mary, don’t you weep. Tell Martha not to mourn,
Aretha sang. As I listened to her soothing voice, my
body felt warm, humming with cozy pleasure. . . .
Open your eyes! Dad commanded.
I screamed, jerking the wheel. The memory of
that Pennsylvania crash after college was enough to
spike my adrenaline. I had to stay awake. I cranked
down the window until it was blasting air into
my face and yodeled along with the gospel tunes.
When I didn’t know the lyrics, I made them up.
ny 495 east/lincoln tunnel, exit 16e
I looped the car around the curve of the road,
and the tollbooths—appearing now as sentries
of welcome—smiled. Manhattan lay beyond,
incandescent. It looks like Oz, I thought, and
twenty-five years of jadedness dissolved.
An Ezra Pound quote came to mind:
“And New York is the most beautiful city in
the world?
It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the
nights there. . . .  the car, but rather the driver that matters, I was
Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut
into the ether. Here is our poetry, for we have
pulled down the stars to our will.”
I reached my Upper West Side neighborhood at
last. Prayer had gotten me home, but even Jesus
can’t come up with a parking spot in Manhattan
at 3 am. Two blocks from my apartment, I pulled
into a garage, but the metal gate was closed tight.
The sign read, please honk for assistance.
I hit the horn. Nothing. Then a face appeared at
the narrow window, glaring. I leapt from the car,
driven by fresh fear.
“Please, I just drove more than eight hours.
I’m exhausted!”
Face hidden in shadow, the man shook his
head no.
“Please, only until 11 am.”
From the shadow, eyes stared.
“C’mon, I’m out here by myself!”
The shadow vanished.
The street was nuclear wasteland empty. Was
it better to sleep in my car and risk a vagrancy
charge? Or double park and get towed? I turned
over my options in my head when, suddenly,
blessedly, the mechanical gate creaked up. Yellow
light spilled across the concrete. A Pakistani man
sporting an Izod shirt stepped into the light and
said, “Come.”
I suppressed the urge to hug him, my body
whirling as if it still moved at eighty miles an hour.
home
I woke with the sun, the apartment still. All was
beautiful in my blue bedroom. Little by little, I
drew myself up from a coma of sleep. I tiptoed
into Julia’s room, rubbing crust from my eyes. I
squinted at her stufed animals, hand paintings,
and crumpled socks; travel had given the common
sharper contours. But the pink room was devoid
of my daughter’s energy. I blinked at the empti-
ness, and then I remembered.
I fished my cell from my purse and sent a text.
I’m home, c u at 3.
I crawled back to bed, and in that dreamy state, I
remembered why I had hit the road, why I’d gone
to Maryland in the first place: I wanted to feel
more alive. I found renewal in the cave of the self,
holding dark communion. In discovering it isn’t
enlightened. No Buddhist meditation could’ve
delivered the depth of gratitude one mistake had.
When I got up several hours later, I felt stif,
as I did after a good run. The soles of my feet
embraced the parquet floor. Morning cappuc-
cino never tasted so good. I showered, dressed,
returned the rental car, and headed to Brooklyn.
“Mommy, Mommy!” Julia cheered, hugging
my thighs. The weight and warmth of her arms
was a benediction.
She beamed. “I had fun! Did you?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer.
Louise Boyd said, “The real work of an expedi-
tion begins when you return.” Maryland was the
destination, but that’s not where I ended up. Fear
had delivered me to a place of clarity. It emptied
out everything from the way I’d seen myself—the
public version, anyway. I found a me that wasn’t a
mother, a woman, a writer. The me with nothing
to prove and nowhere to run from. Now I can
find her anywhere, on or of the road, if I get still
and let go.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 71
 WRITERS AT WORK

No Guts, No Glory
Two memoirists explain how they learned to embrace
vulnerability on the page

Pyrotechnics: Blowing Up
Your Life on the Page
ALLISON K WILLIAMS

I ’d practiced my story in the car, making key details

anonymous. I called my city “a Michigan college town.” I
changed everyone’s name. And I figured that even if the audience
despised me, it wasn’t like I lived in Chicago; I’d never have to
see them again. But standing at the mic, ready to tell my story
for The Moth, I suddenly remembered Tyler, the stage manager,
sitting onstage next to the emcee, waiting to signal the five-
minute mark.
Tyler, my former student.
Who knew me at the same time my story took place. Who
might think I was a bad person if I told this story.
But I was here, in front of almost a thousand people, with a
ALLISON K WILLIAMS serves as the
social media editor for Brevity and
story I needed to tell. I took a deep breath.
hosts the Brevity Podcast. Her work “You’re going to have to trust me that prostitution really
has appeared in Christian Science
Monitor, McSweeney’s, and the
seemed like the best option at the time.”
New York Times. I glanced at Tyler. His mouth opened gently.

