"A Miracle in My House

By Amira Abdul-Wahhab

It was November 25, 2006, Thanksgiving Day, one of the coldest winter days I have ever faced in my 19 years on the earth. Man it was so bitter cold that those tiny hairs on my arms and back were sticking straight up toward the heavens. All the houses on my block had little ice sticks hanging from the gutter and the roof and snow flakes were falling so gently on the icy side walks.

Sounds like a little fairytale story right?

Well it was nothing like that at all. A few months before, my mother had lost her job. She felt let down and so ashamed. She knew that Thanksgiving was not going to be as delightful as in years past.

Just the year before we had celebrated the most magnificent Thanksgiving dinner that I had ever seen. We had macaroni and cheese, candied yams, turkey, and stuffing. You know, the works, anything you can think of, we had it, and lots of it.

But now it was 2006. A year of relative famine. We didn't even have heat, let alone a plump turkey to fill our stomachs. It was so cold in my house that you were able to see your breath in the air, you know the way those little fluffy white clouds come steaming up?

Many times I asked my mother "Why do we have to live like this? It’s not fair, none of my other friends have to go through this." I would stomp out of the house crying with nothing but rage in my eyes and fear in my heart. We had no idea where our next meal or rent payment was going to come from, and I tell you, that is one of the scariest things to think about, for my mother had three children including myself to care for.

I spent a lot of time in my room crying and hating my life.

That Thanksgiving Day I lay there on the bed sobbing when something rather miraculous happened.

I actually heard a strange voice coming out of my closet. It was the voice of an unfamiliar old woman. A voice like you might hear from a grandmother. Crazy? Oh yeah. The voice asked, “Why are you crying, dear?”

Scared to my toes, but trying to be brave, I asked, "Who…who's there?" and out of the closet came the funny reply: “What do you mean who, you know darn well who this is. It is your closet, girl, you see me, don’t you? Every single day I am here for you. You throw your shoes at me, don’t you? And don’t you remember all those days you would climb into my arms and cry almost every night. I never asked why, did I? Well not until now.”

Shaking, I nodded my head and said “I don’t know what in the world is going on, am I dying or something?”

The closet didn’t answer. Not at first.

Finally, she said, “Tell me, honey, what is wrong?” And she said it in such a nice peaceful voice that, as scared and confused as I was, I found myself answering her.

“I'm sad because of my mother. She lost her job and we don’t have a cent to our names. So we fight all the time. It’s gotten to the point where, when she hits me, I can feel and taste the warm salty blood in my mouth.” I paused.

“Go on, honey.”

“She hits me sometimes as if I am some strange man off a lonely street, a man trying to steal from her. It feels like she hates me and now it’s Thanksgiving and we haven’t got any food. What did I do to deserve this?”

I started bawling. “HELP ME, please, what can I do to stop her?"

With the sound of sorrow in her voice, the voice began to speak. “Here here dear, first, why don’t you wipe your eyes.”

I reached for a tissue and blew my nose.

“OK, so there you go. Now close your eyes.”

I did. She continued in that wonderful grandmotherly voice. “All you have to do is let all of your pain go. And breathe. Can you do that?”

I took in a long breath. I breathed out. I did feel a tiny bit better.

“Whenever you need to, come to me. Sit here in my arms, and close your eyes and breathe. And I will sing to you.” And she did. She began to hum.

Imagine, some kind of a closet that holds you close AND sings to you?

“And one more thing, honey.”

“Yes?” I whispered. Her words of wisdom came singing out:

“Next year, you will go away to college. You will find friends there. You will find yourself growing in ways you never imagined. You will be happy. You will no longer have to cry out for help. Make school your sanctuary. Learn everything you can. You will be free of all this. And you will have your dignity with you at all times.”

And here, a year later, I am in Albany. I am a student. I am doing well.

Sometimes I think about that closet. And how what she said to me was, so true.

Amira Abdul-Wahhab, who grew up in Binghamton, New York, is a freshman at the University at Albany, State University of New York. This is her first published piece of writing. It appears this month in LATINO NEW YORK.

