Route 2
(micro-fiction, originally published in Crack the Spine Issue 226)
Rushes of white light came at the girls as cars streaked by underneath them. They could feel the wind on their legs, tanned and dangling through the overpass rails like the bendy straws they put in their Cokes. Annie’s flip-flop had slipped off once and the two of them had shrieked with laughter and horror watching it fall onto the highway below.
On these summer nights the damp air coated their bodies and coaxed out their goosebumps. They ached with dangerous wonder (hormones). The lights kept coming.
They screamed to know what it felt like, guttural and deep and as loud as they could.
Guillotine
(flash fiction, originally published in Sky Island Journal Issue 7)
https://www.skyislandjournal.com/issue-7-winter-2019
The CVS checkout line was longer than usual. It snaked into the seasonal aisle, which at this point in August was sparsely populated with a few bottles of SPF100 and picked-over pool toys. The gaps in the shelves were like missing teeth in the aisle’s mouth, gawking at Gabriel while he waited.
The box he held was lighter than he’d expected, lighter than its fraught contents merited. It fit snugly in the grip of his teenage-boy hands, long- fingered and bony-wristed and too delicate-looking to belong to a varsity tight end. His hands were strong, though; that made the difference. His mom always told him he’d had a grip like a bear trap when he was born, his tiny fingers tight around hers or grasping greedily at the air. Gabriel the Grizzly, she called him when she was feeling nostalgic or after a few Miller Lites, or both. He never corrected her on the point that the bears weren’t the ones doing the trapping.
Up at the counter a woman was buying a beach ball. Gabriel stared at it, envying its cheerful absurdity and envying the woman for the freedom to make such a mindless purchase. Then the line shifted again and he took another step forward, trying to lend purpose to his movement. He had volunteered to come today, after all. Michelle had talked about going herself when they’d spoken on the phone last night, but her words were too fast and her voice too quiet, the same way they were when she was mad at him. Only she wasn’t mad at him, she said. This was both of their fault, she said.
The line moved forward again. He thought about grabbing a pack of gum or batteries, anything to take the attention off the box he’d have to slide onto the counter soon, but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. Anyone that wanted to look was going to look, and a pack of Bubblicious wouldn’t do fuck-all to stop them.
He wasn’t nervous, not really. When he got nervous before a game, it was because he didn’t know how he would perform, or what decisions would fall to him on the field. It was because he didn’t want to screw up the outcome. But right now? He had no control over the outcome. He was hoping for a certain result, of course – one line like the picture on the back of the box, a goal line beckoning him to safety. But whether it was going to be one line or two was predetermined at this point. What could he do to change that? Just because he didn’t know the answer yet didn’t mean it wasn’t already a truth, as real as the bologna sandwich he’d had for lunch or the blue Nikes on the woman in line in front of him.
The air conditioning in the store was too cold, the same way it always was at his dentist’s office and the movie theater downtown. They had gone there often during summer breaks when he was younger, Gabriel and his mom and little brother. He remembered the sticky, soda-coated floors under his feet and the way the popcorn butter sheen on his brother’s face had reflected the glow of the screen. The memory made Gabriel’s guts twist up into a fist. He couldn’t be reminded of those carefree kid times now. Carefreeness had an expiration date; you could only enjoy it for so long before it turned sour on you.
The woman in the blue sneakers was heading for the exit – it was his turn now. He stepped up to the counter and raised his chin in what he hoped looked like defiance. The cashier glanced up at him, scanned the box, and swept it into a flimsy plastic bag. Again Gabriel was struck by its lightness. He imagined the bag catching the wind and flying out of his hand, each gust taking it higher and faster until it was completely out of reach.
He hoped Michelle wasn’t freaking out too much. She’d said she wasn’t on the phone, but in that same too-quiet, too-fast way. Whatever the test told them, they would be fine. He’d tell her that and give her one of his Grizzly bear hugs before she went into the bathroom to pee on the stick. Or maybe she’d want him to come in with her. He tried not to imagine what her urine would sound like as it hit the toilet water, or what her arm would look like shoved in underneath her like she was feeling around for something she’d lost.
Gabriel had some money saved, and he’d tell her that too. He’d been saving for a tattoo, or maybe a new (used) car so he didn’t have to keep borrowing his mom’s. He hadn’t quite decided yet, and well, now he might not have to. But they’d be fine, he told himself now, whatever the result, and whatever they decided to do about it.
The sickly glow of the overheard fluorescent lights gave way to bright sunlight as Gabriel stepped outside. He squinted, a bewildered animal while his eyes adjusted. And then he saw it again, all easy lines and bright colors. The beach ball, set down on the sidewalk while its new owner fumbled for keys in her purse.