72 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

i tell writers in workshops: Be
willing to be the villain of your own
story. Set your own actions out there
for the reader to judge, without excus-
ing or justifying your behavior. That
thing you’re ashamed and afraid of?
Send it up like fireworks. Let the reader
decide whether or not to like you.
Guarded memoirs are damp squibs
on the page. Readers can tell when
something’s missing, when an author is
holding back, but blowing up our own
privacy by sharing the thing we swore
we’d never share reaches an audience
more viscerally than carefully dispens-
ing the truth. Some of the most power-
ful, best-selling memoirs lay open the
narrator’s addiction, grief, compulsions,
or terrible childhood. Mary Karr’s
memoirs about her volatile family and
her drinking could be seen as incredibly
embarrassing, but I watched readers line
up at the 2016 HippoCamp nonfiction
conference to tell Karr how her books
had given them the bravery to tell their
own dark stories.
If you’re venturing into blogging
and personal essays, or doing social
media for your writing life, it’s hard
to know how much to share. Where’s
the line of privacy? How do you get
past the shame of sharing dark secrets?
How can we write fearless, personal,
potentially mortifying pieces that cre-
ate beautiful explosions and enlighten
everyone watching?
Here’s what I know after twenty years
of getting naked on the page:
Focus on why telling your story
is important.
Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess and author
of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,
opened her blog in 2007 with the post:
Cursing makes everything funnier.
My dog just died.
My fucking dog just died.
See.
Almost five years later and much less
glibly, she posted about her debilitating
depression. A long postscript included
why she’d chosen to write about such a
shame-laden subject:
Judge me or not, I am the same person I
was before. And so are you. And chances
are that many of your friends, family,
Every secret I tell makes telling
the next one easier.
and coworkers are dealing with things
like this. Things that are killing them a
little inside. Things that kill people who
don’t get help. Silent, bloody battles that
end with secret victors who can’t celebrate
without shame. I hope that this post
changes this somehow. I hope that you
feel safe enough to be honest about the
things you are the most ashamed of.
More than 2,600 readers commented,
many sharing their own battles with
mental illness. They’d spent years
getting to know Jenny through her
blog—every time she dug deeper, it
unearthed some of their own truths.
Part of memoir’s power is reaching
people who thought they were alone.
Step slowly into the heat.
Exploding your private self on the
internet is scary and permanent. Start
with tiny sparks.
My first deeply personal nonfiction
was an anonymous blog in the early
2000s. For eighteen months, I wrote
daily in graphic detail about relation-
ships, sex work, and my own mental
health. Readers watched me slowly
destroy my marriage, pursue a destruc-
tive long-term afair, and become
suicidal. Even though no one knew the
“real” me, the first few comments of
“slut” or “selfish bitch” stung. But after
the fifth, or the tenth, or the fiftieth, I
focused on the readers who wanted to
hear me, who were fascinated with my
disintegration, whose responses and
commiseration kept me showing up
to the page and deciding to stay alive.
Eventually, nasty comments lost their
power. “You deserve to be alone the
rest of your life!!!!!!!!!!!” Really? That’s
the best you got?
Later, I wrote a mix of fiction and
nonfiction for a LiveJournal community,
where some people knew my real name
and regular social media. Supportive
feedback let me go deeper with personal
experience. Over eleven months, I
moved beyond writing primarily to
shock readers and learned to focus on
judicious self-revelation in the service
of a well-structured story. Meanwhile,
in “real life,” I was learning more craft.
I was nervous when Brevity accepted my
essay about working as a stripper while
in high school, but the literary-journal
context felt important and worth the
cost of igniting some personal fires.
Now, blogging regularly for Brevity,
I’ve built an audience that expects and
welcomes deep personal revelation.
Detonation gets easier every time.
Molestation? Been there. Rape? Check.
Resentment, envy, grudges? Yep.
Depression? One of my favorite posts.
Every secret I tell makes telling the
next one easier. Every time a stranger
emails, “I thought I was the only one.
I feel that way, too. Thanks for talking
about it,” I know my craft worked; my
honesty touched someone.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 73
 Focus on the moment of change.
Writing trauma, tragedy, and
intense emotion risks straying into
“therapy”—writing that works out
the writer’s feelings instead of giving
the reader a revelation. Andre Dubus
III told me, “If nothing changes, it’s
a journal entry. There’s gotta be some
change in who you are.” Cancer and
climbing Mount Everest are both
dramatic situations. What action did
you take, and how is your life difer-
ent? We already know you survived;
your name’s on the book. How is
post-adventure you a new person?
Tell your own story.
Riding high on the success of a few
published pieces, I made a bad choice: I
sold a radio story that wasn’t primarily
mine. Yes, I was a major player—but
I revealed personal, identifiable details
about a dear friend. Details they
weren’t ready to share, that embarrassed
them and exploited a situation they
were still in. I made myself the hero of
the story—big mistake!—and didn’t
get clear permission to tell. I’m lucky
we’re still friends, after some awkward
months and a lot of apologizing.
True pyrotechnics come from the
narrator’s revelations and realizations
rather than holding someone else’s be-
havior up for condemnation. If you’re
writing a “family secrets” memoir,
how did finding the truth change you?
Red-light warning: if you seem heroic
on the page, take a good hard look at
whether you’re telling the truth about
what you did.
Decide what’s sacred.
My now-husband supports my writ-
ing, but he’s about as non-literary
as it gets. When I warned him I was
writing a memoir with “a lot of sex
in it,” he said, “There’s a lot of books
in the world I haven’t read, and that’ll
be one of them.” I choose to protect
74 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
his privacy, and knowing that’s the
boundary helps me explore other flam-
mable subjects. Figure out what you
need to protect— your kids? a friend-
ship?—and make clear choices about
your subject matter. Decide in advance
how you’ll deal with the mechanics:
Jef Sharlet recently Tweeted about
watching a Latinx woman’s dehumaniz-
ing border-crossing experience and his
young daughter’s passionate reaction to
it. He gave his daughter a pseudonym,
and a key picture showed the action she
took in response but not her face.
Write without shame.
Approach your darkness with the best
craft you’re capable of. When your
mother/neighbor/classmate dubiously
asks, “Are you really going to publish
that?” tell them, “It’s a story I think is
important to tell.” Refuse to be embar-
rassed. If they don’t like your version,
they’re free to write their own.
In 2009, when cancer researcher
Brooke Magnanti was revealed to be
prostitute and blogger Belle de Jour,
she refused to be lectured or scolded
by the public or the press. Instead,
she used her new platform to draw
attention to issues she cared about,
including the decriminalization of sex
work. By pointing at larger issues and
standing by her decisions both to do
and write about sex work, Magnanti
successfully controlled her image as
a doctor and established herself as an
author now writing crime novels. In a
2016 Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything),
Magnanti wrote:
There’s still a bit of backlash, but a
lot of it is in media or on the internet.
In my day-to-day life, it doesn’t affect
much. I live in a small village and
everyone knows, and they deal with
it like small communities deal with
anything else. The nice thing about
living in a small place where everyone
knows everyone’s business is finding out
how many people have skeletons, and
life goes on.
Time helps. No matter how big the
explosion, the echoes will die away.
Build your own community.
Often, what we’re most afraid of
revealing isn’t received negatively at all.
Jenny Lawson told NPR that when she
blogged about her mental illness:
I was shocked at how many people came
out and said, “Oh, my God, me too!”
Or, “I thought I was the only one.”
She’d expected honesty would turn of
her readers, but maintaining the façade
of quirky, fun blogger felt wrong.
I had all this stuff in my drafts
folder—funny posts that I could save
up and post on days or weeks when I
was having a rough time. It felt like I
was creating such a false history because
I was lying on the couch, just forcing
myself to breathe, and I would have these
comments saying, “Oh, you’re so funny!
What a great life you have!” I felt like
such a liar. So I decided to go ahead and
write about it.
Lawson’s willingness to explode her
lighthearted image led to a readership
supportive of her and each other:
When it comes to mental illness, on a
very selfish level, it is so reassuring to
me to have other people say, “You’re not
alone.” I’m sometimes stuck at home and
cannot force myself to leave the house, or
I’m at a hotel room and I cannot leave the
hotel room even to eat, and I know I can
always go out on Twitter and say, “I’m
stuck. I don’t know what I’m doing. I
feel like a failure.” And a thousand people
are going to say, “I’m right there with
you. I’m hiding in the bathroom myself.”
 you’re going to have to trust me
that prostitution really seemed like
the best option at the time,” I told the
Moth audience. Tyler’s presence had
made me realize something important:
I’d rather he respect me for telling a
powerful story than admire me for
being a good person.
The audience laughed so hard I had
to pause. Tyler laughed with them. I
told how I’d realized a client needed
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: A GOOD LIFE
more love than I could give, that my
biggest problem with sex work was that A good life is what every human and every society strives
it’s boring. After the show, audience to achieve. On the surface the elements of a good life seem
members told me, “I can’t believe you obvious—health, security, contentment, meaning. But easy
were brave enough to tell that story,” truisms mask the complexity of these goals. If health is such a
prominent component, then how is a good life achieved in the
and “Wow, I always wondered what
face of illness? Does living a good life make one a good person?
sex work was like, and I’m glad you What do we make of people who achieve a good life using less-
told us,” and, yes, “That’s totally what than-good means? And who defines what qualifies as “meaning”?
“happened to me, too! I thought I was
the only one.” Backstage, Tyler gave The Bellevue Literary Review is seeking submissions for a special
me a big hug. “Great story!” issue entitled “A Good Life.” Deadline 1/1/19.
It’s scary to light that fuse and wait
WWW.BLREVIEW.ORG
for the boom. But reaching readers
with the truth is powerful, and revela-
tion creates community. Letting people
know they’re not the only one strug-
gling is worth the tension and worry of narrator can fail! scribbled over it in ability—defined by social researcher
being the one who told. Blow up your messy pencil. The thesis in question Brené Brown as “uncertainty, risk,
secrets. Light the sky with your guilt was the first third of Finding Petronella, and emotional exposure”—is vital to
and shame and complicity. Everyone’s my book-in-progress about the four creating intimacy with readers. Yet,
going to know this thing about you— months I spent walking across Finland although much writing on craft extols
and that’s the point. in the footsteps of Sylvia Petronella the need for vulnerability in creative
van der Moer, a legendary figure in writing, far more diicult to find are
Lapland’s gold fields, whom I’d met resources that describe how, precisely,
Sing It Loud: Looking shortly before her death in 2014. The to render it. How does a writer break
to Music for Lessons on journey had come at a crucial point in down the barriers between herself and
Embracing Vulnerability my life, and I’d risked everything to her readers?
on the Page take it. Yet on the page, I was playing Last year, I followed this question
it safe. Success as a writer demanded I back to my roots as a musician. I have
JENNY O’CONNELL
invite in the one thing that frightened no problem creating intimacy with a
me most: vulnerability. ukulele in my hands. In fact, after I’ve
“In order for connection to happen, we have
Vulnerability is uncomfortable, performed certain songs I often notice
to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.”
and like most people, I’ve been con- a curious phenomenon: strangers
—Dr. Brené Brown, THE POWER OF
VULNERABILITY, 2010 TEDxHouston ditioned to fight it, to defend against approach me as if I am an old friend,
the possibility of being harmed. And with a sense of warm recognition and
last year, my MFA faculty mentor yet, writing demands overcoming this a willingness to share their own deep
returned my thesis manuscript with protective impulse. Writers of creative and personal stories. Similarly, certain
Where’s the risk? We need to know the nonfiction understand that vulner- pieces of music shake me at my core

