Scattered Light

RIP

2020-11-23T19:50:00.004-05:00

Janet Snell 1954-2020

My sister was many things. A galaxy of ideas. An exultation of creativity. The radiance of hope. And now, the source of all sorrow.

Reading Group Questions for Bombay Trilogy

2020-10-16T18:21:00.002-04:00

The overarching subject of Cheryl Snell's Bombay Trilogy is the meaning of home, and how we navigate the intersection between duty and individuation. The theme of the concluding third volume, Kalpavriksha, narrows in on the nature of kinship. The following are questions for discussion:

The novel opens with the Sambashivan family meeting for a wedding between a Bollywood bride and a favorite son of the family. The union is joyously received, unlike the marriage two generations earlier between Ramesh and the American Alice. How did the Brahmins alter their strict codes of proper behavior in order to accept Lalith’s profession? Is caste more important in the Sambashivan clan than traditional values?

Developing the exploration of caste from another angle, Ram meets his student Anand on the street outside the wedding hall. The boy is a Dalit, an Untouchable, and immediately suffers an incident of casual racism at the hands of Ram’s brother. .More cruelty follows in a sequence of events that has Anand’s father paying the ultimate price of being shunned. However he leaves a revelation for his son that changes the young man’s identity and could ease his burdens. Did this storyline remind you of the current status of race relations in this country?

Nela and Ramesh overcome the coolness between them to band together at the hospital where Anand has taken his father. How do siblings’ respective roles in the family change over time, especially when one member exceeds the entire family’s expectations as spectacularly as Nela has?

The brother and sister are accompanied to the hospital by Nela’s adopted daughter Ranu. She is considered a goddess in her village for her ability to emotionally heal people, although she herself is not whole. She has a deformed leg. That’s enough reason for some of her relatives to consider her unmarriageable. So, when she and Ram and Alice’s son Sam upstage the bride and groom by announcing their own engagement, these relations are aghast. Does that reaction have more to do with Ranu being adopted (her caste unknown) than her physical imperfection?

A recurring motif in Kalpavriksha has to do with freedom and how far the characters go to get it. Marriage that benefits the joint-families involved is one way. Geographical distance is another. Ram, Nela, and Sam all go away to college where they can hear their own voices above the din of the genetic collective, Reconfiguring the idea of family is still another way --who will we allow into our inner circle, based on what criteria? It’s not always blood. For instance, Ram’s central conflict is resolved when he takes Anand under his wing; Nela uses her fame to rescue her imprisoned husband; and Alice accepts her status as an outsider by using her art to record the truth of the family’s interactions. These are novelistic solutions to problems developed within the text, but in real life, how have you reconciled independence and duty?

One Idea Two Ways

2020-06-25T19:22:00.000-04:00

Interrupted Sleep

2020-06-25T19:18:00.000-04:00

Mask Wearing 101

2020-06-22T13:14:00.001-04:00

There's a right way and a wrong way. :)

Some of Cheryl's Favorites by Janet

2020-04-27T14:33:00.004-04:00

Poems for Days like These

2020-03-14T14:22:00.004-04:00

Kalpavriksha

2020-01-28T17:50:00.001-05:00

Book Trailer Template (copy) on Biteable.

Book Trailer for Bombay Trilogy

2020-01-27T20:50:00.001-05:00

The Usual Qs A’d in Poetry

2020-01-19T00:16:00.002-05:00

Q What about inspiration?

A--At first it's got no manners, eats
with its fingers, slurps the soup,
kisses with too much tongue.
It thumbs through my foolscap
with false starts, balls it up,
sighs and lies down with a cool cloth
on its forehead. All night imposters ring
the doorbell darting away like Halloween.
I do not notice when inspiration leaves
but when it returns, Sunday hat in hand,
I ask for some ID--
I am your ambulance, it says.
You are my car wreck

Q What about writer’s block?

A-- From the pink muscle, I’m about to pinch

dangling syllables; but my fingers close

around damp sandpaper. A garbled sound

drops behind my teeth and I hear hard

swallows, like a liar caught in his lie.

Word, turn around and retrace this neck’s stretch

with your true identity. The lights in

my head will guide you…no —it’s no use:

alphabets elude me while substitutes

make mockery. The word is turning out

of sight right now, a red bicycle down

a bombed-out alley. I run toward it —

only to find severed letters bobbing

in confetti-strewn waters, and one owl

cruising overhead, pinching something

indecipherable in its beak.

Q-What made you want to write?

A--After a tornado hits, a girl may notice
what’s missing: the arm of a Tiny Tears,
her plastic Barbie’s plastic Ken. And if
she has no dolls, she may content herself
with teacups. If not cups, then saucers broken
on the tracks of a train rumbling through.
If not a train, a set of wheels trying to reach
full potential. Something crucial is yet to be
driven off in the darkened next-door:
her father’s heartbeat, a sister’s equilibrium.
Rails made porous and fluid as tap water—
a glimpse of the ghost in the hall.
If there is no ghost, a premonition
that someone will throw its words back
in its face. If not words, then gestures
behind the newspaper from which
conclusions jump. These are bad weather years.
Each one finds its own terror touching down.

