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Modems and Memories

5/31/2018

I can’t exactly pinpoint the last time my eyes met yours, but staring at them across the table,
those deep pools of cinnamon, it felt as though not a day had passed. There was so much I
wanted to tell you. Needed to say. But where to begin was what caught the words in my throat,
left them stale on my tongue, and drowned them in the cup of coffee I nursed at.

Had this been yesterday, a world when we were young, careless, full of innocence and
hope… maybe then, just maybe then, I could have found them. My tongue was fruitful with
words then. They would spill from my lips each morning I passed you in the hall, our eyes
meeting as they did now, sparking the embers to a fire inside I still kindled now and again. And,
they would drip from my fingertips, across pages of text messages in modems now covered in
dust. Locked away in storage. Hard drives too outdated to find the signal anymore. To revive the logs. The words. Perhaps my tongue, too, has become outdated. In need of a system update—so we move at the same speed and capability again. But it’s been so long. So, so, long…

I remember our mundane conversations over the lecture of algebra—notes we never took.
You’d complain how your younger sister had ruined dinner again with her sobbing over an ex-
boyfriend; a boy that she claimed to have loved so deeply, she would never love again.
“She’s only ten,” you would say to me, “she doesn’t even know what love is!”

We’d laugh, pretending we, as the older kids, had a better grasp on love than she. How
wrong we were. How young and innocent.

I’d fill you in on the latest drama on the way to geography—mapping the newest gossip
and friendship circles to be wary of. These stories, these people, how one day they would merely be shadows in the back of my mind. Names without faces, faces without names… Simply figures moving through the halls, those, empty modems, like ghosts. They never made it through when the upgrade happened. They never saw the latest software and technology that painted my future.

But then again… neither did you.

It was the simple things. The mundane. That’s what we spoke of every day. We knew
every detail: what we had for dinner, where we went, who our crush was. There were no secrets, nothing zipped and stowed away. But now. As I stare across at you, your eyes are all I know.

Countless dinners have gone by—the best meals I’ve sampled, foreign delicacies that I
would have longed to tell you of. I’ve traveled far too much of the world to ever sit down and
share the stories with you. I could tell you the places, but it’s just not the same. The images on
the screen aren’t as real as walking the streets—streets I used to wish you could have walked
with me. And our crushes…

It’s almost painful to realize you never met my wife. Never read my late night texts
contemplating asking her out for coffee on our first date. Never got to hear the things I said about her—the utmost praise I showered her with to my closest friends. And you never got to see us get engaged. Never saw us share that kiss, and watch as she took my name. I remember wanting to send you an invitation. A card to simply say “hey, I’m married!”. Perhaps to show you up and claim victory over the bet we made once—that you would be wed before me.

But now we’ve got a kid on the way, and I’ve got a high paying position in the career
field of my dreams. It’s not what I wanted to be when we left school—not in the slightest—but
it’s what I became and I’m proud. I think, if you had been there, you would have been, too.

I keep watch on your eyes, how they rise and fall from me to your cup and I can’t help but to
accept that we’ve become strangers. Shadows. Ghosts in the modem. I knew you once, as you
knew me, but these days…

I’m not the same kid who parted ways with you after graduation anymore. You knew me
back then as the starry eyed dreamer out to make something of his name. The one who stayed up late to write somber poetry in old notebooks no one would ever read. You knew me for who I
was—my shadow – all that made me who I am.

But now… My hand trembles as I set my cup down, vision fixated on the table between
us. Now, you don’t know a thing about me. And it hurts. It burns like the fires I’d longed to fan
for this day—but the spark simply isn’t there. Not as it once was. The circuits have been cut
short.

Yet still, I look back into your eyes, finding the only piece of memory that I know. The
only traces of who we once were—who you once were. The person I grew up with, shared my
dreams with, and my stories. The person who watched me fall and stand, pushed me to never
give in, and granted me with the gift I will always be grateful for. Friendship.

And that’s something deep inside, hidden in memories of saved chat logs, in corridors
echoing with late night laughter, which never can truly be erased. No matter the distance. No
matter the time.

I smile. There are no words. There don’t need to be. From across the table, I see that
spark in your eye again, the awakening of a memory thought to long be lost. And you smile
back.