CREATIVE NONFICTION 75
 when I listen, drawing me into their
world.
I decided to see if I could quantify
the elements that foster intimacy in
songs, in the hopes that I would gain
insights I could apply to my nonfic-
tion writing. I started with a pool of
ninety-five “vulnerable songs,” my
dear ones’ responses to the question,
“What song pulls at your heart?” The
songs spanned a variety of genres,
bands, and styles, though because a lot
of folk and blues songs are inspired by
a story or a feeling, those genres were
especially prevalent.
I listened to each song, focusing
on storytelling and lyrical expres-
sion—metaphor, point of view, phrase
placement—as well as instrumentation,
dynamics, rhythm, and harmonic ac-
cents. Slowly, patterns of vulnerability
began to emerge.
Where Vulnerability Resides
Across the board, each of the ninety-five
songs filled one or more of six purposes:
1) Offering: expressing feelings,
emotions, or gratitude without an
expected return. “Take My Love”
by The Lone Bellow likens the
beloved to “the woods at night
on fire,” “burning love, hope, and
desire,” “a wild melody”—all
powerful metaphors, sung in an
upward motion with strong, build-
ing harmonies. At the end of each
verse, the speaker acknowledges
he may not be the one chosen but
belts out a repeated ofer anyway:
“Take my love.”
2) Releasing: describing or embody-
ing the process of letting go. This
feeling of release is often invoked
by stylistic performance choices,
such as the half-shouted repetition
of vocals and the wailing guitar in
76 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
Etta James’s version of “The Sky Is
Crying” or the upward harmonic
motion of the bridge in the Dixie
Chicks’ “Let Him Fly,” a song
about releasing a lover. The act
of singing harmony is, in itself,
vulnerable. In an interview on
Weekend Edition Sunday, Kanene
Pipkin from The Lone Bellow—a
band NPR described as “a trio
built on harmony and trust”—
spoke about participation in vocal
harmonization: “It’s so much
about trust and hope, and I think
it adds a quality to the music that
just can’t be faked, or […] taught
with technique.”
3) Asking: stating need. These songs
can be prayer-like or written like
a letter addressed to an unseen
“you.” A Great Big World and
Christina Aguilera’s “Say Some-
thing” illustrates intense love
(“I’ll be the one, if you want me
to,” “Anywhere, I would have
followed you,”) before letting
out a last cry that begs a response
before the speaker says goodbye
indefinitely. Jane Siberry’s
plaintive “Sweet Incarnadine,”
about the speaker’s overpowering
feelings for a lover and her desire
to have those feelings returned,
was produced with an echoed
cathedral quality that invokes the
feeling of prayer.
4) Accepting: describing the state
of things, no matter how hard,
without ofering a solution.
Existing simply as an expression
of emotion, these songs render
loneliness, pain, and longing
without trying to fix or change
them. Shawn Colvin’s “A Matter
of Minutes” discloses the speaker’s
inner turmoil before a big deci-
sion. Torn between knowing she
must leave her lover and trying to
combat an old pattern of leaving,
the description of the speaker’s
thought process invites the listener
into the present moment.
5) Relief: nodding to hardship
through an ofering of peace.
Mumford & Sons’ “After the
Storm” describes hope after loss,
contrasting the speaker in the
present moment (“on my knees
and out of luck, I look up”) against
the refrain, which depicts the
quiet moment of grace after the
storm. This contrast, along with
the melodic shifts between minor
and major chords in the refrain,
gives the listener the experience of
moving from a place of sufering
into one of relief.
6) Gratitude: expressing thanks.
Rising Appalachia’s “Novels of
Acquaintance” acknowledges joy
in many forms: newfound love,
family roots, natural splendor,
hope for the future—yet the song
still feels vulnerable. Joy is also
a form of vulnerability, Brené
Brown reminds us in her book
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to
Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We
Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. She
argues that we fear joy is only a
passing state, so we often choose
to live disappointed: “It feels more
vulnerable to dip in and out of
disappointment than to just set up
camp there. You sacrifice joy, but
you sufer less pain,” she writes.
According to Brown, gratitude and
joy are inextricable: “The shudder
of vulnerability that accompanies
joy is an invitation to practice grat-
itude, to acknowledge how truly
grateful we are for the person, the
beauty, the connection, or simply
the moment before us.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found that
songs which called upon two or more
of these six categories had the most
powerful impact. Bonnie Raitt’s
“I Can’t Make You Love Me,” for
example, exhibits ofering, accepting,
and releasing. The lyrics beg no reci-
procity (“I will lay down my heart”)
and describe a state of pain without
trying to change it (“I can’t make
you love me if you don’t”). There’s
a sense of surrender, humility, and
a willingness to be rejected. “I will
give up this fight,” Raitt belts out in
the final line of the second verse, a
sudden release.
Beneath the Words
The pull music exerts on us is cross-
cultural and ancient. We dance before
we learn to speak. When I listen to a
piece of music, I feel the sound of it in
my body before the words can register
in my brain. Vulnerability in song-
writing rests heavily in the musical
undercurrent beneath the lyrics. Here,
too, there are lessons for prose writers.
Forward momentum: When writing dif-
ficult material, it is important to keep
the writing fluid and forward-moving
so as not to overwhelm readers. In
an interview with Relevant magazine,
when asked if he had ever written
something he felt was too personal or
vulnerable to sing to others, The Lone
Bellow’s Zach Williams mentioned
“Two Sides of Lonely.” The song, a
deeply personal one for Williams, is
shot through with imagery: a frozen
park in Brooklyn on a dark winter
night; wind crashing through the trees;
the dead rocking back and forth in
their graves, singing forgotten songs.
It’s bitter, accusing a partner of letting
love die. Yet, in the musical rendering
of the song, these heartbreaking lyrics
are sung over a series of repeated
eighth notes played by the rhythm sec-
tion. The momentum created by the Join
eighth notes pulls the listener forward, award-winning
making a painful subject more bearable
and creating an efect of beauty rather
author
than abject heartbreak. Laura Pritchett
for a yearlong
Contrast: Sweeten pain with a touch
of beauty or humor. Deepen joy
writing
with a well-placed note of sadness. workshop.
Williams founded The Lone Bellow
in the aftermath of a horseback
riding accident that nearly left his
wife paralyzed. When he showed a
friend the journaling he had done
during this time of grief, his friend
saw the potential for song and
encouraged Williams to pick up
a guitar and turn his writing into
music. In an interview with NPR,
The Lone Bellow’s guitarist, Brian
Elmquist, spoke about contrast as the
element underwriting every one of
their sad songs: “It’s not, like, just
get sad. Let’s celebrate life and what
it is, the up and down. It’s all of it. It
The Whole Shebang:
sucks, and it’s great and beautiful and
Writing that Book Inside You
horrible at the same time.”
Each verse of Leonard Cohen’s
“Hallelujah” rings with utter devasta-
tion yet is followed by “Hallelujah,” Fishtrap’s Yearlong Workshop
which directly translates to “Praise the is a 13-month intensive
Lord.” Rising Appalachia’s “Novels of writing program modeled
Acquaintance,” about the beginning after low-residency MFA
of a deep and lasting love, juxtaposes programs, with short, intense
sharp, dissonant vocal harmonies
group sessions framing a year
of long-distance instruction –
against pleasant words and a melodic
ofered at about half the cost
background. In a 2016 interview with
of most low-residency MFA
Stereogum, producer Don Was spoke programs.
about Bonnie Raitt’s use of contrast
during the recording process of “I Apply at ishtrap.org
Can’t Make You Love Me”: or call us at
541-426-3623
It was so emotional on such a myriad of to learn more.
levels, but it has to do with something
that is very hard to describe in the tone
of her voice. I mean the song could go
to the morose really quickly, right?
But there is a strength combined with a
 ly found in live performance. Simplic-
ity. Imperfection. Dynamics. The
management of silence. When Bonnie
Raitt performed “I Can’t Make You
Love Me” live in August 2015, only
the pianist and the drummer remained
onstage, leaving almost no instrumenta-
tion in between the singer and her
audience. Raitt took of her guitar and
sat on a stool. Washed in blue light, she
sang with deliberate slowness, taking
upstreet_MTKWUM[aW]ZKZMI\Q^MVWVÅK\QWV time to reach each precise pitch. The
ritardando and syncopation between
Submissions for upstreet 15 will be open from September 1 stanzas highlighted the silence and
\W5IZKP8ZM^QW][Q[[]M[PI^MQVKT]LML_WZSJa space after each phrase, allowing room
8PQTTQX4WXI\M5QKPIMT5IZ\WVM4aLQI,I^Q[,W]OTI[/TW^MZ
for the listener to enter the song and
8PaTTQ[*IZJMZ:WJQV*TIKS0IZZQ[WV+IVLMTIZQI.TM\KPMZ
draw a parallel to her own experience.
IVLUIVaM`KMTTMV\MUMZOQVO_ZQ\MZ[
In the interview with Stereogum, sound
?MPI^MX]JTQ[PMLQV\MZ^QM_[_Q\P)VLZM,]J][111 engineer Ed Cherney recounted the
;]M?QTTQIU;QT^MZUIV:WJQV0MUTMa recording of the song, which Raitt did
,IVQ;PIXQZW2WIV?QKSMZ[PIUIVLW\PMZ[
in a single take:
AW]_QTTÅVLaW]Z[MTNQV^MZaOWWLKWUXIVa
www.upstreet-mag.org/guidelines I could feel her soul when she sang it.
It was just one of those moments where
the studio disappears, and the whole
world disappears, and all that’s there is
the emotion of that thing. As far as I’m
vulnerability. There’s still a sweetness in between head voice (higher register, concerned, that’s what great music and
her voice. softer, breathier) and chest voice great art is. It just pulls you into the
(louder, more solid timbre). The chest moment, and the feeling and emotion of
Voicing: Shifting between interior and voice is used for the bulk of the verses, it. I felt like I could feel her heart.
exterior voicing is a powerful tool for which are rooted in the storytelling of
creating characters with depth. The use Delilah cutting Samson’s hair to subdue Brian Elmquist expressed a similar
of these two voices shows complexity his strength. The true psychic weight of concept in The Lone Bellow’s interview
of personality, need, and emotion, the song is felt during the switch back with NPR:
and reveals the tension between what to direct address at the end of the song:
a character says and what he or she is “You are my sweetest downfall. I loved We, in a day, will play to a bunch of
feeling. In his performance of “Cover you first.” It is this one well-placed people, and songs that you’ve written
Me Up,” Jason Isbell uses changes in line of interior voice that delivers the and you’re a part of are a part of their
register and volume to diferentiate emotional punch. story. And they’ve almost [taken] the
his strong, directive voice (“Girl, leave meaning, your meaning, out of it and
your boots by the bed; we ain’t leaving Presence: “The reader is in love with put theirs in it. That’s what’s so beauti-
this room”) from his tender, more continuity, with extent, with duration, ful about singing these songs.
vulnerable interior voice (“so cover me [a]bove all with presence—the feeling
up and know you’re enough to use me that each sentence isn’t merely a static For Upstate New York singer-
for good”). construct but inhabited by the writer,” songwriter Travis Knapp, presence and
Similarly, in “Samson,” Regina Spe- writes Verlyn Klinkenborg in Several vulnerability can be cultivated where
ktor illustrates the diference between Short Sentences about Writing. In music, song meets audience. He explained to
interior and exterior by alternating elements of presence are most frequent- me in an interview:

78 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

 I either tell a story, or get people singing,
or both. Or get people dancing! That’s
one way that people can become vulner-
able. If you’re dancing, suddenly you’re
part of the song. Do you ever read
something and think, “Whoa, I need to
stop doing this right now and go do that
thing they wrote about?” That’s what I
want it to be like. What inspires people
to get up and go take action in their com-
munity? What makes them talk to the
person in the next room? What makes
them want to share it?
Writing Powerful Lyrics
When I listen to song lyrics, I’m
looking for language that is specific,
unique, and engaging. Songwriting
expert Pat Pattison encourages strong
imagery in lyrical songwriting. “Your
job as a writer isn’t to point to a generic
territory where images could be, but
instead to go there, get one, and show it
to your listeners,” he explains in Writing
Better Lyrics: The Essential Guide to Power-
ful Songwriting. This can be achieved
through precise detail and a clear focus
on the lyric idea. Pattison suggests
wordplay—taking time to craft mean-
ing through specificity, carefully chosen
metaphor and simile, and powerful
juxtaposition of words. He ofers an
exercise for choosing a metaphor:
Make a list of five interesting adjectives.
Then, for each one, find an interest-
ing noun that creates a fresh, exciting
metaphor. Take as long as you need for
each adjective—hours, even days. Keep
it in your vision. Push it against every
noun you see until you create a breath-
taking collision.
Pattison describes a song as “a stack of
boxes,” with each verse interesting and
productive so the refrain lands with
more impact every time. Good lyrics
hook the listener with a strong opening
and then drive toward meaning as each
verse builds on the last.
Another important consideration
is where material in a story or song is
naturally highlighted. “The opening
and closing lines of any lyric section are
naturally strong,” Pattison writes. “If
you want people to notice an important
idea, put it in the lights of a power
position, and you will communicate the
idea more forcefully.”
Every story needs an access point.
Experimenting with diferent points
of view can help a writer figure out
the most powerful form of address.
Pattison suggests writing diferent ver-
sions of the same story on a continuum
from most intimate to least intimate
address: direct second-person narrative,
first-person narrative, third-person
narrative. The same idea can be applied
to chronology—experimenting with
the order of beginning, middle, and
end—to find the most salient entrance
to the story.
Becoming the Vulnerable Writer
Those who choose to engage with
vulnerability invariably claim that the
process, though diicult, is worth it.
“Vulnerability is still uncomfortable
and falling still hurts. It always will,”
Brené Brown writes in Rising Strong,
her book about gathering oneself up
after failure. “But I’m learning that the
process of struggling and navigating
hurt has as much to ofer us as the
process of being brave and showing
up.” Indeed, when asked by Relevant
Magazine about the experience of
singing “Two Sides of Lonely,” Zach
Williams had a surprising answer:
I cherish the moment in the show when
we sing that song, because it ebb[s] and
flows from tragedy, hope, betrayal,
redemption. I really enjoy singing the
song in front of people I don’t know. It’s
like one of those disciplines people do
to feel alive, like running—to remind
yourself that you feel.
The courage of these singers and
songwriters has not only granted me
more access to vulnerability in my own
writing, but has also left me asking
questions about the role of the artist
in the community. Travis Knapp, who
works on an herb farm, likens art to
permaculture. “In the permaculture
process, the way to make a system more
resilient is to be more connected with
parts of it,” he said. “The more parts
that are connected to each other, the
stronger the whole is. What’s the role
of art? To connect people to each other,
or people to their environment.”
Amanda Johnston, poet and cofound-
er of Black Poets Speak Out, calls the
act of writing “a slow dance between
what we dare not say and what demands
to be sung.” What if we allowed
ourselves to be deeply, vulnerably seen?
What if we weren’t afraid to show our
failure, to want wsomething badly, to
love with everything we’ve got? The
potential exists within the grasp of
the writer to influence the way we as
humans connect to each other, and to
ourselves. As artists, it is both our power
and responsibility to be agents of social
change. We must embrace the discom-
fort of vulnerability as an invitation.
And whatever, for each of us, demands
to be sung—we must sing it.
JENNY O’CONNELL's work has appeared
in or is forthcoming from Slice, Camas,
Stonecoast Review, and Wanderlust. She
is currently working on a book about her
solo trek across Finland in the footsteps of
a woman legendary among the gold miners
of Lapland. Jenny is a resident artist at the
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. She received
her master’s in creative writing from
Stonecoast MFA.
CREATIVE NONFICTION 79
 REQUIRED
For more than fifty years, John McPhee has informed and entertained
readers with his immersions into specific areas of expertise. Among
other adventures, he has ridden cross-country with truckers, gone up
in an experimental, wingless aircraft, and taken a deep dive into the
Florida orange industry. As a professor at Princeton since 1974, he has
also spent considerable time breaking down the process of writing,
and in a recent book he shared a lifetime of hard-won insights about
everything from starting a project to the physical organization of notes
to the intricacies of structure. In this issue, Shannon Reed finds both
comfort and inspiration in McPhee’s Draft No. 4.

You would think that by [the end of my second year as a New Yorker staff
writer] I would have developed some confidence in writing a new story, but I
hadn’t, and never would. To lack confidence at the outset seems rational to me.
— John McPhee, DRAFT NO. 4

SHANNON REED is best known as

a humorist for the New Yorker and
A s a professor teaching creative writing to undergraduates,
I’m asked dozens of questions about writing on a weekly
basis because my students distrust struggle and mistakenly sense
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Her
work has also appeared in Slate, the
that they’re somehow doing it wrong. I try my best to respond
Washington Post, Poets & Writers, with the few insights about the craft of writing that I’ve managed
and many more venues. She’s a
visiting lecturer in the University of
to cobble together over the years, making it clear that I’ve got the
Pittsburgh’s Writing Program. same writerly diiculties. Sometimes what I answer suices, but

80 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

more often, the student frowns, sighs,
and asks what they really want to
know: How the hell does writing work? I
always respond with the only answer
I know: However the hell you can get it
to work.
Writing can sometimes seem to
involve two contradictory yet simul-
taneous struggles: first, to continue to
move forward as a writer, and second,
to accept that periods of self-doubt
and fallowness are part of the work.
While there is some comfort in real-
izing that knocking around the attic
of one’s own brain, hoping to trip over
a story, is an essential part of being a
writer, camaraderie in despair doesn’t
feel like enough. What my students
really want is something to do, some
action to take that will move them
closer to actually writing.
Luckily for my students and me,
John McPhee’s recent book-cum-
master-class, Draft No. 4, is full of
helpful suggestions. Its first kindness is
to show us that even McPhee—revered
longtime staf writer for the New
Yorker, professor of journalism at
Princeton, and author of more than
thirty books—struggles. It’s deeply
comforting to learn that a nonfiction
writer as pioneering and important
as McPhee tortures himself with the
same questions as my first-year writing
students have. He describes himself
lying on a picnic table in his backyard
for “nearly two weeks, staring up into
branches and leaves, fighting fear and
panic” because he doesn’t know how to
start an essay. His research is done, and
notes and recordings are piled up on
his desk, but he doesn’t know where to
begin. What a helpful gift to allow us
to see him stuck!
The other great kindness of
the book is that McPhee does not
merely catalogue his writer’s block;
he demonstrates how he gets out of
it, making use of techniques that are
blessedly simple in concept (although,
as McPhee’s use shows, they can be
as complex as a writer wants). He
relies on techniques that vary from
the digital to the utilitarian, many of
which I found intriguing enough to
apply them to my book project, about
Broadway musicals and how they’ve
shaped my life. I’m not fighting
writer’s block, exactly, but the depth
of material available to me, both in my
recollections and in my research, can
feel as stupefying as an empty page.
Where to begin?
First, McPhee counsels, the proper
mindset must be undertaken. While
he seems as tortured as any of us by
the dreadful process of beginning an
essay or book, he seems to lack (or at
Being stuck is hard, he acknowledges,
but it’s not wrong, exactly.
least has successfully suppressed) the
self-lambasting instinct too many of
us indulge. Being stuck is hard, he
acknowledges, but it’s not wrong,
exactly. It’s a stage, and stages are
moved through, with efort.
To what end should we put our
mental efort? Although it must be
noted that at no point in the book does
McPhee dictate, he does suggest that
structure is where the work of craft-
ing nonfiction is most diicult; on the
other hand, he makes a strong case
that settling on a workable structure
is ultimately tremendously freeing.
He begins the book with an account
of a complicated structure he decided
to put together before he had a topic
in mind—“That is no way to start a
writing project, let me tell you,” he
notes dryly—and then demonstrates
a number of diferent structures he’s
employed in his writing, typically af-
ter research: for example, he explains
how he arrived at the structure of his
profile of Thomas Hoving, then-
director of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, which was eventually titled
“A Roomful of Hovings” and pub-
lished in the New Yorker in 1967. The
research McPhee had done gradually
revealed that Hoving’s story was best
told as a series of thematic sections
that skipped around in time, rather
than follow a more typical “He was
born in …” structure. McPhee notes
that this structure leaves room for the
readers to work some of the meaning
out for themselves.
The Hoving profile’s structure is
diagrammed in the book, a kind of
visual explanation McPhee helpfully
provides for several of his works. And
yet, he notes that he’s constantly look-
ing for “a structure that makes sense
and is not just clever.” The structure,
he asserts, is for the writer, and readers
should not especially notice it. But he’s
also not in favor of writing that makes
the easiest choice, noting himself to be
particularly unmoved by the siren call
of chronological or other hackneyed
structures: “Has any other writer ever
not done that?” he asks. As I had been
considering a chronological structure
for my book, I was relieved to read
that McPhee doesn’t dismiss any struc-
ture unilaterally: if a typical structure
passes the other tests—if it makes
sense, isn’t clever, and works for the
writing—then it’s worth considering.
I decided that keeping a chronological
structure made the most sense, but
CREATIVE NONFICTION 81
 that the book had to be more than a
straight-line march through my life.
At first, all of the emphasis on struc-
ture over topic confused me. Then I
realized that topic is not unimportant
to McPhee; it’s just that structure
seems to be as important. And actu-
ally, McPhee suggests, there is an
intriguing tension between subject and
structure, between the story and the
way the story is told. “The narrative,”
he writes, “wants to move from point
to point through time, while topics
that have arisen now and again across
someone’s life cry out to be collected.”
On that note, I was somewhat
surprised by McPhee’s observation
that in 90 percent of his writing, he’s
explored topics that were of interest to
him before college, a statistic I suspect
would leave me writing much more
pervasively about R.E.M. and U2
than I currently do. But then I realized
that my interest in musicals absolutely
proves his point, as I fell in love with
them when I was a child. I began to see
what McPhee means: we write about
what we’re drawn to, and while our
interests may expand somewhat over
our lifetimes, they change less than we
might expect because we change less
than we might expect.
I realized I had to find spaces in my
book that stepped outside the chronol-
ogy of my life, places that allowed for
deeper explorations of certain topics,
including a close look at the title
number from the movie Singin’ in the
Rain, a performance by Gene Kelly
that haunts me. With McPhee’s advice
in mind, I began to think about the
way an evening at the theater unfolds,
from the settling in at the top of the
show to the comparison of notes at
intermission to the 11 o’clock number,
when a musical hits its high point in
energy and excitement. Sections I had
been thinking of as digressions weren’t
digressions at all, I realized, but could
82 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
work like songs in a show, allowing in-
sight into the characters’ thoughts and
dreams, and I could intersperse them
in the chronology of the book the way
songs are placed in the plot of a show.
With a tentative structure and a
definite topic, then, I had a plan and
started researching. I knew I wanted
to focus on the musical Godspell in
the opening chapter, as it was my first
musical, so I started there. Researching
all of musical theatre is hard; research-
ing one show less so.
Advice on how to research is where
McPhee is particularly inspiring.
He’s eighty-seven now, and his
writing technique is characterized
as as old school as you can get if you
don’t employ a medieval scribe. This
reputation is unfair, as one of the great
revelations of the book is that McPhee
has long used the computer program
KEDIT, adapted by a friend to suit his
exact needs, to help him draft. But the
drudgery of his system, before the ar-
rival of personal computers somewhat
streamlined it, is memorable: he’d type
up all of his notes, then code each by
where it should appear in his structure,
then photocopy the typed notes, then
cut those photocopies into slivers, and
finally, he writes, “If the structure
had, say, thirty parts, the slivers would
end up in thirty piles that would be
put into thirty manila folders.” From
there, he’d write up each section by
spilling out the slivers and reorganiz-
ing them before he typed.
I should pause here and mention that
this description thrills me, although
it seems—and is!—laborious. I knit
and sew and cook and garden and, in
general, love using my hands to make
things. Writing, a thing I do almost
entirely in the digital realm these days,
from concept to publication, can feel
almost ethereal at times. I often find
myself lost in a project if I’ve had to
step away, frustrated that I can’t simply
flip to the page where I was working
or take up the notecards I had been
using. Strange as it may sound consid-
ering the hours I spend typing, I long
to use my hands as a writer.
Why it’s never before occurred to me
to embrace the physicality of writing
a book is a very good question, but
for now, I’ll simply express my relief
that McPhee’s technique has allowed
me to do so. For a solid two weeks,
I read books connected to my topic
and took down notes on cards, coding
them with the source and other helpful
information. At the end of those two
weeks, I spent several hours sorting the
cards into stacks, then the stacks into a
rough outline, and then, as I imagined
McPhee beaming with approval, I put
away all but one of those stacks. Sitting
at my laptop, I began to write the story
of how Godspell came to be and how
I first saw it. As I remembered how it
felt to hear a musical for the first time,
I thought of McPhee’s advice about
a lede: it “should be a flashlight that
shines down into the story.”
Flashlight batteries dim and die,
of course, and though I’m trucking
along on my book, it’s highly possible
that I’ll need to go back and rework
the lede or the structure or both.
But I do feel free of the worries with
which I began the project: I’m neither
swamped with too many ideas nor
starving for one. I feel empowered
to focus on what interests me in each
chapter and to weave the factual
information I want to include into my
memoir. I can thank John McPhee for
all of that. I like his combination of
intellectual rigor and physical craft,
which makes me feel that all of me can
contribute to the creation of this book.
Will the end product be as concise and
beautiful as one of McPhee’s works?
Probably not. But standing on the
shoulders of giants still provides quite
a lovely view.
 Experiments in nonfiction