Q--Any favorite books?

She clatters through the back door,
scowls at the librarian’s puckered shush,
scrapes chair to table, grabs a book
that falls open to text ticked and bracketed
by anonymous hands. She clucks softly,
angles the spine away from policing eyes,
searches each margin as if she had struck
the marks first, worried that some point
might be missed if not underscored yellow.

The girl sees impressions of her fingers
on the pages, hard evidence that books
are changed by readers they change.
She slaps covers closed, slides the volume
into the shelves and walks away empty-
handed, reverent, her mind roaring open.

2020-01-15T20:11:00.001-05:00

Not So Fast...

2020-01-15T20:07:00.003-05:00

Wait! There's more!!

2020-01-08T17:47:00.000-05:00

Now on Amazon

New Books

2019-12-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

Standard of Care, Kalpavriksha, and Bombay Trilogy

Recent Oils by Janet Snell

2018-06-16T20:31:00.001-04:00

photos by Dawn Ward

Live Through This

2017-08-03T22:29:00.002-04:00

...with New Drawings

New from The Poet's Haven

2017-01-22T20:51:00.002-05:00

To order, click here

Lose Something?

2016-07-04T00:39:00.000-04:00

On the Bias

2016-07-01T22:28:00.002-04:00

It's Blue Everywhere

2016-06-30T14:19:00.005-04:00

Rescuing Ranu (4)

2016-06-03T10:16:00.000-04:00

Chapter Four

Her new problem would keep her going forward. It could save her. But as she got more deeply involved with it, her temper frayed without Jackson’s influence and inspiration. She snapped at students, colleagues, and the administrative staff. She abandoned her favorite old rituals, such as dispensing advice to new students along the lines of “learn something new every day that is disjoint from the problem you’re working on.” Such phrases seemed pointless now. She began to cancel classes. If the students showed up anyway, she ignored them, and continued to work on her own problem at the board. She turned her back to the confused young people expecting to be taught something else, something that had nothing to do with the scribbles under Nela’s chalk. She dismissed their confusion. She was doing her own dharma.

One day, Nela took out a paper on the hawk-dove game, and leaned back in her chair to read. She read on and on, and hardly registered the knock on her door. “Enter!” she called out, marking her place on the page with her finger. How had she managed so many pages in so little time?

A girl of about twenty, very thin, stood in front of her. The girl’s skin was damp, hair standing up at all angles, and she was nervously chewing her pierced bottom lip. She reminded Nela of a hatchling, another of the small creatures designed to make adults feel protective. “Yes?” said Nela.

“How come you didn’t show up for class?” the girl asked, almost inaudibly.

Nela glanced at her watch. “Oh no! I must have lost track of time. Is anyone still in the classroom?”

“No, they all bailed after ten minutes.”

“And no one thought to look for me here in the obvious place?” “I guess they didn’t think that was their job.”

Nela should have let it end right there, let the clumsy comment pass. It was her fault, after all. But the girl’s impudence burned a hole in her stomach. She decided that she would reschedule the missed class, but begin all the ones to follow with a quiz. The pupils who absented themselves would fail that day’s quiz. She announced the news in class the following day.

She told herself that she was doing it for the students’ own good. It was not a spiteful gesture, the sprawling students’ rolled eyes and theatrical groans notwithstanding. Someday they would thank her for preparing them for their futures. They would inherit the reins of the field, after all, and Nela must not let standards slip.

After a few sessions, Nela noticed that some of the students would not take the quizzes. They sat in their seats, pencils dancing between thumbs and forefingers, but left their papers face side down on their desks. They would not hand in the blank sheets at the end of class, but left them on their desks while they slipped out the door silently. Soon, many more did not even pick up their pencils.

If they were going to behave like stubborn children, then, Nela would teach them like rank beginners. “What’s a formula?” she demanded, peering into the sullen crowd. The room buzzed, but she couldn’t see exactly who was whispering. “It’s not a trick question. I want a definition.” The students looked confused. One boy raised his hand. Nela nodded at him.

“A formula is an expression in symbols.”

She nodded curtly. “What is an equation?” Heads hung. Pencils tapped. The same hand rose.

“An equation is two sets of expressions on either side of an equality.”

“What is a calculation?” The boy didn’t bother to raise his hand this time.

“It’s a process leading to expressions and equations,” he declared. Nela stared at the boy, trying to place him. He was from Japan. Last week, she had overheard him telling an older student who suggested he pick up after himself in the lounge, “We have servants to do that where I come from.” He was a typical arrogant rich kid, but sure of his answers, and therefore useful for intimidating the less prepared students.

After class, the girl who first alerted Nela to her missed session appeared at the office. “I have regularly scheduled office hours,” her professor reminded her. The girl closed the door behind her without a trace of her former timid quality. Nela could have sworn she had grown taller, too. She should be long past that.

“We took a vote and we don’t think it’s fair.”

“Life is notoriously not fair. But to what, specifically, are you referring?”

“All these damn quizzes,” she spat. “Half the class is suddenly failing because of them. They count for a whole third of our marks! You can’t do that.”

