Dispatch #64: Not My Story II

A Musical

by Lupe Fernandez

Last time on Not My Story,  I wrote about Ms. N_, Vietnamese hair stylist, harrowing escape from Viet Nam at age 14 on a raft. The story was hers to tell. Not mine to embellish.

But my job is to tell stories. What if Ms. N_'s story was a screenplay in Hollywood studio development hell? What would they do?

NOT MY STORY - THE MOTION PICTURE
Based on a True Story

Change the Title

• Raft
• Escape from Terror
• South China Sea Travel Tips

Add Love Interest

• Ms. N_ falls in love with a pirate, but her loyalties are divided between running away with her dream-boat or staying with ailing grandmother and face hardship in a refugee camp.
• Ms. N_ meets a cute boy on on the raft, but he has an ailing grandmother who disapproves of refugee romance. Will the they consummate their forbidden love?
• Ms. N_, after her boyfriend is killed by pirates, becomes a pirate and ravages the South China Sea in search of her beloved's murderers. Will she find love again? (Grandmother is written out.)

South China Sea. Caribbean. What's the difference?

Action, Action, Action

• Ms. N_ is caught in the middle of an international naval incident, bringing the superpowers to the brink of World War III.
• Ms. N_ fights off aquatic monsters to save her ailing grandmother and fellow refuges.
• Ms. N_ versus Zombies.

You get the idea.

Tasteless Elements

• Ms. N_ is played by a Caucasian actress.
• Ms. N_ makes soft-focus, orchestra music love on the raft.
• Ms. N_ stays glamorous. Everybody knows exposure to sun, starvation and salt sea spray is good for the skin.

Based on True Story.

Item:
Ms. N_'s father served in the South Vietnamese Army, killed in 1972. Commenting on the disposal of her father's remains, Ms. N_ said, “They dig a hole where you die and dump you in."

Still not my story.
What's not your story?

Dispatch #63: Not My Story

by Lupe Fernandez

While getting my remaining hair cut, Ms. N_, the hair stylist at Super De Duper Haircuts tells me she had come to the United States in 1980 at age 14.

On a boat.

“Not really a boat," Ms. N_  says.

She lives in Saigon - renamed Ho Chi Min City - and leaves Vietnam with her Grandmother aboard a make-shift boat. More like raft. The raft is crammed with people and travels with other groups of rafts. Somewhere south-southwest on the South China Sea, the motor breaks down. Ms. N_, her grandmother and the other passengers are adrift off the coast.

A boat of pirates motors close and tows the rafts for a few nautical miles and then leaves them.

Another boat comes along and tows the rafts along the coast and then leaves them.

On and on, past the Mekong Delta, past the Ca Mau Cape, Viet Nam's southern tip, then northwest along the coast of Cambodia until the remaining rafts drift off a coastline.

How long at sea? Five days? Months? Ms. N_ doesn't know. She remembers hunger, thirst and her grandmother.

“Many didn’t make it. Girls were raped. Some drowned.”

At night the rafts wash ashore on a beach.

"They asked the locals where they were and told us we were in Thailand," Ms. N_ says. "Locals told us to go to a church to get help."

Ms. N_ and her Grandmother are interned in a refugee camp.

“People I tell don’t know what hunger is. We had two buckets of water. They supposed to be full but they were not full. They in a hurry to pour it in and it falls out.” Ms. N_ gestures with her hand to show water level in bucket.

"Today I still don’t like to waste food.”

Ms. N_ and her grandmother got out of the camp by having a sponsor in the United States. Her grandmother died after they reached America.

Here in California, she has a husband, also Vietnamese, two grown children and works at Super De Duper Haircuts.

After Ms. N_ relates her harrowing tale, I think, "there's a YA novel here. Or a non-fiction bio. Or..."

There are questions I don't ask. Was she assaulted by pirates? How long was she in the refugee camp? How did her grandmother die? What does she think about today's Vietnamese immigrants?

I would be stealing Ms. N_'s experience for my own gain. Besides, others writers can tell this story better. It's good to know when to back off.