It’s then I know we both know what love is. What it means to truly love, and how
perhaps, even as young children, we did understand. It just took all our lives to piece it together.

So where to start? I question myself over and over again. Lost in the mundane—the
dinners, the crushes, the places. There’s so much I want to tell you. So much you need to know.
So much you never got to hear. My heart pumps hard in my chest as I part my lips to speak,
finding the words that have longed to reach you. Somewhere inside, deep, deep inside… the
system is rebooting. Back-up files found. And I smile. And smile.

“Hey… how’ve you been?”

Author

Dorian J. Sinnott is a graduate of Emerson College's Writing, Literature, and Publishing program, currently living in Kingston, New York with his sassy munchkin-mix cat, Scarlette. When he's not busy at his full-time job, he works as a cat adoption assistant at a local humane society-- which he claims is more therapy than work. Dorian's work has appeared in Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Bleeding Lion, Alter Ego, and The Hungry Chimera.

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Roller Derby

5/30/2018

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Roller Derby

Los Angeles was burning the night I drank beers with women who like to participate in the rituals of hip-checking and slamming their bodies into one another. “I get really angry and I need to hit a bitch,” explained roller derby skater Dannia Alfonso. Alfonso was joined by her Reseda Wreckers teammates last December at the Empire Tavern in Burbank. Part of the San Fernando Valley league (SFV), the team’s practice had been cancelled as multiple fires burned throughout southern California. One of the blazes threatened the league’s track, so the team had an impromptu gathering at the bar. Chatting about an upcoming tournament and their collective performances, conversations soon turned to weeding out misconceptions about a sport that has seen a rise in popularity in recent years.

Roller derby is both aggressive and sexy, however, it is not to be confused with vaudevillian antics or hyper-sexualization. It’s a contact sport that requires skill. It is also, some teammates told me, duly lacking in diversity. As I later came to observe, the Reseda Wreckers is a team that is varied in both self-expression and ethnic identity. Pitting flesh and skates against other players, the team is challenging fallacies about the game, both on and off the track.

I first heard about the Reseda Wreckers when my best friend mentioned that her cousin, whom I’ve known sporadically the last 20 years, had taken up roller derby. Katia Rios is petite and polite, the opposite of my idea of the stereotypical muscled and foul-mouthed derby skater. I was surprised to hear that she willingly (especially given her small body type) played in an aggressive sport that threatened bodily harm. But once I saw her slam like a small cyclone on 8 wheels into a fellow team member at a practice session, my surprise turned to admiration.
Roller derby, Rios points out, is not just about body slams. Reciting her favorite quote, she explains that it’s “like playing chess while having bricks thrown at you at the same time”. It’s a contact sport that is both strategy and physicality. Wearing roller skates, two teams compete against one another on a circular track skating at high speeds moving counter clockwise.
Designated “jammers,” “blockers,” and “pivots” work offense and defense, constantly strategizing to score points and to also prevent the other team from scoring. That said, like any sport it does have its rules. You can “hit” another player using your shoulders down to your hips, but you can’t punch, kick or clothesline (think of slapstick comedy - extending your arm across a person’s chest or neck to knock them down). Rios and her teammates practice these skills and strategies on a piece of land that reflects LA culture.

Practice and home game tournaments for the SFV league are held on a flat track which has been dubbed “The Lot” harkening back to old Hollywood film lots. It’s an abandoned parking lot in an industrial part of Sylmar that resembles a backdrop of a dystopian cold war movie. Barbed wire encircles the track and large storage containers sit heavy and silent against the back wall. Large spot lights cast shadows on skaters that look like elongated ghosts keeping in time with body checks.

Standing out amongst these shadows are the matching team shirts worn by the Reseda Wreckers. The logo on the shirts was designed by teammate Morgan Perry. With input from her fellow teammates, Perry wanted to show the diversity of the skaters. The logo is a drawing of a woman with a half-shaved head who, Perry points out, “looks kind of multi-ethnic since we have like a crazy amount of [multi-ethnic] people on this team”. The backdrop is a bomb with a wick on fire and the profile is accented by a Wonder Woman “W,” the comic book heroine of yesteryear who beat up Nazis.