EXPLORING
THE BOUNDAR
IES

The Guggenheim
Fellowship Career
(Non-) Narrative Essay
IRA SUKRUNGRUANG

IRA SUKRUNGRUANG is the It is our inward journey that leads us through time—forward
author of three nonfiction
books: Buddha’s Dog &
or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of
Other Meditations, Southside us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover,
Buddhist, and Talk Thai: The
Adventures of Buddhist Boy.
we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely
He is a cofounder of Sweet: do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.
A Literary Confection and
teaches at the University of
— Eudora Welty, ONE WRITER’s BEGINNINGS
South Florida.

1.

I have been babysitting my student’s two-year-old

boy for the last three hours, while my student and
his wife go out for the night. The boy is bubbly.
He has the habit of bouncing on his toes when he
is excited, and he is excited about everything. He’s
discovered language, and I marvel at how his mouth

CREATIVE NONFICTION 83
 and tongue wrestle with words. His vocabulary grows by the hour. He has
devoured the words I’ve taught him—predicament, osmosis, malfunction. As in,
“We have a predicament here, young boy.” And, “You’re learning through
osmosis.” And, “The robot has a malfunction.” His comprehension and forma-
tion of language fascinate me to no end. I tell him in the most excited voice I
can muster how smart he is. He’s excited at my excitement, so he speaks with
more vigor. Puts words into unique orders. Forms complicated and syntacti-
cally incorrect sentences. He trips up when he says grasshopper (“hassgropper”)
and lemonade (“lemonlaid”) and flip-flops (“footlops”). The two words he knows
well, the two words he uses over and over, are why and what. When I lay him
down to tell him a bedtime story, he interrupts with questions. These questions
are philosophical and illogical in the best ways. Why? he wants to know. Why
does the hedgehog have needles? Why is the prince so angry? And soon my story, a
loosely planned narrative, derails. And soon we are of into avenues of more
interest. More inquiry. Finally he succumbs to sleep, but we never reach the
end of the story.

2.

I can’t write a chronological career narrative for this Guggenheim Fellowship,

not because it is beneath me, or because I don’t believe in career narratives,
but because I’m unsure where to start and where to end. Every time I think of
beginnings and endings, I think of death, a dark hole I plummet down.

3.

In this time of my life—after a breakup, in the long trench of middle age—I

know only disorder, clutter, chaos. This is my writing process. I am not the
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Adam Johnson, who logs where, when, and how
much he writes, into spreadsheets that compute his optimal places and times for
creativity. I’m not like my colleague, the novelist John Henry Fleming, who
wakes at four in the morning and pounds out ten pages before his kids wake up
for school and it is time for carpooling.
No. I write amid mess. I have an oice, but it’s a storage facility for shoes and
unmatched socks.
Right now, I’m in the kitchen with my partner’s family. It’s evening. Her
younger daughter is playing The Sims on the computer, controlling the desti-
nies of her created characters. Her older daughter is busy making shepherd’s pie
for dinner. My partner is tending to a sick pet cockatiel. In the middle of this is
me, writing a career narrative for a fellowship I’m afraid I’m not good enough
to get.

84 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

4.

My creative nonfiction students believe the material for their nonfiction writing
exists only in the time period they have been alive in the world. The questions
they ask limit them to—well—them. Their narrow perspectives hinder the
scopes of their narratives. I want them to remember a time when the world was
new, remember that boy or girl wrestling with language for the first time, ques-
tioning everything. When they—we—were young, the outside world was one
big fascination. I prod them to dig deeper, to open other doors they never knew
existed, to explore other possibilities, to see themselves before their births, to
see themselves after they expire, to see themselves beyond themselves.
I was like them. (Still am at times.) As a nineteen-year-old English major at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, studying fiction and nonfiction with
Kent Haruf and Lisa Knopp, I turned in terribly young stories about greenish
aliens that resembled Asians or—although I was Buddhist—about God. I used
to believe that telling a personal story was all you needed in narrative, that the
story would do the work, that plot alone was power. My youth made me dream,
and I dreamt for myself a career similar to that of Amy Tan (the only Asian-
American writer I knew back then, and the inspiration for my collegiate nom de
plume, Pierce Tan: Tan after Amy; Pierce because my stories would pierce your
soul).  Like Amy, I would write a bestseller. I would write and write and write. I
would be famous.
This imagined writing career was a story marked by monumental accom-
plishments. What it lacked was the what and the why and the how. What it
lacked was “the guts,” as a teacher of mine once told me. What it lacked was
an understanding that being a writer is not a career choice at all, but a devotion
to engage in the life of the mind, in the creation of art that seeks to delve deep
beneath the surface.

5.

It would be easy to say my writing career began when my Thai immigrant

parents came to America—my mother in 1968, my father in 1972. It would
be easy to say it began when I was born in 1976, a couple of weeks before the
bicentennial. Or it began when I fell from the high chair and broke my arm. Or
when a group of bullies pinned me down and slapped my belly pink and raw. Or
when my mother went in for an emergency hysterectomy. Or when my father
moved out and disappeared for two years. But none of this would be true. These
are markers of my life. They are like the long drives on I-57 I used to make from
southern Illinois up to Chicago. The land would undulate up and down, then
flatten out to miles and miles of agriculture. I knew I would pass Mt. Vernon,
then Eingham, then Champaign, then Kankakee, and then finally reach

CREATIVE NONFICTION 85
 Chicago. Within those six hours, my mind would jump back and forth between
ideas, girls, classes, life and death.
Perhaps it is much simpler.
Perhaps my writing career began when I asked my first question.

6.

Or sooner.
Buddha said in this life we look for our fingerprints from our other lives.

7.