"My First Love Was a Wicked Twisted Road"

By BSM



My memories don’t exist for you. When I look out of my head through my eyes, I see the now. All that ever happens in front of my eyes is the now. I figured that out a few minutes ago.

If there is such a thing as a collective memory in this country, it must include trains. No matter how often I ride on a train, when I get on the train my now that’s in front of my eyes starts to mix with my memories behind my field of vision.

I’m riding the Now and Then Line from New York City to points north. Fascists, like Rudy Giuliani, generally rail against the Now and Then Line in their stump speeches and campaign ads. They attack this venerable, historical railway as, "not on time," "neither here nor there," and perhaps most damning, "Now and Then but Never on Time." True, when the Now Local arrives, it most often was scheduled to arrive then, and is therefore late. And in an odd synchronicity that proves Amtrak does have a sense of humor, the Then Express generally arrives now.

On the Now local, the woman sitting in front of me is always a fat blond woman eating potato chips. I can see her playing a game on her cell phone reflected in the window.

The guy sitting behind me always likes to call people at regular intervals during the ride to ask annoying questions. He says, “Hello!” in a way that completely captures the essence of Now. His singsong repetition of that most basic of words is an eerie simulacrum. He means it to be a imitation of a cartoon character, but there is no cartoon character that sounds like that.

By now, the fat blond lady is crinkling the empty bag of Frito-Lays and has taken her Blackberry out of her purse. Double fisting her phones, a flip-style one in the left and a PDA in the right, she clears her throat as if to say, "this train is just so now right now."

Sometimes this train is more then than now. Those are the rides I like the best. The people stay off of their – excuse my French – motherfucking cell phones, unless they are speaking in hushed tones. On the then train, the golden glow of reading lights falls on clean, wide seats. The train speeds along the Hudson River. During the day, the Then Express passes sailboats, and at night, the opposite bank of the river offers a never-ending string of twinkling lights. On the Then Express, my steel cocoon rumbles through deserted stations where white lamps splash pools of light down onto solitary train platforms. In the summer, there are moths gathered around the lights.

Every now and then, I catch a whiff of the Jim Beam sour mash whiskey that someone in my general vicinity is furtively sipping. Although, I have never had the good fortune of sitting across the isle from this whiskey sipper, I know his name. He’s the Gambler from the old Kenny Rogers song. He knows when to hold ‘em, he knows when to fold ‘em, he knows when to lay down, he knows when to run.

I’m not sure if it would even be possible for the Gambler to ride on the Now train. I mean, he’s been riding the Then train since it was the Now train. I’m like the Gambler in that way.

My memories don’t exist for you. They exist for me, though – all of the time. My life is looking out of my head via my eyes and seeing about 150 degrees of now. The other 210 degrees are on the Then Express, 24/7. In front of me are the bright fluorescent lights and high-speed data connections of Now. The Now Local stops in grimy subway stations and navigates 6th Avenue in the rain. The pavement is slippery, the wind is cold, but that’s only now. Behind my eyes, wrapped around my shoulders, and trailing behind me, just my memories.

Memories of the caress of an ex-girlfriend co-mingle with memories of the wind on my face in the evening as I was getting home to my seaside apartment in Cancun. Memories of the gently swaying palms of Cancun brush shoulders with memories of walking down the tree-lined streets of Vedado in the springtime.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I do not believe that most people live as surrounded by their memories as I do. Maybe old people do. My two living grandparents are probably on this Then Train Express somewhere also. I guess I’ll go find them now then.

BSM lives in Brooklyn. He writes at night and reads on the subway.

"On Deck"

By John Grey





A splendid serenity suffuses the planet
and stars, buoyed by the pale calm of their glow,
gift the world their pledge of unending sobriety.

The new moon glimmers in the sky's low trough,
a golden curve like a wheelman's smile
and the ocean flattens glossy like a silk sheet,
stretches windless to the arc of the dim horizon.
Propeller spins. The dark fleck of speeding hull
creases the invisible.