Ethnic diversity is also found in the derby names of some of the skaters who integrate their ethnicity with playfully aggressive verbs. Natalie Rankin, aka Tokyo Takeout (like the Japanese city), and Amber Javier, aka Gunner Ginzu (a play on Ginsu knives and a childhood nickname referring to her eye shape), were inspired by the skaters’ Asian ancestry. Both players have varied backgrounds; Javier is Filipino and Hispanic, and Rankin is Japanese, black and white-Spanish. It’s this diversity, the skaters tell me, that is unique in the world of roller derby.

“Roller derby is a white woman’s sport,” states both Rankin and Javier. Though the sport exists all over the world, Rankin elucidates that there are a lot of leagues, especially in the southern states of the U.S., that are lacking in diversity. The SFV league is an exception, she tells me, as the team boasts many different ethnicities, a reflection of the multi-cultural landscape of the Valley. Yet, even with these varied players, Rankin hasn’t been spared from racism. While in New Orleans for a tournament, she was at a jazz club with a former white teammate. The teammate confided that she was “uncomfortable” with the amount of black people in the room. Rankin after pointing out that they were in a predominantly black city told her, “You know I’m black, right?”. “It’s okay,” the teammate retorted, “because you’re mostly Asian”. Shaking her head Rankin recalls telling her, “I’m the same percentage black as I am Asian. You just can’t go around saying that.” Rankin’s current teammates find varied experiences and cultures to be an asset to their value as players on the team. Veronica Pacheco, aka Sammi Smacky-Yao (her derby name was inspired by the boxer Manny Pacquiao), explains that it was the diversity of the SFV league that attracted her. “This is where I was meant to be,” she recalls, emphasizing the support she has found among the league, “We accept anybody and everybody”.

This acceptance extends to the different body shapes and sizes of the skaters. Rankin explains that roller derby is a very body positive sport and that “every single body type has a genuine advantage on the track”. This is especially true for Javier who was a cheerleader in high school and felt pressure to be thin. But now in her late twenties, she finds acceptance in the Reseda Wreckers. Her full figure is ideal for blocking other skaters on the track. “I have a muffin top,” Javier states, adding “I don’t have any shame in that because that’s who I am”. This body positivity also allows for a freedom of expression with many players opting to wear fishnets, tight clothing or modest and loose workout clothes. Pacheco is quick to point out that with this expression the sport has often been sexualized. One misconception is that players are “half-strippers”. Javier interjects, addressing Rankin, “She wears booty shorts? Guess what, she just fucking kicked somebody’s ass on the track”.
***
The fire had begun to clear up and The Lot was left unscathed allowing for the home team tournament in early December to commence. The score board indicated that the Reseda Wreckers were playing against the Van Nuys Valkyries. Night had descended, and the smell of smoke lingered faintly in the air. The barbed wire and spot lights looming over the track lost its dystopian charm as children ran around and families lined up for nachos and soda. Spectators sat in plastic chairs that lined the track reflecting the ethnic diversity of both the SFV league and the San Fernando Valley. Men also filled the audience but there was no leering or cat calling, instead they gave directives to the skaters shouting, “Offense!” and “Defense!”

Many of the skaters from both teams sported war paint, wearing red lipstick pin-up girl inspired pouts, to drawing on exaggerated comic book Joker mouths. A flash of hot pants, fish nets and work-out pants skated by the track at full speed. All of the players wore helmets, knee pads and elbow pads, a reminder of the physical risks of the game. At times, the momentum of bodies resembled big enveloping waves. Helmets and swaying bodies moved up and down in unison until a crash toppled the flow. Rios was hit and left with a swollen nose, though she shrugged off the minor injury. Many were swift on their skates, weaving in and out like they were hovering just above the concrete asphalt. Pacheco, like her boxing namesake known for his fast punches, was quick and jabbing. The game soon ended, and time was called.

The Reseda Wreckers lost to the Van Nuys Valkyries, coming in fourth place at the tournament. But the loss doesn’t define the team. Pushing themselves both on and off the track, Javier told me, “These females make me want to be a stronger version of myself”.