“By whose authority?”

The girl pulled out a creased paper from her backpack. “We’ve all signed this. We want you to stop bullying us. We are your employers. We pay your salary, and we want satisfaction. The customer is always right.”

Nela felt the blood in her temples thud against her skull. Employers, indeed! Nela took the paper and tore it in half, her black eyes boring into the girl’s ice blue ones. “You may go now,” she said in a voice as heavy as lead.

Two days later, Nela, in her perpetual bad mood, was angrily sweeping all her gyroscopes into a drawer when Ashoke walked in. “Are you ready to give the exam, Nela? I will walk you.” She made an exasperated gesture, but he just stood there like a mountain. Or an ant hill.

Nela gathered her materials and made for the door. Ashoke cleared his throat and she wheeled around. “What now?” He pointed to her feet. Sighing and scowling, she kicked off her running shoes and shoved her toes into her pumps. “May we go now?”

Ashoke’s Adam’s apple moved in his throat like an animal all the way to the physics building, but Nela was not listening. Suddenly, he became quiet, his face scrunched. Nela shot him a sideways glance.

“We will need to have a chat about your teaching. We worry that you may have lost interest,” he was saying. He placed a proprietary hand on her shoulder, which she violently shrugged off. “I cannot postpone telling any longer. We have decided that one of us will come to listen in on your class now and then. I offered myself in this service. I know you best, and I may be able to help you regain interest in your calling.”

Nela reared back and leveled her blackest gaze at him. “Don’t try to intimidate me with your puffy title and your flimsy power! WE this and WE that! If you try anything with me…” She did not finish her threat, but plowed straight into her classroom. He followed her for a few steps, and she abruptly pivoted to face him. Ashoke flinched under her glare, and scurried away without another word.

Nela slammed the door on the hum of voices. The sight of teenagers sprawled on their seats irked her more severely than usual. And yet, that was no reason to slough off her duty towards them. Administration had a point. She was aware that her students were upset with her. Just the day before, she had seen one of them in Ashoke’s office. The door was wide open—Ashoke made a point of that whenever he was with a female student, for all the good it did the girl—and Nela heard the girl complaining about her. She also caught a glimpse of Ashoke comforting the girl. It was the same student looking at her now, dull eyes staring out at her from the third row.

“All cell phones on the table,” Nela ordered. A wave of protest rippled through the room, but Nela, arms crossed over her chest, stood at the table, immoveable. A small hill of devices began to pile up, and Nela walked to the front of the room to take her seat. A few of the little machines in the pile began to ring, and their owners shuffled to the back to turn them off. Nela assumed that they cheated with their devices, but she didn’t know exactly how. She passed out the test and said, “You have one hour. This will count as one third of your marks. Show your work.”

Heads bowed in unison, and nothing more was heard except the occasional cough and the scratch of pencil on paper. Nela looked at the array of phones on her table. So it had come to this. She tried to recall what trend had irritated her own teachers, but came up with nothing. The last golden age of obedient innocents? The Americans must view the fifties this way, never mind the population of mothers on tranquilizers.

Nela stretched her legs and bent down to examine the faulty heel on her shoe. Out of her peripheral vision, she sensed one student’s hand upturned suspiciously under the desk. Nela bolted upright, jerked away from the table and marched to where the student was now furtively and furiously rubbing her palm. “Let me see,” Nela said.

The girl raised her long-lashed eyes to her teacher. “See what, eh?” she asked.

“Your hands,” Nela ordered. The girl offered the innocent one first, still rubbing the other one on her knee. Nela grabbed that one and held it to the light. “That’s an old-fashioned way to cheat. I’d have thought you kids would go in for a more modern way.” She spit the words out like bullets.

The girl opened her mouth, to protest, so Nela thought. A long wail came out instead. “No fair,” the girl sputtered. “I didn’t cheat. It’s not what you think.”

Nela let the hand drop as if it had scalded her. “Oh, very well, then—deepest apologies!” Her sarcasm plastered the girl’s spine to the back of her chair. She sniffed and snuffled and rolled her offended eyes toward Nela. Did she expect some tissues? Nela stared at her until the girl dropped her gaze. “You only have forty more minutes, class. Do not waste it on rubbernecking!” The stricken students turned back to their task. Nela circled the room for the duration of every one of the remaining minutes, stopping at the accused student’s desk each time. She wanted to remind the girl she could not be trusted.

When the bell rang, the students slapped their papers onto her table. Although it was her habit to search the departing faces to see whether her questions had been too easy or too hard for them, Nela no longer cared. She did not look at them, and waited for the rustling sound of fabric and paper to subside. She sat in her chair for many minutes. Stay or go? She couldn’t decide. There were complications everywhere.