The immigrant story is not linear. It is not shaped by cause and efect as media
outlets make it out to be. And the immigrant story is not finite; it doesn’t end
once an immigrant makes it to America. It fact, it begins again. It keeps begin-
ning. There are other challenges. Other heartbreaks. Other sadnesses that lurk
in the shadows.
The son of immigrants will inherit the immigrant story. At first, he may not
know what to do with it. It is heavy and unwieldy. It does not fit comfortably
into the pockets of his stonewashed jeans. For a while, he simply finds a place
where it can gather dust while he cruises around the mall with his friends. Years
later, he will return to it because, eventually, the immigrant story will call to him.
He will look at it and see himself. So he will begin to unfold the narrative. Slowly.
As he did with paper airplanes to understand the mechanics of their glide. He
will not know what to do with what he finds. There are too many questions. Too
many avenues of exploration. But he will be glad he has found it. All these layers.
He has learned that not all questions need answers. Just asking is good enough.

8.

Don’t laugh. The first story I completed was entitled “Murder from the Heart.”
It was a mystery set in a high school chemistry class. I don’t remember much of
the plot except for the creative use of a petri dish as a murder weapon and a love
story between a Thai main character and a beautiful redhead whom I modeled
after my current love interest at the time. Don’t laugh. I remember the fancy
font I used, some random cursive that would drive me nuts now as a teacher. I
was in high school, and my English teacher wrote something like, I really love your
writing, Ira. You remind me of me at your age, so lost in the idea of love. I was. I was a
love-crazed teenager. Don’t laugh.
My teacher’s praise for “Murder from the Heart” has stuck with me. His praise
was better than the Illinois Arts Council Award (2001), or the Arts and Letters
Fellowship (2003), or the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2005),

86 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

or the Just Desserts Short-Short Fiction Prize (2008), or any of the times my
essays have been selected as notable in Best American Essays (1999, 2007, 2008,
2011, 2013, 2014). (As requested in the Guggenheim guidelines: selected awards
and honors.) My English teacher was a man I admired very much during a
time in my life I thought I’d never get through. (So spurned by life! Oh angsty
adolescence!) His comment on my work was a shared moment, a connection, a
communication. A career as a writer is not so much about what you’ve accrued
from your writing as it is about the conversations you have entered in with it.
“It’s about being part of this tribe,” a friend once said. This has become
my mantra.

9.

I’m not against narrative. I love chronology. My first book, Talk Thai: The
Adventures of Buddhist Boy, is a narrative about growing up in Chicago. I have
written essays and stories and poems adhering to the rules of chronological
order. I admire writers who manage linear time well. To write a memoir is to
construct something that is unnatural. We take what comes in fragments, and
we impose order. In Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner wrote, “I believe in Time,
as [my grandparents] did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life
existential.” And I, of course, understand Stegner. I mean, what do we do to
understand ourselves? We create a narrative. We tell a story, and in that story,
we learn, we change, we teach.
But for some reason, I can’t wrap my brain around writing a career narrative.
And perhaps I’m being dense. Perhaps I’m overthinking this. (I really would like
this fellowship!) Because I do feel “existential” about it, as if to list awards and
honors doesn’t really encapsulate a career. The things that really capture a career
are hard to mention. Are the invisible practices a writer/artist/musician does day
in, day out. To paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston: the agony of an untold story.

10.

Just a second ago, my partner’s daughter asked if I was writing a poem. I told
her I was working on a grant. “Fun stuf,” she said. Her sister, on the couch
watching My Little Pony, said she had Googled me. “You’re famous,” she said.
Then she said she watched a Facebook clip of me singing karaoke. “They should
give you a grant for that.”

11.

One of the assignments I give my students is the two-page autobiography.

They have to write their entire lives in that small space. It’s an impossible

CREATIVE NONFICTION 87
 assignment, and they think I give it to them to torture them. I do. But like all
assignments I’ve given, I’ve done it before, myself. I’ve been tortured, too. My
two-page autobiography contained all the topics I return to now, will return
to for the rest of my writing career: what it means to be the son of two Thai
immigrants; what home is; how to maneuver in the world as a big bodied
individual. But that assignment—I restarted it endlessly. I cursed my teacher
for assigning it. It never seemed right.
This is a good marker of a career as a writer: the number of writing exercises
you’ve done in your life. The number of times you’ve felt tortured. The num-
ber of times doubt has crept into your psyche. The number of times you’ve
pondered how to write this career narrative.

12.

Answer to the last question above: thirty-three.

13.

When I was awarded the Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Writer’s Center
in Bethesda (2011), a friend asked me what emerging means. I told him I didn’t
know. I told him I had followed the fellowship guidelines, and according to
the guidelines, I qualified. He asked me how they chose winners. I told him I
didn’t know. Probably a panel of judges. Probably the quality of work. He told
me he thought I had already emerged. That there was nothing emerging about
me, especially my writing career. The only thing emerging was my belly over
my waistline.

14.

I’ve looked up the etymological roots of the word career. (When desperate,
look at an Oxford English Dictionary.) In the 1530s, the word career meant “a
running, [a]course,” a term that was used to describe the movement of the sun
in the sky. Later, as a verb, career meant “to charge (at a [ jousting] tournament)”
or “to gallop, run, or move at full speed.”
My career is not running at full speed. It is not staying the course. It is
meandering here and there. It is stopping to smell the roses. To spin in an open
field. To pick flowers along the way. To be easily distracted by the blinding sun
or the buzzing bee. Oh, does it smell fresh baked bread in the valley? Oh, did
it remember to turn of the stove at home? Oh, does it hear its mother calling
from the next mountain?
Go. Whatever direction. Go. Keep moving. Never stop.

88 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.