Photo Captions:

The Reseda Wreckers are part of the San Fernando Valley Roller Derby League (SFV). The league was started in 2011.
Natalie Rankin is leading the team’s practice on The Lot, an abandoned parking lot in Sylmar.
The Reseda Wreckers team logo sports ethnic diversity, aggression and comic book inspired imagery.
Katia Rios body slams into another teammate at practice.
Bonding night for the team at the Empire Tavern in Burbank.
Dannia Alfonso (right) and fellow teammates outside of the Empire Tavern in Burbank.
Veronica Pacheco, aka Sammi Smacky-Yao, at the home game tournament.
Natalie Rankin, aka Tokyo Takeout, at the home game tournament.
A volunteer sells merchandise at the home game tournament. The San Fernando Valley League (SFV) is volunteer run and DIY.
Audience members watch the Reseda Wreckers play against the Van Nuys Valkyries.
Amber Javier, aka Gunner Ginzu, blocks Van Nuys Valkyries skaters at the home game tournament.
Roller derby is about physical strength, skill and strategy. Two teammates from the Reseda Wreckers practice for the home game tournament.

Author

Tiffany Hearsey is a writer and photographer. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Salon.com and LA Review of Books.

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Three Poems by Darren Demaree

5/29/2018

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with an empathy so fatal #7

i want the bodies in the field
to be okay i sent my children
into that field
for the party i thought might
welcome them
now i am afraid i sent them
onto a burial ground
i sent them onto a burial ground
there was nowhere else
to send them
i couldn’t stand to have them
& not share them with you

with an empathy so fatal #8

the plot
is not so
professional
that haphazard
manufacturing
of a sacrifice
didn’t have
to include
the whole
hearts
of my kids
i didn’t have
to have kids
once i did
i didn’t have
to teach them
empathy i did
so they are
a small piece
of the whole heart
that might not
feel them
their belonging
in the beat

with an empathy so fatal #9

take more of me
is the default
of every parent
why did i teach
those small eyes
to do as i do
to do as i do
is to put strangers
on your back
while you attempt
to elevate
their ankles
out of the tide
what of my face
what of my face

Author

Darren Demaree's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.
He is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently ''Two Towns Over' (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. He is also Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.
He currently lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

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Three Poems by Yuan Changming

5/28/2018

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Turing Test
There is-- no solution -- to this
--Problem of --the other mind
Harbored-- in my bedmate’s --body:
After --35 years --of marriage
Or communication --inside out--
Are --you a cyborg human, --or
Am I a --human cyborg? --Perhaps
We --are both dreaming in a --virtual world
--Like a lost digital --artifact?

Drafting the Dragon
- According to a recent survey conducted in ten English speaking countries,
the top 10 most familiar Chinese words are …
In the Shaolin (少林) Temple
Rebuilt between yin and yang (阴阳)
With billions of yuan (元)
Collected from gugong (故宫the Imperial Palace)
After each greeting nihao (你好)
The wushu (武术Chinese martial arts) is
Gaining more and more momentum from qi (气)
Or the energy of qigong (气功)
Bloated with tons of renminbi (人民币)
While every Chinese is playing mahjiong (麻将)

The Meaning of Evolution
More advanced in evolution
Than     their human masters are     chickens
As they     outnumber the     stars in the whole
Universe, and     occupy     every corner of
The entire planet,                    but as in-dividuals

No chicken can fly higher than a low

Fence, make love within                     its confinement
Or live together     with its children. The     only
Thing     they do besides     laying eggs and growing
Meat is standing     there, day and night,     as if

Meditating about the meaning of evollution

Author

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and many others worldwide.

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Necessity

5/27/2018

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We were very quiet in Mrs. Rodriguez's second-grade class late that morning. Our teacher had the lights off, and we were working by the sunshine that came in through the open windows. It was spring. The weather had only just gone from cold to hot. The warm breeze and the smells it carried made even the school's old asphalt playground seem like it would be paradise if I could touch my sneakers to it.

I looked around the room. Everyone was still working on their math problems but me. The teacher had just finished teaching us to subtract a one-digit number from a two-digit number and then she had given us an assignment. I had already checked over my work like I was supposed to, but I was waiting a few more minutes to turn it in because Mrs. Rodriguez got angry if anyone got done before she finished her coffee. That's how long it was supposed to take us to do our work.
She drank a lot of coffee.