Nela walked down the corridor a few days later, cradling her books in her arms. She entered her classroom, resigned to the regularly scheduled interruption of her real work. She called the class to order, and as she lectured, she watched her charges’ eyes for a sign that they understood. A few students stared at her as if they were in a contest in some bar, but instead of confronting them, she passed a hand over her black bristles, raised her eyebrows, and smiled briefly. She hoped to put them off guard, and the gesture did seem to startle them. They ducked it, misunderstanding its

intent, looking down at their books again. Nela was puzzled. Maybe it was her shorn head. They were used to seeing her with her hair down to her waist, and perhaps this was the first time they noticed its loss. That must have been what all the whispering was about. Sheltered creatures, to have so little to talk about!

After class, Nela spent a peaceful hour rearranging her book shelves. It calmed her and was one of the few activities that could help her keep images of Jackson at bay. The tomes were her talismans, and maybe, by extension, could be his. Whenever she read the precious spines, her father’s presence also came back to her strongly: Appa presiding over Saraswati puja, the children rocking on bare heels in front of the plinth of books, musical instruments and garden shears composed a picture that could still squeeze the air from her lungs.

From outside her office door came a rustling sound. Ashoke! But no, it was an envelope sliding across the floor. It looked official. She picked it up and tore into it. “Dear Professor Sambashivan,” she read, “This letter is to inform you that an undergraduate in your class had lodged a complaint against you. The disciplinary board will meet to investigate the matter…”

Nela let the paper fall. It floated to the floor, quivering upward slightly with a gust of air from the vent. She jabbed her heel into it. The girl she had caught cheating was trying to turn the tables on her! She began to pace up and down the room. She couldn’t think with the blood rushing in her ears, so she yanked the door open and stomped into Ashoke’s office.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as soon as the facts of the matter had sputtered from Nela’s mouth. “I serve on that committee. No harm will come to you.” He took the liberty of surrounding her tense shoulders with his arm.

She walked out of his embrace, and said, “Since when can we not deal with cheating in our own ways?”

“Alleged cheating,” Ashoke corrected her. Nela furrowed her brows. She saw that he was not surprised by any of this. He knew all about it, and hadn’t said a word! He could have warned her. Why would he wish the embarrassment of a situation like this on her? She searched the familiar face for answers. Finding none, she slammed her fist on his desk just to see him jump.

In her own office again, she locked the door and stood in front of a shelf. She read the gold-embossed spines, whispering their names like prayers, prayers she didn’t believe would be received. And, if they were, received by whom? She believed in no God. The closest she had ever come to believing was during the Ganesh Chaturthi when she had fallen into a line of devotees with prayers written out on scraps of paper to give to the priests. She had written one, too, a wish more than a prayer. Let Amma live. That prayer had been granted. How many more were allowed her?

So she faced her accusers. The committee was made up of a chorus- line of her peers, who, in a war, should be on her side. These people would leave her for dead. Not one of the professors wanted to be there, that was clear from the crossed legs and folded arms. The colleagues Nela knew would not meet her eyes, and the ones she knew only by sight looked at her with calm curiosity. Not quite indifference, but close.

Each of the colleagues was sipping coffee from disposable cups. Would it really be such an effort to stay awake through this? The complainer sat in a chair in front of the line of professors, her ankles primly crossed. Where were the fake tattoos and leather she had been affecting all these months? She was dressed to sway a jury, face washed to a childlike innocence, borrowed clothes a size too big.

Nela stopped in front of her and greeted her formally, hands together in a namaste. The onlookers gasped, as if she was harassing the child. Well, why not make the girl squirm? Although Nela had no idea how a simple hello from another culture could do that! Shuli, the token woman in psychology, awkwardly tried to steer Nela to the chair facing the row of professors, but Nela pulled away from the presumptuous hand on her elbow. Shuli and she had exchanged greetings precisely three times in as many years. How dare she touch her!

Another teacher offered the chair to Nela as if they were at a restaurant. She glared at him. “He is not my peer,” Nela pointed out to the room. “I do not know him! I challenge the make-up of this committee!”

“Don’t be so literal, my friend,” Ashoke’s voice rose up from his seat in the middle of the table, a stack of papers dwarfing him. Nela had not even noticed him. Was he really leading this fiasco, then? She glowered at him. “This is only an informal inquiry to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding.”

The girl, already convinced of her status as a victim, rushed in indignantly. “There is no misunderstanding! She grabbed my hand in front of everybody, and made that clucking sound she does. Everyone thought I was cheating! My rep is ruined!”

“You were cheating! Unless your palm is a new place for decoration, as in the case of bridal henna or tattoos, and you were just admiring it under the table.” The cords in Nela’s neck stood out.

The girl looked confused first. Her expression quickly tightened to one of rage. “Bridal henna? How are we supposed to know what she’s talking about?” she appealed to the others. “The accent is bad enough!” Her smooth cheeks burned.

Ashoke waggled his head reflexively. “So it is your contention that Dr. Sambashivan harassed you by grabbing your hand, and further embarrassed you by the accusation that you were cheating?”

“She got no proof…” the girl swore under her breath. “Define proof,” Nela wheedled.

“Come to order!” Ashoke pounded his little gavel. It looked like a toy in his hand, and thudded against the table ineffectually. Nela ignored him.

“Don’t know? I’ll give you a hint. A proof is a set of expressions leading to the truth of a theorem,” Nela taunted.