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 Continued from Page 15
comfortable publishing stories that con-
front issues within a community they
don’t belong to. I’ve published stories in
which facets of Black culture, or Black
and white American conceptions of
race, are critiqued, and I’ve heard from
Diversifying literary magazines has
to be a movement. Editors need to
challenge and change perceptions.
They need to encourage, expand,
extend—hell, redefine—literary
excellence and aesthetics, narrative
styles, and the art of storytelling.
some white readers, “Don’t you know
the Black experience is beautiful?”
DE LEON: But you have every right
to write the characters and plots and
settings you so desire. We all do.
ESCOFFERY: What’s underneath their
impulse is a flattening out of people
seen as “other” into representative
ideas. Take, for example, the dedicated
viewers of Fox News, for whom the
definition of thug is “any young Black
man.” The “don’t you know Black
people are beautiful” thing is, simi-
larly, a failure to see us as individuals
and a failure to see our humanity. It’s
the flip side of what we think of as
overtly racist thinking, yet it’s not the
opposite of racist thinking but rather a
fraternal twin.
We are, to a portion of well-meaning
white liberals, an accumulation of Black
History Month lessons. We are victims
of subjugation, or we are triumph in
the face of adversity—we are 12 Years a
90 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
Slave, or we’re Hidden Figures—but we
are not allowed to be anything else. We
are not allowed a full range of doubts
and mistakes and ugliness, as comes
requisite for the human experience. I’m
not claiming these two manifestations
of racist thought are equally heinous—
there is a more evil twin here, the one
that visits frequent and lethal violence
upon those who look like me—but
liberal racism is insidious and should be
identified as such.
BAIDYA: Looking specifically at the
literary journal landscape, there doesn’t
seem to be much of an appetite to
understand the nuances and aesthetics
that don’t align with white liberal
conceptions of what comprises diversity.
DE LEON: When expectation doesn’t
meet “demand,” then there is a problem.
BAIDYA: And if the writing challenges
the viewpoints or stereotypes editors
have of other cultures, they appear
reluctant to engage. The demographics
of writers and readers are evolving. And
here, I really do empathize with literary
journals and magazines because they
face multiple challenges of resources,
space, funding, and time, and I realize
those challenges make the responsibility
to diversity even harder. Is there an
incentive for them?
DE LEON: I recently had a story
accepted at the Iowa Review. When I
was at AWP (the annual conference of
the Association of Writers and Writing
Programs), I went to their table. The
woman who had read my story and
promoted it was there. Is it a coinci-
dence that she was a WOC herself?
Maybe. Maybe not. I’m leaning
towards maybe no because I had sent
that particular story to about thirty
diferent journals over the years.
BAIDYA: When I look at my stories
that have eventually been accepted in
comparison with the ones that were
rejected (oh so many times), I see a
glaring pattern. Because of that and my
belief in conscious or unconscious quo-
tas, I tend to submit stories where race
and ethnicity are central, or I make
it so for publishing, checking certain
buckets for grievance or injustice, the
immigrant experience, etc. These are
good stories, although my range and
scope of work is broader than they al-
low. It is a challenge to publish or even
tell a story that is unraced, and simply
human, if the character is not white.
ESCOFFERY: The importance of having
people of color involved in editorial
decisions can’t be overstated, but even
if there’s a POC on the other end of
the submission process, it’s not a given
that they’ll relate to your point of
view. In fact, it can at times be the op-
posite, if what you’re writing doesn’t
line up exactly with their politics.
Many people have a diicult time
understanding that you can love and
critique the culture you exist within.
Often, you critique it because you
love it. I know that for the African
American community, it’s frowned
upon if you’re not holding the line,
so to speak, and questioning what it
means to be a member of this com-
munity is blasphemy. Some within
the community understand that you
are striving to show the variation and
range and freedom to ask questions
of your culture, while others think
you’re encouraging division or airing
dirty laundry.
BAIDYA: When you start peeling the
layers, getting deeper into the topic of
diversity and what it really means, you
realize how complex and convoluted
it is. It can make well-meaning white
people uncomfortable to hear it. I am
uncomfortable saying this out loud.
It feels as though WOC are supposed
to represent something bigger than
ourselves. We need to be pure and
unflinching in some ways. Our stories,
too, need to embrace certain narra-
tives or aesthetics that are familiar,
or are in the realm of familiarity for
white editors.
SCHECK-KAHN: What other constraints
have you encountered? What are the
implicit writing rules from which
mainstream white writers are exempt
and about which white editors might
be oblivious?
BAIDYA: I have noticed that if a
character is white, their race is never
explicitly mentioned. You just assume
they are white. But POC are expected
to introduce every character with their
race, cultural background, context,
etc. Our stories cannot be unraced. We
may try to tell a story that explores
those identities, experiences rooted in
that which isn’t necessarily clean or
clear-cut. The extra space we take to
illustrate “cultural information” can
weigh down a narrative, and it’s our
responsibility to ensure that it doesn’t.
White editors may or may not appreci-
ate this extra work that we do.
ESCOFFERY: One craft idea that fails
my characters at times is “show don’t
tell.” I have to “tell” because the
cultural cues aren’t always going to be
the same when I’m writing characters
who have one foot in the Caribbean
and one in the United States, assuming
a significant portion of my readers
don’t also have that experience.
BAIDYA: I hear you, Jonathan. If you
explain too much, it’s exposition; if
too little, then “they” don’t get it.
SCHECK-KAHN: What you’re saying
reminds me of a talk I attended
recently about queer writing and
how most readers expect straight and
CREATIVE NONFICTION 91
 cisgendered characters unless explicitly
stated otherwise. If you are going to
show, you need to really show because
readers will try to straighten out your
characters if you leave the smallest
margin of that possibility.
ESCOFFERY: Right! If you leave any
room for misinterpretation, readers
assume the dominant narrative. I like
to grapple with questions of identity
very explicitly in my writing; it’s not
necessarily that I’m getting explainy
for a white American audience so
much as I’m asking questions that
even I, as the person who has lived the
experience, want answers to. I want to
make sure I understand how the given
events went down, because I don’t
have the road map of how to experi-
ence these things: I never or almost
never see them in literature.
SCHECK-KAHN: There aren’t
canonized examples of what you’re
doing because it isn’t yet part of the
“universal” experience currently
represented in literature. How do you
describe what’s currently included in
that experience?
BAIDYA: That makes me think of
something Roxane Gay said in an
interview about what kind of stories
she likes: “I love literary fiction so
long as it is not about (a) writers, (b)
sad white people in sad marriages or (c)
sad white writers in bad marriages.”
More seriously, it is very hard to
articulate what should be considered
universal. Whiteness is such an innate
and universal construct in publishing
that it is hard to deconstruct it without
making people uncomfortable, and get-
ting uncomfortable yourself, especially
if you’re a new upcoming “immigrant”
writer without a platform.
Growing up in India, I read and
marveled at the short fiction of
92 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
Salinger, Hemingway, and Raymond
Carver. Because of these stories, I fell
in love with the short story form, but
it was only after reading story collec-
tions by writers like Jhumpa Lahiri,
Ha Jin, and Yiyun Li that I felt open
to the possibility of being able to write
my stories; their work bridged the lack
of universal experience for me.
SCHECK-KAHN: We are talking here a
lot about fiction writing or creating
fictionalized accounts of lived experi-
ences. I’m curious if, when you write
creative nonfiction, you find a set
of restrictions and/or opportunities
diferent from those you encounter
in fiction. Are there any challenges
unique to the genre? Because readers
can guess the ethnic background
of the narrator based on the author
photo, are you freed from managing
reader expectations? Or are there
other, diferent expectations inherent
in the genre?
ESCOFFERY: That’s a great question,
Jenn. In a way, it is really freeing not
to have to establish my race in the same
way that I worry about establishing
the race of my characters in fiction. At
the same time, if I’m writing about race
and identity and power structures and
I’m saying POC have more challenges
getting published, there’s less distance
between me and my writing—there’s
more opportunity to ofend that white
editor who would like very much not
to see themselves as part of the problem
and who might actually feel a little
fatigued with POC talking and writing
about race. When I’m writing creative
nonfiction, I have to worry more
that I’m shooting myself in the foot
by taking on certain subjects that are
important to me and the community.
SCHECK-KAHN: Interesting, Jonathan.
Sounds like it might be easier to say
the hard truths with fiction than
creative nonfiction.
ESCOFFERY: I think so. In fiction, I
might have many characters with
many viewpoints, and they’re all
coming from me. With creative
nonfiction, I feel more exposed, like if
I say something, I’d better say it right
and be prepared for the consequences.
SCHECK-KAHN: So, technically,
creative nonfiction might be more
appealing, but fiction seems to ofer
more freedom, more cover. The result
is less confining.
ESCOFFERY: I’d say there’s a lot of truth
to that.
BAIDYA: Judging from what gets
published, there seems to be a lot more
appetite for engaging and understand-
ing the consciousness and tradition of
another culture, and the complexities of
storytelling, in creative nonfiction.
DE LEON: In general, I think creative
nonfiction allows more room for
the “telling” we were talking about
earlier. So there’s that. I love writing
creative nonfiction. Essays are all about
trying (essayer, in French) to untie some
knot, to figure out something, to ask
questions. So it’s natural to have more
voice, more conversational narration,
I guess. I also love nonfiction because
no one can challenge it in the way one
can challenge the veracity of fiction.
No one can say, “Yeah, but that would
never really happen.” It’s like, no . . . it
did happen; I’m telling you it happened,
and I’m right here. There is a kind of
power in that. Testimony. Witnessing.
BAIDYA: I agree with Jennifer. I am not
an essayist, but I’ve begun to write
them. They are a powerful tool for
expressing myself, and they get stuf
out of my system that might be too
“explainy” for fiction. Very cathartic.
DE LEON: I will also add this: tradition-
ally, many POC are hesitant to air
their family secrets and all in creative
nonfiction. We weren’t raised to do
that. Many in the Latinx community
were told by family not to share your
personal sh*t with the world. I’m
not saying writing fiction is easier
than writing nonfiction, but there is
a kind of liberating aspect to it. “But
it’s not me, and it’s not my family,”
for instance. The impulse comes from
a tradition of being silenced. That’s
slowly changing.
SCHECK-KAHN: In what ways have your
characters or narratives been misunder-
stood by a “whitestream” readership?
BAIDYA: One of my stories, which
eventually got published in a
UK-based literary magazine, had
a narrator who was a middle-class,
educated Indian man, who happened
to have a maid. I got very useful and
meaningful feedback, which truly
helped me improve the story, but there
was one piece of common feedback
that I received: “I wonder how the
story would be if written from the
point of view of the maid. It would
let us see the real India.” Now, this
was good feedback, an exercise that
tested diferent points of view and
narrative styles, and eventually helped
me explore my characters more deeply,
but it also made me a bit uncomfort-
able. Real India? What did they mean
by that? In fact, one editor blatantly
said, “I want to see more slums. This is
Bombay, after all.” But that wasn’t the
story I was trying to tell. My narrator
would not venture into a slum. And
like any other new writer trying to
get published, I struggle to discern
which feedback I should follow. Was
this a good critique to act upon, or did
it simply come from the whitestream
perception of how a story set in
Bombay should be told? It could be
both. So that’s an added layer.
ESCOFFERY: This might sound asinine,
but Black people have dealt with
oppression for so goddamn long in
this country, and we’ve dealt with
it, in part, by cracking jokes. It’s a
coping mechanism, and it’s all over our
writing. The way we employ humor is
I also love nonfiction because no one
can challenge it in the way one can
challenge the veracity of fiction. No
one can say, “Yeah, but that would
never really happen.” It’s like, no
. . . it did happen; I’m telling you
it happened, and I’m right here.
There is a kind of power in that.
Testimony. Witnessing.
linked to class, too: the poorer you are,
the more powerless you feel, the more
likely you’ll rely on it to get by. I wish
editors would understand that some of
the dialogue in Black people’s fiction
is not meant to be harsh; it’s humorous
coping, often in the face of insur-
mountable adversity. I feel like one in
four white editors really get this. Do I
have actual stats? Of course not. And
I’m laughing as I write this. But I’ll
hear from one editor that she thinks
my character is hilarious while another
three don’t get why he’s so mad. So,
yeah, there’s another challenge.
SCHECK-KAHN: Jonathan, what you’ve
said gets to the core of the problem
here. Why don’t they pick up on hu-
mor? Because they are unconsciously
biased to assume anger, perhaps, but
also because they just don’t get the
tone. Isn’t there some famous saying
that you don’t understand a culture
until you find their jokes funny?
Nothing denotes insider/outsider
mentality like humor, but because of
the power dynamic, you’re the one
placed as outsider.
ESCOFFERY: Right! I’ve heard from
editors who did publish my writing that
they had argued with their readers/edi-
tors about how to understand the tone.
SCHECK-KAHN: They don’t hear it
because they don’t have models for it.
How do you teach someone how to
interpret a tone they haven’t heard?
ESCOFFERY: How indeed.
BAIDYA: The simple answer is that
they need to broaden their horizons
and publish more writing that
CREATIVE NONFICTION 93
showcases diferent voices. Editors need
to overcome the reluctance to engage
or understand stories outside certain
familiar arcs.
ESCOFFERY: Does fiction have to
present a dramatic arc at all? When you
write stories that are not about a charac-
ter’s final push to achieve a goal, but are
instead more interested in answering
a dramatic question or demonstrating
the exhaustion associated with battling
an oppressive system, the narrative
structure might not look like an arc at
all. If you’ve lived through this battle—
if you are currently fighting it—the
story shape makes sense. If not, and
you’re an editor at a literary magazine,
you might say the story doesn’t have the
shape you expected.
SCHECK-KAHN: The shape you suggest,
Jonathan, of circling an idea, is more
common in personal essays, but why
can’t fiction borrow this form for its
purpose? Are there other decisions
you’ve made that feel unexpected to
the editors with whom you’ve worked?
ESCOFFERY: This isn’t intentionally
genre-bending, but from a few editors
I’ve received feedback that my char-
acters’ experiences “feel too specific,”
and I worry that this feedback suggests
that the events of the story read as
“stranger than fiction” because they
aren’t familiar to editors.
SCHECK-KAHN: How so?
ESCOFFERY: Here’s one example: many
of the stories in my linked collection-
in-progress follow the journey of a
multiracial, first-generation Carib-
bean American character who lives
in Miami. I get the sense that this is
too complex a character makeup for
some editors. They ask, “Well, is this a
story about Miami or the Caribbean?
Is it about immigration, or is it about
being multiracial? Is it about racism
or intraracial colorism? Pick one! And
what does any of this identity stuf
have to do with the plot?”
I’ve always been confounded by
narratives that set protagonists into
action without reflecting on the
characters’ cultures and how their
cultures inform their decisions. Stories
like that could never take place in a
city like Miami, at least not with any
plausibility. In Miami, people want to
know “What are you?” In part, this is
because it’s an international city and
a high percentage of the population is
racially and ethnically mixed, whether
they identify as such or not. People
want to know “what you are” in part
because they wear their biases on their