I admired the classroom's bulletin boards once again in an effort to kill some time. They were still full of happy cartoon children wearing primary colors who had been reading and writing and playing at recess in stasis since the beginning of the year. They all seemed as if they were near exploding with joy for being at school. The letters of the alphabet still lined the top of the chalkboard, big A and little a to big Z and little z, and numerals too. The chalkboard itself was colored a modern green instead of the traditional black, and it always had our schedule for the day written on it in yellow chalk. The flag on the wall to the left side of the board waved in the little breeze that was passing on and off through the room. Our teacher's desk was along the same wall as the main door to the classroom to our right. On the other side of the room was the exit to the metal fire escape that always scared me when we climbed down it during fire drills. The glass in the windows was laced with wires. I had always wondered why, but I never seemed to remember to ask.

I was almost always done with my work first, and my work was usually right. I never forgot to write Simon S. at the top. Sometimes I even wrote my full name, Simon Shulman, if there was enough room for it. I was also usually the first one to finish my English and science and social studies too. Mom told me at the beginning of the school year that they wanted to skip me to third grade. The way she talked about it made me think that she wanted me to skip, and I wanted to skip too. When my mother asked my father about it, he said he had been skipped, and he didn't like it, so I had to go through the second grade with the same classmates as I had had in kindergarten and first grade.

Mrs. Rodriguez wasn't finished with her coffee yet, but I couldn't wait any longer. I brought it up to her desk and put it in the "In" basket. She still had most of her coffee in her mug. She looked from the mug to my work and frowned. Her eyes flicked across the ditto and then she nodded grudgingly. That meant I was done.

The best thing about finishing my work first was that I had more time go to the reading corner and sit on the padded seats and read a book. My favorite book was The Runaway Robot. I'd read it three times even though we weren't supposed to read a reading corner book more than once. It was the only rule I remember breaking on purpose.

Eric, Leah, and Norman got finished with their work right after I did. That was strange. They usually didn't get done with their work until last, so they didn't make it to the reading corner often, and that was fine with me. When Mrs. Rodriguez called on them during class, they never knew the answer. Half the time they didn't know what the question was. They didn't pay attention. Sometimes they tried to get me to tell them the answer so they could raise their hands, but I wouldn't because it's against the rules.

The three got up at the same time and put their work in the "In" basket. She narrowed her eyes at them the way she did when she thought someone was doing something wrong, but she didn't say anything. After turning in their work, the three of them came over to the reading corner. I could tell by the cruel smiles on their faces that they were going to do something mean to me.

Without bothering to look at the titles, they quickly grabbed books from the reading corner shelf and sat down next to each other and across from me, blocking my view of Mrs. Rodriguez, isolating me. They opened their books and pretended to read while sneaking peeks back at her, waiting for the coast to clear. They got their chance when Robert went up to her desk to ask for help with his math problems. He almost always needed help.

"You're going to Hell," Leah whispered at me over her book. I noticed her book was the dictionary. At first, I thought she had read the word "hell" out of it. This wasn't the usual thing they picked on me for. They usually made fun of my clothes or my curly hair or my glasses, or they'd call me a teacher's pet. Hell was something new, and I didn't know what hell was, so I didn't whisper anything back.

"Jews killed Christ," Norman said. "That's why Jews are bad. That's why you're going to Hell."

I'm wasn't too sure about what a Jew was. My mother had tried to explain it to me once, but it didn't make a lot of sense. It didn't seem like I was any different from the other kids, but from that moment on I was different whether it made sense or not. I didn't know why I had to be a Jew. I wished I was like the other kids. Being a Jew had suddenly become just another reason to get picked on, and there already seemed to be plenty of reasons.
I had almost no idea who Christ was either. Mom had told me that he was someone who had lived a long time ago, before televisions and schools and cars. She said that people who went to church liked to talk about him. When I asked her why we didn't go to church, she said that God and Jesus Christ were make-believe.

"Christ is make-believe," I said.

Mrs. Rodriguez started coughing. Everyone looked at her until she stopped. When it seemed like she was distracted again, my Sunday school lesson continued.