The girl appealed to the table of professors. “She went around the room during the whole test, pacing and pacing like some kind of big cat or something, and every time she passed me, she’d stop and look at my paper. Then she’d make a sound like a growl or something and it totally freaked me out! She’s so whack!”

“Define theorem,” Nela demanded. “Don’t know that one either? A theorem is a logical statement with hypotheses and conclusions.”

“Isn’t she out of order or something?”

“Alright, Ms. Jameson,” Ashoke said quietly. “You may leave.” “But don’t I get a chance to take the test over? It wasn’t a fair test!

She made me too nervous!”

“You’re dismissed, Ms. Jameson,” Nela said, grinning. The girl gathered her things and hurried from the room,

muttering. Nela looked to her colleagues. They were already packing up. “Well?” she said.

Ashoke looked at her. “We have seen enough. We must deliberate. We will let you know of our findings.” Nela stuffed down the urge to slap him. She glanced at the group, looked them all up and down, and found no one who would meet her eyes. There would be no quick pats on the back, no meeting at the pub to commiserate with a maligned colleague. No griping about the changing face of the student body, how they considered themselves customers now, always right, the ones holding all the cards with their daddies’ tuition money.

The peers filed out of the room silently, heads bowed, shuffling their feet. Why not? They were on a slippery slope. Any one of them could be next.

Nela waited for Ashoke to get his books and papers together. He said nothing, barely nodded to her as he went out the door. It closed with a thud, and Nela winced as if the sound was much louder. She tracked his muffled footsteps retreating down the corridor. When she could no longer hear them, she gasped. She had been holding her breath.

Inter-departmental complaints were supposed to be confidential, but Nela knew from experience that nothing was leak-proof. The students already knew about the scandal, she realized. It was why, earlier in class, no student would meet her eye. And when she passed out papers, a few of her charges cringed theatrically.

During her own schooldays, she had been at the mercy of a number of teachers armed with rulers, and the freedom to wield them as they saw fit. Not the good old days, exactly, but a more obvious system than this, a rumor mill grinding away, fed with innuendo, secret meetings in closed rooms, recommendations handed down based on public pressure.

For the next week, Nela tallied up the mounting prejudice against her. She made it a point to walk briskly through the halls, greeting the people she had always greeted, pretending not to register it when they cut her dead.

There was no need for legal advice, Ashoke told her, when they accidentally collided in the corridor. The student had not accused her of physical abuse, wrist-grab notwithstanding. Only harassment.

“She wants an apology, and also to take the test again,” Ashoke said. “Why should I agree?” Nela retorted. “She was cheating. She should be expelled, not negotiated with.”

Ashoke, with a pained expression, put a hand over one ear. “We are all friends here, isn’t it. There is no need to shout.”

Nela was not aware that she was shouting. In fact, she was sure that she had not. What was Ashoke up to? She reached back into their childhoods for something that would explain his actions. He had always been possessive of her, but now he seemed intent on making it hard for her to stay on here. What could he gain by sacrificing her now?

“Do you know Hamilton’s Rule?” she asked in a voice so cunning and soft Ashoke had to bend down to scoop up the words. He shook his head. “Jackson was telling me about it in bed one night.” Ashoke colored up, his forehead instantly dampening. Nela idly wondered at what temperature his hair oil would begin to melt. She took a piece of chalk in hand and scrawled a formula on the board. She quoted, “Put into words, the relatedness of the individual that profits from the altruistic act of the focal individual must be higher than the cost/benefit ratio this act imposes. “

Ashoke looked annoyed, the way he always did when an unfamiliar concept was introduced to him. Thinking seemed to make his head hurt. “It’s a handy explanation of how related a person must be to you for you to bother to save them. Altruistic vs. selfish genes.” Nela began to sketch a scene of a man at a lake. “If this man has a choice, according to the principle, who will he save? The two brothers, or four nephews, or these eight cousins?” She drew one of the cousins with a halo of frizz and dressed in a sari. “How many less-close relatives are worth one sibling? Blood is blood, you always say. Family is everything, etc. etc. It is not really true with you, though, is it?”

They looked at one another, leaning away from the barrier between them. Ashoke’s expression sealed over. His eyes clouded, and Nela saw that he was giving her up. The only question remaining was how to make his triumph hurt him, if that was possible. She smiled with as much bravado as she could muster, and slouched against the table in a way meant to provoke him, but did not, for once. She had her answer.

“We will hear you tomorrow at nine.”

At ten minutes after nine, Nela entered the room. After she had settled herself in her chair, she narrowed her eyes to hard black hash marks for the benefit of each member of the committee.

Along with the professors, two more students were in attendance. Ashoke mumbled their names to the assembled company, his voice drowned out by the noisy scraping of Nela’s chair. “I trust you have no objections to the presence of these representatives from the Student Rights Association?” he said.

Nela shrugged and examined her nails. Suddenly, she raised her head and stared at the students. “A circus, is it?” The students widened their eyes, and one of the girls’ faces crinkling up as if to cry. Ashoke frowned, and flung his arms at his sides in an expression of exasperation Nela recognized from their childhood. He pursed his lips and brought the meeting to order.