On bow, starboard, a deep crease of water,
endless through the shimmer,
traps, within its crests, its valleys,
white curls of foam that fracture, fizzle,
wavelets that, left to themselves,
would ripple all the way to shore.

Poet John Grey, a frequent contributor to MyStoryLives, is from Providence, Rhode Island. His book, “What Else Is There,” is published by Main Street Rag. He has been published in Agni, Hubbub, South Carolina Review and The Journal Of The American Medical Association.

"Family Tale"

By Camincha

The 50s

She arrived virgin. Was baptized by the foam of new waves. Swallowed by 5 & 10 cent stores, radio, the tube, night school, boyfriend, car, dancing. Swallowed by wars, turmoils, universal and personal.

Her wedding gown compounded the problems. Covered her like a shroud. The first of four chubby babies made them proud, a boy! In ignorance they celebrated. In ignorance they lived. Their ignorance like a boil grew. In them it grew. Then came two little sparrows. One straight hair, one curly top.

And all were swallowed by the American Dream: OWN YOUR OWN HOME, their little house. House swallowed by termites. Not a home that house but a menace hanging over their flimsy heads. They, not the owners. It was owned by FHA and BofA. In the garage, cars, owned by dealers who demanded payments. Also demanded: payments on a couch, chairs, washing machine, dryer. Worst of all the freezer, AMANA, BIGGEST IN THE MARKET. WILL SAVE YOU MONEY AT THE TABLE. Sharks sold it to them. Sharks devoured them.

The 60s

Another little sparrow came. Also curly topped. Came with the New Year, almost. Which found them, bleeding hearts, desperately trying to save their love affair from unnamed horrors. Unknown dangers in face of impotence against discrimination, lay offs, frustration, despair. Divorce. He did what he had long been practicing for, his GREAT EXIT. Left her juggling mounting bills like a circus veteran: merchants, banks. Doctors, for diarrheas, colds, flu, viruses. Dentist bills, for teeth retainers. Orthopedics, for feet retainers. Felt she could use some for her head. Maybe could keep it from falling off.

She switched to powdered milk to save for socks and shoes. Meantime she carved pumpkins for Halloween and stuffed turkeys for Thanksgiving. This took on meaning, when seen through her children's eyes. And on and on. Good moments few and far between. There were lovers, hers. One, she married. A mistake. Divorce didn’t make it good. Brought shock, destruction. Learned to lie: All is fine. Yes, all is fine! To so called friends in disguise. To so called neighbors who denied them the Christian virtue of looking the other way. But rather, pointed and stared.

The 70s

Materialistic well-being. Big disappointments. Strange comforts. Spiritual discomfort. Adjustments. Adjustments. Counseling. The long-haired boy looked like a middle aged lady: marijuana. Wine. Beatles. The Doors. Janis Joplin. Protests and sit-ins. Hippies, beads and flowers. The girls wore long hair and no bras. More protests and war. War of un-sung soldiers. Graduations, birthday cakes, good-byes. Trips to far-away, long-longed-for relatives. Earning power. And with it they knew envy and discrimination at its best. Despair. Disappointment. Unemployment. She searched. Searched spiritual growth.

The 80s

New passions, alliances, new life, new joys. Awesome expansion in learning power. As a reentry she first earned an AA, then a BA, then an MA: She, a Master. Oh, with great effort and perseverance, a new language for her.

The 90s

The one of the GREAT EXIT, performed his last. And left her to tell the story, which she did, in a prose poem. And here it ends. Not the story but the prose poem. For she knows now that writing will never end for her. Rather. She thinks this is but. The beginning. . . *

END

Camincha is a pen name for a California-based writer.

"Saving Blue"

By Juanita Reyes

A long bright street
A big, blue house
The white, blue and red
Dominican flag
waves in the cold wind
in the garage.
I smile, but
a black, dirty bag hits me
in the back.
I turn and the bag
swirls towards the
big, blue house.
I run, I try to catch up, but
there is a rock on the ground and
I trip and
I roll down the long, bright street.