Gabriel got a running start, the contents of his own bag lightly thwacking against one thigh. He reached the beach ball and punted it, now a cartoon comet of blue and orange streaks as it burst through the air. The woman let out a startled squawk and they both watched the ball arc high and fall, but Gabriel turned to leave before it landed. If he didn’t see it hit the pavement, maybe he could tell himself it was still floating.
Satin Slips
(essay, originally published in Mindless Mag)
Wearing secondhand clothing runs in my family. Or really, it runs through my family, as hand-me-downs often do. The women in my family are magpies, and we don’t let go of things easily. Sometimes, this tendency manifests in mounting clutter; piles of clothes stacked on chairs waiting to be mended, old pieces of furniture clogging basement corners, standing by for their next purpose.
But sometimes, it manifests in magic.
Here I was as a little girl, running downstairs to watch Nick at Nite on a hot August evening in my grandmother’s old slip as a nightgown, feeling as glamorous as Eva Gabor in Green Acres as the cool satin slid across my skin. Here I was at thirteen wearing my mom’s lavender terry cloth tube top to a friend’s pool, striding through my suburban neighborhood while feigning as much 70s free-spirit confidence as I could muster.
Because that’s what secondhand clothing can do at its best: allow us to embody someone else for a little while, and imagine the adventures through which it saw previous owners. Even better, it can enrich our own lives.
My mom kept racks of old clothes, pieces that had belonged to her or my grandmothers as younger women. My friends and I would play dress-up in 50s cotton dresses, faded to shades of sherbet oranges and pinks, and as we got older, my sister and I would browse the attic every few years to see what pieces appealed as trends changed. Chunky wool sweaters one year, high-waisted linen skirts the next, graphic novelty tees always. Many a Halloween costume was pulled from those ranks.
I was endlessly inspired by Claudia from The Babysitters Club books, whose inventive outfits were always described in detail. I felt like my best self in one particular ensemble I knew she’d have approved of: white overall shorts from The Limited (from our neighbor), a black long-sleeved shirt (from my mom’s
stash), black tights, white Keds.
Much as I loved my secondhand treasures, I also came to understand that not everyone saw them as such. Buying new clothing has always been at least peripherally about status, especially growing up in the US during the 90s. It was peak label-mania, all Calvin Klein waistbands and Tommy Hilfiger-tinged Americana. There was a particular pride that came with adorning oneself in the latest trends, one that I wasn’t immune to. I once received, from the aforementioned neighbor, a glorious trash bag full of name
brand hand-me-downs from her older daughter. I remember the delight in trotting out my new pieces, but also the undercurrent of shame I felt when my classmates found out the clothing’s origin, their voices hinting at pity at this perceived charity. Didn’t they understand the good fortune that came with such a gift?
Of course, for many people wearing secondhand clothing isn’t a stylistic choice, it’s a necessity. But that’s even more reason to remove the stigma. Wearing secondhand clothing is resourceful, it’s sustainable, and it should be celebrated, not shamed.
That shift is starting, with new secondhand online retailers and sustainable Instagram influencers popping up every day. It’s a movement that, hopefully, will expose more and more people to the benefits of choosing secondhand compared to the impacts of exploitative fast fashion.
At its simplest, though, wearing secondhand clothing is still about infusing purpose into items that would otherwise be cast aside. About honoring a family heirloom or finding the perfect white tee shirt that could have once belonged to James Dean. It’s about imagination. That’s where the magic comes from.
Soup for 8
(creative non-fiction response to artwork by Jennifer Blesso, originally published on Palette blog)
We come inside from the cold, ladle hot soup into bowls, cradle them in our thawing pink hands.
Outside the crescent moon hangs uncertain in the night sky, waiting for us to come back and play. It searches the hardened snowbanks for our footprints, vessels of their own holding the light.
The warmth of our home is a celebration; the air feels thick with color. We sit around the table, four siblings and four mirror images, reflected in the glass of the window darkened by the night just beyond it. We eat in the company of these other versions of ourselves: the selves we present to the outside world, refracted and a little muted. Versions that aren’t so weird, so us. Versions we’ll have to work harder not to embody as the crush of adulthood infiltrates like the dark outside the window.
But here, together? We’re safely in the womb of our childhood. We take deep, nourishing drinks from our bowls in an act of affirmation.
We stack the empty bowls in the middle of the table, see them, too, reflected in the window. We balance them with friction and luck, pretending we don’t know what’s at stake.
We lie on the rug, nestled together like small, smooth moons.
There are so many moon phases yet to come.
Christina Wiseman 