“Ms. Jameson alleges that Dr. Sambashivan abused her during an exam on November 14. May we hear from Dr. Sambashivan what occurred on that day?”

“I’ve already told you. She was cheating and I caught her.” “How do you know she was cheating?”

“She had written answers on her palm, which she tried to rub off when she saw that I had caught her.”

“Did you see the writing on her palm?”

“She had rubbed it off by the time I reached her seat.” “So you looked at her hand, and saw nothing?”

“Unless you installed a secret camera in the room, it would be difficult to prove.”

Nela crossed her legs and resumed the inspection of her nails. They excused her before she had a chance to upend her chair or otherwise make a scene. She sauntered into the next room, nodding mocking goodbyes, but once the door was shut, she began to pace.

The committee deliberated for all of five minutes. They called Nela back in the room, where they did not ask her to take her seat. She stood before them, hands behind her back, as if she was shackled.

Ashoke, as the chair, delivered the committee’s recommendation to allow the girl to take the test over. Before Nela could protest, he stridently told her that they had also decided to call for a formal apology, and strongly encouraged her to take classes on anger management.

“Or perhaps an all expenses paid trip to a spa!” Nela countered. “On your nickles, isn’t it?”

At a certain point, when under duress, Nela became an observer, with no attachment to the outcome. Ashoke’s behavior was what interested her at the moment, how he could do what he was doing to someone with even one particle of his own DNA. She thought back to a play in which he had acted when he was eight years old. He had played Arjuna, anguished at the possibility that he would have to kill kinsmen and friends in battle. She remembered the little boy’s squeaky protests to Lord Krishna, how he begged to understand what was beyond him. But this was easy. He was an adult now. He had no excuse.

The committee members whispered behind their hands, and the two students behind theirs. Ashoke bobbed his head like a sewing machine at whatever they were saying. At last he stood apart from the others, cleared his throat, and suggested she take a leave of absence. “Think of it as a sabbatical for rest and reflection. We know you have been under a lot of strain from taking care of your mother,” he said piously. Nela laughed aloud. The great goose! She walked out of the room and left him simpering in mid-sentence, the colleagues with their mouths ajar.

That night, at her cottage, Nela overturned her basket of mail. She sifted through all the envelopes on the floor and began to accept every invitation that would take her away from there.

Blue on Fire

2016-05-22T16:10:00.000-04:00

Prickly Heat

2016-05-22T16:08:00.001-04:00

When the girl came back home to bury her mother that summer, Roger knew there would be trouble. In some low-lying part of his brain, he had always dreaded the moment he would let himself fall.
     He’d tried to ignore the changes in the girl. Whenever she’d sidle up to him, he’d try not to smell the new sharpness inside her familiar fragrance. He’d tuck his mind into an innocent white place whenever she whispered in his ear, “Want some lemonade, Mr. Wilson?” her breath tickling the hairs along his neck. He’d imagine how her calves must look, standing on tiptoe like that. Her voice had a touch of whiskey in it when she’d hand him the sweating glass and say “This might cool you off some.”
    The girl vandalized his senses with her too- wise eyes. Nights, when he ran his fingers over his wife, he wondered how much the girl could see or hear of him through the open window. He liked to think it was her harsh breathing he heard on the breeze, her desire ruffling the gauze curtains.
     Since Jean couldn’t read his mind, things remained pretty calm between them. They didn’t get in each other’s way, and whatever she cooked him he ate, no complaints. After dinner they would take cold drinks out back and watch their daughter play badminton with the girl.

The girl would reach up, straining for the shuttlecock, and flash a crescent of breast. She wore white shorts a size too small. Roger hid his need behind dark glasses, watching the girls until the fireflies came out. He watched until they were just rushing shadows.

    One night, Roger rolled a gin-soaked ice cube around in his mouth and said to Jean,   trying for some small talk, “Ever notice how this heat sucks its own self dry, as soon as it’s done sucking up every other damn thing?” Jean’s eyebrows shot up quizzically. “It’s called evaporation”, she drawled. Roger turned his chair away. “Don’t you think I know that?” he snarled. It was becoming harder and harder to have any kind of conversation with his wife.
    There was a time when my life began the minute I came home to her, Roger thought. He remembered the way he used to rub up against her from behind without a word. She’d be stirring something at the stove, maybe humming a little. He’d nuzzle her salty neck and palm her breasts like puppies. She’d lose the rhythm of her stirring and Roger would whisper “Tell me a secret.” She always had something to say.
    Now he was the one who had secrets to keep. He began to imagine them leaking out of his dreams like sorrow, and he worried about that. He obsessed about the girl day and night, and barely noticed the cold spot like a ghost that had sprung up between Jean and him.

Jean would often get up in the middle of the night to shut the window. Probably it’s just the crickets, or else the rain slanting in, Roger would tell himself. Maybe she’s got her own secrets, something that explains the bags under her eyes and makes the worry lines come, new ones every day now.