Juanita Reyes and her family moved to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic three years ago. She is a freshman at the University at Albany, SUNY.

A Floor Speaks

By Carrie Holmes

Her face became blurry as salty tears filled my eyes. I should have known better than to think that I could find a home in a stranger’s house.

“I never wanted you anyway. You ain’t anything but another check.”

It wasn't the first time that I had heard something like that. Foster home after foster home, they are all the same. It’s like the government pays these people to kick my butt. It all becomes second nature to me.

“You hear me? You ain”t nothing! You ain't never gonna be nothing!”

I thought to myself that if I ain't never gonna be nothing, then I was gonna be something because that’s a double negative. But I dared not say that to her face. Correct her? Please, I'd be picking up my teeth.

I struggled off the cold hard floor, trying to regain my composure, when I felt another kick in my back. Face first I fell straight into the smear of dried blood that had accumulated there from a previous beating. The door slammed. I felt as if even my heart was not enough life support.

I tried again to get up. This time I managed to make it to my feet. I quickly glanced around the room. I was looking for my foster mother, trying to avoid another blow, when suddenly the thick grey clouds, and foggy air, drew my attention to the window. It was the middle of the summer. Weather like this was very uncommon.

Instantly, the phone began to ring. It wouldn’t stop. The pictures on the wall rocked from side to side. Everything in the room began to shake. I struggled to stand. I turned around looking for something to hold onto. I fell.

“The floor is really popular today,” I thought to myself. The floor began shaking harder and harder. The sound of dropping items and shattered glass filled the room. This was no earthquake. This was something beyond geography.

Suddenly a loud screech pierced the air as a crack formed in the floor. It was the sound of war. There was nowhere to move without falling through the huge space that had opened.

I heard a loud, demanding voice.

“Get up!”

I looked around, but no one was there.

“Get up,” the voice commanded again.

The voice became louder and louder. Soon I realized the voice was coming from the crack in the floor. I couldn’t believe it. I got as close to the crack as I could without falling in. I leaned over the floor to see who owned the voice. I saw someone, someone strange yet very familiar too.

I saw me.

“Let me out,” The voice said.

“What?”

“Let me out. I have been trapped inside you for so many years. The abuse you got, I got. The tears you cried, I cried. The pain you felt, I felt. It’s time to put a stop to this. Let me out!”

How was this possible? I was asking myself to let me out. It made no sense. But then, life doesn't make any sense.

“How? How do you want me to do it?” I whispered.

“Trust yourself. All your life you have let others take advantage of us. Now it’s time for us to be happy. Trust yourself! Love yourself! Defend yourself!”

“Trust myself? Defend myself?" You must be crazy, I thought to myself.

“Go!”

So I did.

I picked myself up off the floor.

Carrie Holmes, a freshman at the University at Albany, State University of New York, grew up in New York City.

"Regina's Closet, Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal"

By Diana M. Raab

The following is an excerpt from Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal, published by Beaufort Books, September 2007.

I was ten years old the morning I found my grandmother dead. Our neighborhood in Queens was serene while many residents were out of town celebrating the last three-day weekend of the summer. My mother and father weren’t at home, and my grandfather was visiting his sister Rusza in Paris.

I knocked on Grandma’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer. I cracked the door open and got a whiff of her perfume (Evening in Paris). Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the sheer white curtains swaying in front of the open window overlooking the street. The air in her room was crisp, and the night’s dampness clung to the wooden floor. Grandma’s bed, one of two single beds pushed close together, was beside the window.

Grandma lay beneath her soft checkered Scandinavian wool blanket with fringed edges. She called it the warmest blanket in the world. On her headboard rested Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair, a hairbrush, a box of Kleenex, and an open bottle of prescription pills.