"You don't believe in God?" Eric asked incredulously.

"God's real. Everyone knows that," said Norman.

"If he's real, why doesn't he come?" I asked.

Norman started to say something but didn't. He made fists with his hands, and his face got all red.

"You still killed Christ even if you don't believe in Him," Leah said.

"I didn't do anything."

"Jews did," Leah said. "So you did too."

I thought that was ridiculous, but I didn't dare say it was stupid.

"My dad says that Jews are dirty," Eric said. "He said you're worse than rats. He said you shouldn't even be allowed to go to school with us Chris-en kids."

"I am not dirty!" I protested. They must have sensed the anguish in my voice.

"We're going to tell everybody in school how bad you smell," Leah taunted. "Si-mon Smelly-jew!" she sing-songed. "Si-mon Smelly-jew!"

Eric and Norman cackled. I stood up so I could see Mrs. Rodriguez. Robert wasn't at her desk anymore, and she had stopped coughing. She had to be able to hear us because no one else was talking right then. Not only that, but it looked like she had been watching the reading corner, but when I looked at her she looked down at her desk. I didn't understand why she wasn't stopping them. Normally she would have sent them away from me. This was different; it was different for me, and it was different for her. I didn't know why or what was different, but I could feel it. I knew that the reading corner would never be safe again.

The unfairness stung. It was one thing to be picked on by other kids when the teacher wasn't around, but she was letting it happen, and I didn't understand why. I tried to go to her desk to ask, but Eric pushed me back down into my chair, hard, almost making me topple backward in the chair. I thought that the teacher must have seen that, but she didn't say anything, and I didn't hear the sound of her scraping her chair along the floor, the noise that always preceded her rising from the fortress of her desk.

"Leave me alone!" I said loudly so that Mrs. Rodriguez was sure to hear. She must have heard because everyone in class turned to look at us. She didn't stop my personal Inquisition, though. The lunch bell did. She told the class to line up to go to lunch. I tried to get as far away from my three inquisitors as I could, but no one in the class was brave enough to stop Norman and Leah and Eric from shoving their way in front of me in line.

The three of them had made walking home traumatic for a few weeks before my first religion lesson. My nemeses had taken to forming a walking roadblock in front of me as we walked home for lunch and at the end of the day. They liked to walk slowly, and every time I tried to get around them, they would jump in front of me and block my path. They never did it in front of the crossing guard outside the school, so if I could leave before them, I wouldn't have to walk behind them.

Not only did I have to walk behind them once again, but I had to listen to them say "What's that smell?" and "Ew, it's Si-mon Smelly-jew!" to each other over and over again, giggling. It seemed like forever to get to the second crossing guard where they went in a different direction than me.

Lunch was on the kitchen table when I got home. It was cottage cheese on a lettuce leaf with fruit cocktail on top. I didn't like it very much, but my mother made it at least once a week, maybe more, depending on how my baby sister was acting. She was in her high chair. A smaller and more finely chopped version of the same meal was in front of her, and she hadn't bothered to wait for me. Her baby spoon was the only thing that didn't have food smeared all over it.

"What's the matter?" Mom asked as I sat down.

"Nothing," I mumbled. I took a breath, held it, and swallowed a spoonful of cottage cheese and canned fruit. Holding my breath made it taste less bad than it was.

"Tell me," Mom demanded.

"I don't want to," I said.

"You need to. You'll feel better if you get it off your chest."

"They're picking on me again," I said softly after a further moment's hesitation.

She sighed. "Why does this always happen to you?"

"They're picking on me because I'm a Jew. They said that I'm going to Hell and I'm dirty and Jews killed Christ. Is that true?"

"Well, technically you're not a Jew," Mom said, answering the wrong question, "because I'm not a Jew."

"I don't think they care about that."

"You have a Jewish name because your father is Jewish," she continued.

"Can't I have a different name?" I asked.

"It doesn't work like that."

"Why not?"

"Children always get their father's name. It's a rule."

I forced another couple of swallows down my throat. I almost choked on a whole grape.

"You need to stop letting yourself get picked on," Mom said after a few moments.

"How?" I asked simply.