There were two places in the house that Roger claimed: the old green La-z- Boy by the fireplace in the living room, and the basement. As the summer wore on, the living room seemed too public for him to drink and fantasize in. The good thing about that room was the curtained window. All Roger had to do was push aside a fistful of fabric and there he was in a waking wet dream: every week the girl mowed her yard with one of the old push-mowers, and she did her job dressed in bikini tops and cut-off jeans. Her dark ponytail switched behind her like a question mark. Roger wished she would leave off the dark glasses once in a while so he could get a clue. Did she know he was watching? Did she like it?
Most nights, Roger was too buzzed to sleep. Besides, he didn’t trust himself to sleep beside his wife anymore. A couple of times she’d almost caught him: Whaddya thinking? she’d whispered once or twice, just as he’d begun to drift off. He’d felt a chill along the knuckles of his spine and his eyes flew open; relief flooded his body when he realized that he had not answered her question in words. There was no proof, not this time.

      So he began to spend more time in the basement. He had an old chair down there with beer stains and tears in the fabric that reminded him of lost freedom. Boy, if this chair could talk, he thought, patting the grease stain his head had made so long ago, when he had more hair.
      He spent hours rummaging in the boxes of Christmas decorations, in his daughter’s old school projects, fooling with discarded appliances. Maybe I’ll fix this old radio or that broken TV, he thought. If I can find my tools, that is. If I’m not too drunk to see.
     Jean never said a word about all the time Roger spent in the basement. Not a single look of reproach, nothing. It wasn’t the first time he had withdrawn from her, and she had learned to tough it out, knowing these periods would end, usually without warning. On the other hand, she didn’t wait up for him anymore, and she made sure she was asleep by the time he stumbled into bed. She kept the door shut tight, let him feel like an intruder whenever he let himself in.
     Once in a while Jean approached him, as if on a dare. Her eyes would be all hard glitter, with no warmth, only a hunger in them. She stalked him, took him in pursuit of her own pleasure. When she licked his face and chest, Roger imagined she could taste the booze in his sweat and that she liked it. A man needs a drinking buddy, he thought. We used to have that much in common, anyway.

     He kept making it worse. Like the one night when Jean mentioned their daughter would be spending the night with the girl. She said it like an invitation. They could make love right there in the living room. Roger could unfasten the long tease of buttons down the front of her dress, excite all the little hairs of her still luminous skin, make her say I love you until he believed those words were coming from his own mouth.
      But on this particular night, Roger fumbled the ball. He said, “What? No badminton?” face crumpling in disappointment Jean would have had to be blind to miss.
     There was no turning back, no place to go but to the basement. He had tried to call his words back, but the more he talked the worse it sounded. He took a chance, touched his wife; she swatted his hand away as if he were a bug. She stomped off to bed, and Roger knew that this time she would lock the door.
     Roger always liked a burned bridge. Too much choice bothered him, made him feel guilty. You can get used to anything, he told himself. So the dingy basement with its bare bulb dangling over the beat-down chair suddenly looked comfortable and homey. He dragged a heavy box to one side of his chair, set down a pair of binoculars that must have belonged to his daughter on its surface. He tested it for stability, then carefully placed his old harmonica alongside it. There. All set. To hell with her.
     Roger sat there for who knows how long. He watched the light cast odd shapes on the whitewashed walls, riveted as if he had been in a movie theater. He believed he’d mastered the art of being barely there. He tried to remember an old saying, something about all the bad stuff in the world being caused by man’s inability to stay quietly in a room by himself. But he couldn’t remember how it went exactly, and he knew very well how the gist of a thing was never really good enough.
     The outside world settled itself down for the night. The crickets serenaded birds grown silent. Cars surged into driveways, doors slammed their goodnights, human voices echoed and decayed in the distance. The girls should be getting in about now, Roger thought. I better check on them.
    He grabbed his binoculars and walked to the window unsteadily. He noticed how quiet he was trying to be, and it made him laugh. He cleaned the lenses on his shirt tail and brought the girl’s bedroom into focus. Jeeze, it’s like looking up her skirt or something, he thought. It made him whistle low in his throat, the sight of the girl on her frilly bedspread, extending her dancer’s leg, painting her toenails red. When the girl ran her hand over her leg as if it didn’t belong to her, Roger’s gut contracted. He squinted hard; watched how her dark hair surrounded her like smoke, how her smile dazzled the soft light. He watched until his eyes burned and his hands shook. I could use a drink, he thought.

     He held his glass in one hand; fooled with his harmonica with the other. He weighed the glass against the instrument, wondered which would better push down the urge to stand under the window all night, longing for whatever that girl represented.
    What about some old songs -- make out music? He tried a few tunes but only remembered the openings. That’s what I’m good at - beginnings. I get bogged down in the hot dry middle of things.
     He surprised himself over the next few days. He got pretty good on the harmonica pretty quick. I thought this would be just one more thing to screw up, he thought. She can probably hear me over there, especially with the door wide open. Wonder how she likes it.
     Some nights, when he failed to sink into the stupor that passed for sleep, Roger would take his harmonica out to the backyard and sit by the badminton net. There’d be a weak breeze and the sleepy chirping of a few birds irritated by headlights passing through.   Sometimes when Roger began to play a little tune, a bird would answer back.