“Grandma,” I called softly from the doorway, “can I go to Cindy’s?”
She didn’t answer. I glanced at my new watch. It was already ten o’clock in the morning. On most days Grandma was the first one into the maroon and pink-tiled bathroom that all five of us shared. I walked inside to see if her toothbrush was wet. It was still dry from the night before, but her towel, slung sideways on the towel rack, was still a little damp. The toilet cover was down, just the way she taught me to leave it. I didn’t remember hearing the sound of running water that morning, a sound often heard within the walls of our older house.

In my fluffy blue slippers, I returned to Grandma’s room and tiptoed around Grandpa’s bed toward my Grandma’s side. I gently tapped her shoulder.

“Grandma,” I repeated, “can I please go swimming at Cindy’s? I’ll be back by lunchtime. Promise.” Still no answer. Grandma’s face looked pale and her eyes were loosely shut, as if she were almost ready to get up.
I sensed something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed out of the room, glancing over my shoulder in the hope that she’d wake up and answer me. Under the weight of my footsteps, the wooden floor made cracking sounds. Her closet door was closed and her makeup was spread out on her vanity. I trembled while scurrying to my parents’ room at the end of the hallway. They also had two single beds pushed together with one headboard and two pale pink electric blankets sprawled out on each bed.

The beds were unmade, and on my father’s bedside table was an empty plate with crumbs left from a sandwich he had eaten the night before. The oblong wooden bedside table had a glass covering it and a display of family photographs beneath. One photo caught my eye. My grandmother was leaning against a tree in our backyard. She had a broad smile and seemed playful, the way I will always remember her.

Diana M. Raab is a memoirist, essayist and poet who teaches writing at The University of California, Santa Barbara Extension. She is a columnist for InkByte.com, an online magazine for writers. She frequently writes and lectures on journaling. Her award-winning writing has appeared in numerous national publications. For more information about Diana Raab, her book and other writings, please visit her website, http://www.dianaraab.com.

"She Gave It a New Life"

By Camincha

1. She gave it a new life. Donated the computer that sat in the spare bedroom. Bill, her computer guru-guardian-angel, had given it to her. "An extra one," he had said, "in case yours breaks down." But later he said, "You know if it does break down, it’ll be easier and cheaper to buy parts from the dealer."

So she got on the phone to find someone who would take the little orphan. Many calls later a very energetic, short gentleman, the principal of the local granmar school, said: “Oh! I know a very computer-literate teacher who would love to have it to print out our newsletter.”

2. She gave it a new life. Placed the projector in the hands of her film aficionado friend. She had owned the beautiful piece for many years but seldom used it. It's now in very good hands. So is the little movie camera she obtained years ago by trading the old movie camera and a little cash, and all 30 odd rolls of 8 and Super 8 home movies.
Her friend said, "I’ll place the film in a special safe-deposit box. It won't deteriorate. Won't dry out."

3. She gave it a new life. A purpose, to the sturdy, elegant case of French records and text books her friend Erik had given her. Linda suggested donating it to The Historical Society. But they said only took items if related to San Mateo County. She didn’t press it. And called a French teacher at Oceana High SchooL who said, I’Il be glad to take it.

She’s heard it’s greatly admired——this relic from other times——by the students who are in awe of the leather case trimmed in gold.

4. She gave it a new life. Donated her collection of clippings of the Kennedy family. She mailed them to the Kennedy Historical Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts with a letter that said: I have lovingly collected these. It’s time to pass them on, to be used, perhaps by a member of the Kennedy family who needs more information for their memory album, or to a school, or a student writing a thesis.

The letter with the seal of the Kennedy Historical Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts said: Thank you.
She’s giving them all a new life. No one had to sit by her side. No one had to hold her hand and say, you are doing well, you are doing the right thing.

Now, she has room for new tidings, new colors, new dreams.

Camincha is a pen name for a writer based in Pacifica, California.

"Shiny Things"

By Val Haynes

First of all, I didn’t start out being a shoplifter. It’s not something I was consciously aware of doing, at least not that first time anyway. The other times, I admit I was guilty, even planned on stealing, but not that first time.