"Stick up for yourself," she said. "Don't put up with it. Tell them you don't care what they think. And you shouldn't."

"But it hurts my feelings."

"You need to stop being a victim. That's why they pick on you, not because you've got a Jewish name."

I didn't know what a victim was or how to stop being one. My mother seemed to think that I should, so I pretended that I understood.

"Okay."

My baby sister started screaming, so we didn't talk much after that.

* * *

Right after the class got back from lunch, Mrs. Rodriguez took us to the bathroom like she did every day. Leah and Eric and Norman had been busy on the playground after getting back from lunch because as we walked down to the basement where the bathrooms were the kids took turns chanting "Si-mon Smelly-jew" in harsh taunting whispers, chuckling at each other each time someone did it. Eric tried to push me down the stairs, but I caught myself on the banister, unfortunately not soon enough to avoid bumping into Norman. Norman punched me lightly in the face for the misstep. I raised my hand to try to tell Mrs. Rodriguez, but somehow she didn't see my hand even though it seemed like she looked right at me.

In addition to bathrooms, the basement contained the gym, the eraser cleaner, and other things we didn't understand in places we were not allowed to go. We automatically lined up as we had been trained to, girls outside the girl's room and the boys outside the boy's room. I was bracketed by Eric and Norman. It always seemed to happen that way when we were in the boy's room line.

My hand was still up when the teacher sent the boys and girls into the bathroom. I tried to stay back so I could tell Mrs. Rodriguez what they were doing to me, but her eyes seemed fixed on some distant point beyond the basement walls, and she shooed me into the bathroom sternly without listening to what I was trying to tell her or even looking at my face.
Going into the bathroom was scary. Everyone had learned my new nickname. Soon it would be all over the school. The first graders and the third graders and even the kindergarten kids would be calling me "Si-mon Smelly-jew" by the end of the day too. The name would stick for a while.

I could tell by how clever they all thought it was.

"Does anyone smell anything?" Norman asked.

"Just Simon Smellyjew," Eric and a few other boys called back. Forced hilarity ensued.
"Phew! What stinks?" asked Robert.

"It's Simon Smellyjew!" came the happy reply from Norman.

My eyes started to tear up. I knew it would just make things worse, but I just couldn't help it. Hot wet tears of anger rolled down my face.

"Crybaby! Crybaby! Cry, baby!" Eric said gleefully.

"Fuck you!" I sobbed.

All talking and motion ceased as the words registered in their brains.

"Ooh!" they chorused gleefully. A second later they were all rushing out of the bathroom to be the first one to tell Mrs. Rodriguez. I could hear them buzzing around her telling her that I had said the F-word. I stood alone in the boy's room, trying to think of a way to get out of the mess I was in. No excuses and no plausible lies leaped to mind. I wondered if maybe I did smell bad.

"Simon!" Mrs. Rodriguez barked from the doorway to the boy's room. "Come out here now!"

I did what I was told. She grabbed me by my left arm and dragged me almost far enough away from the class for them not to hear us. I remember thinking that we weren't far enough away and everyone would hear everything.

"Did you say a bad word?" she demanded.

I said nothing. Her hand clamped down a little harder on my arm.

"I said, did you say a bad word," she asked again, angrier than the first time she had asked. I got scared.

"Uh huh," I answered.

"What did you say?"

"I don't want to say."

"Well, you don't have a choice. You can tell me, or you can tell the principal."

"Am I in trouble?"

"First you tell me what you said. Then we'll see about that."

I couldn't bring myself to say it in front of my teacher. She shook me a little to work my confession loose.

"Fuck," I whispered. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth. The class failed to resist tittering over what they had heard. I didn't know why Mrs. Rodriguez was so shocked. It was an adult word. My parents used it all the time.

"They were picking on me," I tried to explain. "They called me Simon..."

"We're not talking about them," Mrs. Rodriguez said. "We're talking about you. Two wrongs don't make a right."

"But..."

"But nothing. You've disappointed me, Simon. Your parents probably don't care, but I do."
She was wrong. My parents would care. My ears burned with shame.