MFA Writing in
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sleeve, and if they can’t tell whether
you belong to the particular ethnic
group they hate—or love—they
don’t know what to do with you. For
learned people in the Northeast, this is
inconceivable since, for many of them,
talking about race, let alone directly
asking a stranger what their race is
then overtly treating them diferently
based on the answer, is the last thing
they would consciously admit to do-
ing, so the premise can feel farfetched.
SCHECK-KAHN: What strikes me as
dangerous here is the reliance on the
familiar for believability. It feels akin
to the charge of likability, which is
laid heavily on female authors and
female characters. Female characters,
or narratives that center on feminine
experiences, are too easily dismissed
if they don’t demonstrate behaviors
or attitudes that are likeable, a
requirement that isn’t also borne out
in male-centered narratives. What
are the criteria for judging art capable
of communicating a universal truth?
How can superficial details or gendered
assumptions obscure those truths?
ESCOFFERY: Right. The same level of
credibility that is assumed of straight
white men isn’t assumed of the rest of
us. Because the events in a story are
removed from an editor’s perceived
reality, at best the editor believes they
could only have been experienced by
the author as a singular occurrence
and are irrelevant to that editor and
their readership.
DE LEON: That brings up the subject of
audience. Who are we writing for?
BAIDYA: It’s tricky. I am a huge reader
and patron of literary magazines, but,
wonderful as they are, many of them
aren’t all that diverse. I don’t see enough
stories that speak to me. And I don’t
necessarily mean I want a lot of stories
of urban, educated women from India.
DE LEON: I hate the assumption that we
exist in silos, that only Latinx readers
will respond to a Latinx author. It’s
crazy talk. What happened to the idea
of having windows and mirrors in
literature, in all art and entertainment?
SCHECK-KAHN: How do you handle
the submissions process? What’s it like
for you?
BAIDYA: When a piece doesn’t get
accepted, I do wonder what was
missing. When I get cryptic feedback
like, “I wasn’t able to viscerally
understand why . . . ” or, as Jonathan
mentioned earlier, “character is too
specific,” I can’t help but wonder about
the issues we’ve discussed here around
perceptions, implicit bias, and realm of
familiarity. I have to remind myself I
have no control over that. I definitely
cannot use that as an excuse to give up.
As a writer, sitting at her desk, with her
rejected story, I accept that the story
wasn’t good enough or isn’t finished,
and focus on the craft of revision.
DE LEON: There’s this notion of
acceptance or “being let in”—and how
oftentimes many WOC take rejection
a lot harder than non-WOC. I know
these are generalizations, but they do
ring true to me. In my experience, it
is so hard to get the guts to write, to
revise, to revise some more, to deal
with rejection after rejection on top
of the self-doubt and thoughts like,
Shouldn’t I just go to law school and make
my immigrant parents happy? and then to
do it all over again with a new story.
Getting accepted to a literary magazine
is about so much more, or it can be. I
don’t think editors think about that
when rejecting a WOC. I’m not saying
they need to baby us, but I do think
that if they are serious about including
marginalized voices in their issues, they
need to change the way they provide
access to admission. For instance, what
if they accept a story that needs a major
revision and they commit to working
with that writer? I know it’s more
work. But it will have a ripple efect
that will be fruitful, short-term and
long-term, I think.
BAIDYA: In the lit mag world, a
personalized rejection is the next best
result to an acceptance; it signifies that
the story was almost there. A story of
mine recently received personalized
rejections from two literary magazines
with specific and encouraging feedback
before finally being accepted by Kweli
Journal. What’s interesting is that while
I received similar feedback about the
story from Kweli, my editor there, Laura
Pegram, decided to work with me for
the revision because she saw the bigger
vision of the story. Now, similar to
Jennifer’s experience with Iowa Review,
and her point above about “working
with that writer,” is it a coincidence
that Kweli Journal is committed to
diversity and publishes writers of color
exclusively? One read of their journal,
and you know there’s absolutely no
compromise on quality in there while
showcasing rich and diverse stories.
ESCOFFERY: We have to hold two ideas
in our heads. Yes, it’s unfair that we
even have to be having these discus-
sions, but yes, if you put in the work
and do your research and keep at it for a
while, you’ll get there. I talk to young
writers of color at events; they come
to mind when I have these discussions,
more than I worry about myself, maybe
because I’m too many years into this
to feel discouraged. I mean, we all feel
discouraged at times, but we can’t allow
ourselves to be deterred. Just keep at it;
don’t lose heart!
CREATIVE NONFICTION 95
Can you tell a true story in a single tweet?
To join in the fun, follow us @cnfonline and tag your entries with #cnftweet.
Your micro-essay could appear in the next issue of CNF!
anikawriter The lake water rose until
the dock was a few inches below the
surface, invisible at some angles.
Two minnows darted across it and a
box turtle scrambled over it. We took
our shoes off and walked on water,
suspended between there and here.
22 Jul 18
deborahcrooks I walked outside to find
I was overdressed, the morning fog
cleared by a noon sun. The jacaranda
tree had dropped blossoms on the
windshield and suddenly, inexplicably,
I was in a different city in a different
year staring up at your window,
wondering if it was over.
7 Nov 18
WilliamReagan He arrived just in time
to catch the train, but stood on the
platform as the doors closed and it
pulled away. "Sorry," he said into his
phone, "I missed the train."
26 Apr 18
ConnieKuhns I used to get lost on
Kingsway, a crowded street cutting
across the city grid. Now I drive with
appreciation for the nail salons and
payday loans, the halal meats and won
ton, old motels still with Christmas
lights; all street level store fronts not
long for this world.
17 May 18
hmcdtweets I call my grandmother.
She says “You won’t believe what’s
happening. We’re locked inside a house
and we can’t find the key, and can’t
call anybody!” “But I’m on the phone
with you,” I say. It doesn’t help. She’s
lost in a house that looks like hers but
isn't anymore.
15 May 18
GypsyHausfrau The air in the old
church was heavy with summer heat
and devotional candles. Grandma Betty
fainted in her pew. Five days before
this, she had had three living children.
Now there was only one.
26 Apr 18
saradovrewudali Birds planted a dogwood
too close to our shed, and my husband
and I squabble over it every spring. He
threatens to cut it down, but I love this
tree for its imperfect precision, thriving
where planted, not exactly as planned,
just like me.
5 Oct 18
DangerousMere Sometimes in the
mornings I pass a tiny boy being walked
to playgroup. Chattering to his mum,
he always clutches a fresh flower in
one hand, and a plastic Tyrannosaurus
Rex in the other. I hope he holds onto
both of these, with equal metaphorical
firmness, as a man.
8 Aug 18
JHammons My sister plots GPS points.
I like to wander. However different the
method, together we follow familial
routes through Oklahoma. Trail of Tears
arrivals. Dust Bowl departures.
24 Apr 18
lauragilkey The showers on the pediatric
oncology floor are equipped with
temperature regulators. I get it now, but I
didn’t then, when the cruel, tepid reality
washed over me each night afresh, and all
I wanted to do was smash the sterile tiles
and feel my skin being scalded away.
5 Mar 18
lisarini11 When I was a girl, there was a
boy and he said he'd write but he didn't.
23 Jul 18
JennRHubbard The broken air conditioner
means we'll be engulfed by summer heat,
unable to detach from it, arranging our
days to accommodate it. Just like when I
was a kid, A/C-less, and summer meant
sweat and haze and languor.
14 Jul 18
MPMcCune2 Barefoot under a tree, I'm
standing in a puddle when lightning
strikes. Black bits of bark sift down
towards my hair and purple sparks fly
up from the water. A sense of calm
descends as I contemplate my life's
end, until I realize I'm not dead, and
the shakes set in.
26 Mar 18
WhaleLetters This morning I saw a
gentleman, stooped beneath the slight
burden of his own weight, pushing his
walker at a deliberate pace. He paused,
stabilized & with great effort bent down to
remove a dandelion from the grassy margin.
These are the things that give me hope.
16 Jun 18
bethwestmark A skinny little kid in a
wide-spot-in-the-road kind of southern
town, I trembled with fear at the tent
revival evangelist's loud exhortations and
soft threats and kept my eyes on the
chalk artist's Heaven.
19 Jun 18
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to grow.” with me.”
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