The first time it just kind of happened and after the first time, it became easier and easier. In my career as a shoplifter and thief, I have taken: a man’s Piaget watch, $2500 from a pot-dealer, two pairs of jeans (brick red and blue), and $100 from a hard-luck alcoholic who happened to be my boyfriend at the time—oh yeah—and a skirt full of candy from the corner deli down the street from where we lived.

The hundred dollars was for the shaking I needed to stop and the candy was for all the times I had to go to the Saturday matinees empty-handed. I feel remorse about the $100 (my friend needed to pay his rent and his twisted face revealed the anguish my stealing had caused), for everything else I don’t care. My stealing didn’t make a bit of difference to me or anyone else. But the first time—the very first time I stole—it was for my mom. That first shiny thing I stole was a heart-shaped pendent in gold-toned quilted metal. It was my Rubicon—my maiden voyage into a career from which there was no turning back.

You see, I loved shiny things. I still do.

It all started with my Pa. See, when I was little, my Pa called me “Princess.” He called me that name so much I started to believe it, I guess. In third grade I wore a metal and rhinestone tiara to school seven days straight till finally Sister Mary Catherine made me stand in the corner saying it was a vanity.

The tiara didn’t go with the plaid blue uniform worn at St. Peter’s Academy anyway, so it didn’t bother me much, having to give up wearing it to school. Still, I loved shiny things and their clean brightness. Diamonds and bracelets, those kinds of things. You could put a ring on your finger and change your world. People did it all the time, like when they got engaged. Of course, I was too young to think about getting engaged or anything like that. I just thought diamonds and rings and necklaces, stuff like that was, well life-changing. Maybe those things only changed the way you thought about your life. Maybe wearing jewelry and seeing it day-to-day reinforced a kind of possibility—that things—good things were possible. Even for me. Not just people in shiny magazines. Maybe I’d grow up to be a princess after all.

Back then, my favorite place was Adel’s, the small jewelry shop I passed each day on my way to school. Adel’s was an island of shining prospects despite its location wedged between two abandoned store fronts on a side street littered with other shiny things like beer cans, broken glass and foil wrappers. I didn’t mind the street so much; it’s that Adel’s stood diagonally across from the El Dorado, a smelly old man’s bar, where my Pa spent most afternoons seated on a barstool.

He became a “regular” when one of our town’s chief employers, a paper-mill, went bankrupt. I didn’t understand why he drank instead of getting another job. I suppose he resigned himself to being out of work in the same way I resigned myself to being called names other than “Princess.” You just get tired and give up the ghost.

Both to and from school I walked this street never once passing in front of the El Dorado for fear I’d see my pa’s scowl or worse, his grin. If he grinned he was happy and I would have to go in and suffer the embarrassment of one of his drunken exhortations about how I was such a good girl and such a smart girl, all that kind of crap. I was hyper vigilant about avoiding him especially those days.

It was Christmastime and he was drinking more and more—getting stranger and stranger. There were mornings when I found him passed out on the john, mornings when I woke to find my mom with a black eye, mornings when the car we once owned mysteriously vanished. The winter I turned thirteen I passed Adel’s so often, on my way to do some errand for my mom, that old man Adel practically invited me in as I paused for a quick peek at the window.

One December afternoon the shop’s window glittered with the traditional colored lights and garland of the season forcing me to a full-stop while I stared mesmerized by the shiny display of rings and bracelets and watches. I had yet to buy my mom a Christmas gift and knew I wouldn’t be able to afford anything from the shop. Still, I planted myself in front of the window my gaze focused on the polished array of silver and gold.

Since my Pa lost his job I no longer received an allowance and the only extra money I had saved was from baby-sitting. I wouldn’t have much to spend on gifts this year. Still, I went in. There might be some cheaper items in the back of the store. I remembered that old man Adel kept a saucer of mints on the display counter. I went in for a mint and a closer look at the sparkly selection of jewelry.