When we got back to our classroom, Mrs. Rodriguez took a long time to write out the note to my parents. She didn't give us anything to do, so the room was full of low murmurs about how much trouble I was in. She addressed it to Mr. and Mrs. Shulman, stapled it closed and made me fold it and put it in my pocket even though school wasn't over yet.

During the reading lesson, a wad of paper landed on my desk while my head was turned. I uncrumpled it. It said, "I gong get you afer scol." I turned and looked at the class, trying to figure out who it was. Norman was staring at me, and when I looked at him, he made a fist with his right hand and silently punched the palm of his left hand. I raised my hand again, but I had once more become invisible.

After I got the note the school day went a lot faster. I spent the rest of the day in dread of hearing the dismissal bell. After the bell rang I hung around inside the front lobby of the school until a first-grade teacher made me leave. Eric and Norman and Leah and a boy named Brian were waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. I knew what was going to happen. As I walked down the stairs toward them, my legs were shaking.

"I don't want to fight," I said when I got to the bottom.

"You have to," Norman said.

"Why?"

"Take off your glasses," he ordered in lieu of an answer. "I'm not allowed to hit someone with glasses." I took off my glasses. Brian put out his hand to hold them, and I handed them over. I looked at the blur Norman had become and balled up my fists. I had never won a fight before. I wasn't sure how. While I was trying to screw up the nerve to throw a punch, Norman hit me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. I fell backward and landed on the pavement on my butt.

"He's not crying!" Brian shouted. "He's not crying!" I didn't understand why that was important, but I didn't even feel like crying. I just wanted to get it over with, so I could go home and get that over with.

Once I was able to breathe again, I got up and made fists and held them in front of me like I'd seen on TV. Before Norman could hit me again, Mrs. Rodriguez came out the front door. She looked at us. Norman, Eric, Leah, and Brian lit out of there, leaving me to face Mrs. Rodriguez alone. I was scared, and my guts were aching, and I had to squint at the world because Brian had run off with my glasses in his hand.

My teacher grabbed me by the arm for the second time that day and pulled me up the stairs to Mr. Capella's office. I had never been to the principal's office before for being in trouble. I had always been deathly afraid of being sent there, and there I was in the same room as The Paddle that stood in the corner. It felt like a nightmare. Mrs. Rodriguez shoved me onto a chair while the principal stared at me with anger and disapproval.

"Cursing and fighting on the same day," Mrs. Rodriguez said to Principal Capella. "You need to paddle him."

"Do I really, Mrs. Rodriguez?" the principal asked, his stare falling on her instead.

"It wasn't my fault," I said quickly, seizing the moment. "Norman said I had to fight. He hit me first. I didn't even hit him back."

"Is Norman the boss of you?" my teacher asked.

"No, but..."

"What should you have done?"

"Tell a teacher. But I tried..."

"But nothing, mister."

"Do you know your phone number?" Mr. Capella asked me.

"Uh huh. Yes, sir."

"You're going to call your mother," Mr. Capella said, "and you're going to tell her to come and get you so we can to talk to her."

"I don't want to call my mother!" I begged. I knew how angry she would be to have to load up my baby sister into the carriage and walk to the school. I was sure to get a spanking. "I won't do it again, I swear!"

My teacher turned her head away from Mr. Capella and grinned at me. It was the second time I had seen that kind of smile that day.

"You have to," she said.

"No, I don't," I said, surprising myself with my backtalk.

I crossed my arms intransigently, and I felt the heaviness of the day float off my shoulders and into the air. I smiled back at Mrs. Rodriguez, and for once I was not afraid.

Author

Jason A. Feingold began writing after a teaching career, with works published in journals, anthologies, and collections. When not writing, he reads, keeps house, is a husband, raises a son, chases dogs, and volunteers as a Guardian ad Litem in his North Carolina home.

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Important Update

5/26/2018

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Hi, Little Rose readers!

I've just made some important updates to the submissions guidelines:

1. We no longer accept previously published work.
2. Submissions are now limited to 3000 words instead of 5000 words.
3. Poetry submissions are now limited to 5 poems.

I've decided to make these changes to make the reading process easier on me. I also want Little Rose to house unique, original content, rather than to be a republishing platform. Please be aware of these changes in your future submissions. Thank you :)

-Kendra Nuttall, editor-in-chief

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