     On one such sleepless, sultry night, Roger heard a car with a bad muffler drive up next door. Probably that greasy little bastard the girl calls her boyfriend, he thought. He strained to see over the hedge that separated the two properties; he had tucked his harmonica into his back pocket like a surprise for later. And then he caught a glimpse of the girl, a red shoe dangling off her painted toes and the other foot pressed hard against the dashboard. The girl’s giggles infuriated Roger--with his hands fisted at his sides, the vein in his temple throbbing dangerously, he stood there motionless, unable to move. Suddenly there was a threatening silence, the kind that comes just before lightning strikes. By the time the girl’s angry cry had penetrated Roger’s brain, the door had been slammed and the boyfriend was burning rubber. Roger positioned himself under the girl’s window; he would be able to tell how upset she was as soon as she turned on her light.
     But the light didn’t come on, and Roger stayed rooted to the spot like some clueless Romeo. When he smelled cigarette smoke, he couldn’t identify its source. The girl’s voice, “Whatcha doin’, Mr. Wilson?” startled him. She stepped off the porch and showed herself in the moonlight.
    Grateful for the dark, Roger could feel the flush start up in his face. He stammered a little as he tried to make a believable answer, something that would let him hang on to his dignity. “I was just looking at the stars when I heard you get in. Did something happen-?” She shuffled a step closer to him and replied, “Oh, you know-- it’s always the same with guys. They only want the one thing.” She sighed, scowled at her bare feet for a moment before brightening. “Want a ciggie? I’m supposed to quit so you gotta promise not to tell.”   She held out her smokes to Roger. Maybe she’ll light it for me.. Maybe touch my hand. “Who would I tell?” he said softly. They smoked for a few minutes while Roger’s brain raced back and forth over an incoherent plan. Finally he blurted out, “Want to have a drink with me?” and she rewarded him with her wide-mouthed smile and a nod. Roger happily opened the door to his ‘apartment’ and mumbled, “Now you have to promise not to tell.”
      The girl gushed, “Could this place be any cooler? You got all your necessaries and none of your aggravations.” Roger handed her a glass with a little gin in it. He watched her lap at the liquid like a cat: pink tongue tipped in the glass, unblinking eyes watching him as he watched her. “Where shall I sit?” she asked after a long moment.
      Roger took a chance. He sank down into the only chair in the room and patted his knee. The girl smiled as she wiggled herself into position. “This why you only got one chair?” she murmured into his ear. Each sipped at their drink; neither spoke. Roger held the girl close and felt her snuggle in, sighing. It was his perfect, golden moment and if Jean had busted him right there and then, no punishment could have cancelled out the pleasure of it.
     “Hey, these are just like mine,” the girl said, picking up the binoculars from the box beside the chair. She giggled and said, “Wanta know a secret, Mr. Wilson?” Roger nodded, and the girl said, “I can see into your bedroom with these babies,” thrilling him.
     He managed to say, “See anything interesting?” while his fingers spread against her ribcage, lightly grazing one breast. She didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, but she said nothing. Roger’s heart rose high in his chest--she must be able to hear this, it’s so loud, he thought. He carefully rubbed her arm and said in a hoarse whisper, “Maybe you could call me Roger, since you know all about me.”
   “Oh no, I could never do that,” the girl exclaimed. “Well, I could call you Uncle, I guess.”   She saw his face fall, and she slid off his lap quickly with a little smirk. “Well, I better go get some beauty sleep. Thanks for keeping me company, Mr. Wilson.” She yanked at her shorts unselfconsciously and, not expecting him to see her to the door, let herself out.

     Roger sat there paralyzed, transfixed. He watched a spider spinning its web; he tried to learn the lesson, apply it to his own life somehow. But thinking things through had never really worked for Roger. Life went better when he took it for granted a little. So he picked up his harmonica and played until the cool pink dawn grew gold and warm. He played as the light bounced off the insulation and turned the room silver.
    When he heard Jean’s footfalls above his head, for the first time in a long while he remembered what he liked about her. Memories that had been lodged in his brain like a metal plate loosened now, surfacing as if they were lyrics. When she appeared before him he had the sensation of being rescued.
    Jean held out his favorite old cardigan to him. “Felt a chill in the air this morning,” she said, her voice steely and business-like. “Think we beat the heat wave?” He saw the hard question in her eyes so he took a chance. He held out his hand to her, let her lead him up the steps. Behind them, the basement filled with morning light; it shimmered like a mirage.

-first published in Eclectica

"Woven Together"

2015-11-26T15:32:00.005-05:00

oil painting by Janet Snell

Recent Good News

2015-09-26T19:07:00.002-04:00

I'm happy to say that my poem Streamers,published in The Inflectionist Review #4 has been nominated for the Sundress Best of the Net Anthology, 2015.
The poem was also collected in my sister's and my book Geometries from Moria Books. Many thanks to the editors and publishers involved.
Also, I have work in two magazines, The Eunoia Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Much gratitude to the editors.
Back to work!