Inside on the countertop suspended from a velveteen display rack was a row of chains and necklaces. That’s where I saw it. The watch. I’d never seen any thing like it before. It was a pendant, really. Heart-shaped. In the center of the heart was a watch. The pendant hung from a gold chain dangling near the edge of the rack. I fingered the pendant with care fascinated that there was a small watch inside the heart. I wanted it for my mom. For Christmas.

I closed my eyes and pictured her mouth forming a small oh of surprise as she cooed over the pendant’s beauty. It was seventy-five dollars more than I had. Despite saving all the money I earned baby sitting, I knew I’d never be able to save enough to buy the pendant by Christmas Eve.

Later that day around suppertime, while I helped my younger brother assemble a model airplane, my mom called to me from the kitchen.

“Could you pick up your father, Connie? I know you just got home but I don’t think he should walk home alone tonight.”

“It’s okay, Ma... I don’t mind.”

As I walked down the El Dorado’s street through the dusky twilight, I looked up at the streetlamps. They groaned and flickered on one by one in the wake of my footsteps crunching against the crisp, clean snow. It was funny how the flakes disappeared as soon as they fell into the lamplight. I noticed a small crowd of people on the normally desolate street.

It’s the holidays, I thought.

I saw myself in my second-hand winter coat reflected in the empty storefronts and paused. I thought about my ma and my brothers and sisters, how they seemed so innocent. I thought about how my ma, especially, was always going on about miracles and Jesus and heaven. Sometimes I wished I could make her see it was all a lie meant to keep people from doing things. From being who they really were. I wanted to believe but I thought only suckers believed in miracles and Jesus and heaven.

I passed Adel’s stopping briefly and raised my hand to wave at the old man who for once didn’t seem to notice me outside in the cold. Maybe he’s ignoring me, after all, it’s not like I’m a paying customer, I thought. Without thinking, I saw myself make the sign of the cross before I entered the shop.

The old man hunched behind the counter, busy with a woman wearing too much lipstick and a brown, old lady, fur coat. He held out a charm bracelet and she practically snatched it from his hands.

“It’s for my niece, her first year at Cornell. She’ll be home for the holidays and I want to give her something really special,” the woman chirped.

I tapped on the counter to get the old man’s attention and noticed the exaggerated arch of the woman’s penciled in eyebrow as she turned her head to look at me. The woman stared straight through me while she went on and on about her niece.

“Got any more of those mints, Mr. Adel?” I asked.

Sure enough the old man while in the middle of helping the woman turned his back to fill the empty saucer from a supply of candy he kept in the back of the shop.
It happened in an instant. I grabbed the pendant and shoved it into my coat pocket, the one without the hole in it. The woman was too busy toying with the bracelet to spot me and I figured that before Adel noticed the pendant missing I would be long gone. I felt like I'd unzipped my skin as I flew onto the sidewalk. It took me all of five seconds before I realized I was under the El Dorado’s faded awning.

As I skipped across the El Dorado’s threshold I saw my pa slumped across the bar. I wasn’t sad or scared; I wasn’t even ashamed of him. I tapped his shoulder and he lifted his head and grinned at me in that sad way drunks have.

"Hi ya, Princess."

I smiled and hummed along to the tune playing in my head. It was a song I heard while listening to Dr. Laura’s radio talk show.

I was just thinking.

I needed a little white gift-box.

Val Haynes. a writer, actress and singer, is earning her Master of Arts in English at the University of Albany, SUNY.

"Some Things I Learned From My Dentist"

By Ellen Zunon


Ever since childhood I have had a visceral fear of dentistry. At every six-month check-up, I always had new cavities; my older sister rarely did. My mother thought it was because my bones and teeth had been cheated of calcium because she became pregnant again so soon after my sister was born.

So I was always the one who had to listen to the dentist’s song and dance – literally! - while he pierced my tender gum with the novocaine needle, drilled until my skull vibrated, and then filled the crevasses in my teeth with that shiny metal. The trinket I got to choose afterward was small compensation for my ordeal.

In contrast, with Dr. Koiné, my dentist in Abidjan, there was no song and dance, no trinket, no nonsense, only cool, clean-edged professionalism.

Walking up the stairs and along the corridor to her office for the first time, I felt a sense of trepidation. My first experience with an Ivorian dentist, after I had broken a tooth, was not very encouraging. This was a professor who taught at the dental school in Abidjan. He had tried to grind down the tooth stump without using an anaesthetic. I vowed to myself at the time, if I ever get out of this dentist’s chair alive, I’m never coming back here again.

I think Dr. Koiné had been trained in France, but I’m not sure. In any case, she had learned her craft at the very same dental school from which my tooth stump still throbbed.

I preferred to think that she was trained in France.

She was extremely particular, meticulous even, about the sterilization of her equipment, and wanted me, as the patient, to know this. She wanted all her European and American patients to know this, as you could catch any number of noxious tropical diseases from unsanitary dental equipment.

Her assistant Kouadio was in awe of her. He was a dark black man with patches of pink here and there on his skin due to tinea, and it was his job to sterilize the equipment and to hand her the instruments. I had root canal before the crown went on, and many instruments were handed back and forth during this delicate process. Dr. Koiné admonished me in no uncertain terms to sit very still because the tools were extremely sharp, and missing the mark by even a millimeter could be disastrous.

Dr. Koiné definitely did not fit the Western stereotype of the submissive African woman. In contrast, she was very self-assured and in charge. She exhibited the resilience and self-reliance that I encountered again and again among the women I worked with in my community development projects.

Although she had a traditional Muslim last name, she was a devout Catholic. At first I thought that must be her married name, but I eventually learned otherwise. Incidentally, Koiné is not her real name. I’ve changed it to protect her privacy. But what you need to know about her name is that in the Ivory Coast a person’s tribal identity and religious affiliation are usually evident from their name. And it is quite unusual to have a mixture, as Christiane Koiné did.

As I sat gaping, slack-jawed, I learned how her family had disowned her when she had converted to Christianity. I wondered under what circumstances she had converted, but never learned any more details. I am guessing that her Christian first name had been given to her when she was baptized. She was very close to her priest and spoke highly of him on several occasions.

Dr. Koiné’s grandfather was known as El Hadj Koiné. He had earned the title El Hadj by accomplishing the hadj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, from Guinea to Saudi Arabia on foot during the early part of the 20th century. As Christiane spoke of her grandfather, I pictured him in sandals and flowing robe, trudging through the sandy Sahara from oasis to oasis in the wake of a caravan of camels. The family’s name is really that of one of the famous clans of the Ghana Empire, going back to the Middle Ages. It is a name which is still prominent throughout the Sahel.

I learned something about the degree of Muslim-Christian tolerance in Côte d’Ivoire from Dr. Koiné’s situation. During my years in the Ivory Coast, the country put forth an official face of tolerance and neutrality, but there were always private prejudices under the official façade. These became more evident later, after my family and I left Côte d’Ivoire, and it was torn in half for a time by ethno-religious tension. Some say that the conflict was purely political. Or was it? It is impossible to separate the religious from the political in a country of 60 diverse ethnic groups.

I also learned something about myself from Dr. Koiné. While drilling, and while her assistant was sucking up my copious saliva with that little plastic straw, she told me that my excessive salivation was a sign of someone who keeps everything in. I wondered if this was something she had learned in dental school or an observation drawn from her own practice of dentistry. It is true that I am an introvert and tend to hold things in, but not nearly as much as I used to. But who would have thought that this tendency would be reflected in my degree of salivation under dental stress? Is it because we introverts tend to swallow literally and figuratively things we should spit out?

I thought of Dr. Koiné last week when I learned that the rebels from the north of the country had finally burned their weapons in a public ceremony of reconciliation, putting an end to seven years of turmoil in Côte d’Ivoire. I hope this symbolic act will lead to a real and lasting peace, and that people like Dr. Koiné can go forward and lead their lives free of the anguish caused by ethnic conflict.

Ellen Zunon, a frequent contributor to MyStoryLives, is a writer living in the Capital Region of New York State.