This is not my story. I didn't live it. What was I doing at age fourteen? Thinking about girls at Winton Jr. High.

Dispatch #61: Kissing in the Rain

by Lupe Fernandez

Romantic versus realistic.

Have you ever kissed in the rain? I mean during a cold, drenching downpour. Water hammers on metal gutters, splashes in murky puddles, beats on window pane, liquid streaming off your hair, clotting your nose, stinging your eyes, dripping down your back, punching your membrane-thin umbrella.

I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral the other night. Great movie, but watching Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant kissing in an English downpour got me thinking about what’s it like to kiss in the rain. No, this isn’t a romantic disclaimer.

I present another version:

I walk with Sheila around the Lodi High school campus and talk what we will play in our set for the jazz festival. My hand brushes hers and I cross the great chasm of insecurity – what if she refuses - and slip my fingers around hers. Sheila holds my clammy hand.

Drops go tap, tap, tap on her wind breaker. We hurry to get out of the drizzle. The sleeve cuff of her wind breaker rubs against my palm. Her jacket fabric flexes and crinkles as her body moves; we hurry to shelter of the school auditorium.

My sneakers squish on a watery sidewalk. Humidity has frizzed her red-hair tucked under her hood. I kiss her quick. She smiles, a glimpse of dull braces, and quickly covers her mouth, embarrassed.

Back in the auditorium, our fellow jazz players see us, my sweater soaked, her face flushed and our nervous smiles, followed by a trail of damp footsteps.

Love is like that: a gentle tap on a window pane, an invitation to fill parched lips of dry earth or a root ripping torrent wiping away the past into a chaotic present.

A little of both, I should hope.

Is it raining now?

Is it raining all over the world?

Dispatch #58: Mi Scusi Dove il Bagno?

by Lupe Fernandez

Another in a irregular series about writing in the field.

Mi Scusi,Dove il Bagno?
Excuse me, where bathroom?

I memorized this important phrase on a recent trip to Italy. I also took a small blue notebook in case I got any bright ideas about a MG manuscript I'm revising titled The Adventures of Calaveras Cal: Boy Skeleton. Middle grade re-imaging of the Spanish Conquest of El Nuevo Mundo. Many of the scenes in the story were inspired by certain Italian locales.

Florence -  Brunelleschi's Dome
Standing below the 375 foot dome, I saw an astronomical observatory.

Florence - Giotto's Campanile
When I saw the bell tower, in the Piazzo del Duomo, I envisioned an orate rocket gantry.

Florence - Museo Galileo
 Peter Leopold’s Chemistry Cabinet, a table full of vials, instruments, bottles included this brass cone supported on three legs, resembling a tea-pot. Hmmm...what a cool ascent vehicle for Cal to make his escape from the planet Al Mareekh.

Venice: Il Palazzo Ducale - Doge's Palace

Wandering up a stairwell, I say this cylinder in the corner. It's a hanging lamp, but I imagined, "What a cool diving bell this would make!" There's not underwater action in the current story; I'll use the diving bell in the sequel.

Venice: Il Palazzo Ducale - Doge's Palace
I paced the floor of The Chamber of the Great Council from rear to front. Our hero, Calaveras Cal: Boy Skeleton, first meets the Council Realm. I crouched on the floor and walked to the front of the chamber, imagining the height and distance for a boy crossing the length of the floor.


There you have it. Some inspirations from the land of pasta and Vespas.

Yes, yes. I wrote Spanish Conquest of El Nuevo Mundo. Why Italy? Don't have any money yet for a trip to Spain. Maybe I'll get a queen to sell some jewels or steal a sailing ship.


Mi scusi, dove è la mia storia?
Excuse me, where is my story?

Dispatch #55: Motivation Trouble

by Lupe Fernandez

I'm not troubled by my motivation to write. I'm troubled by the motivation, or lack thereof, of my manuscript characters. Why do supporting characters have more problems than the main protagonist? It's simple isn't? Like peeling an orange with steel skin.

A main character has a problem. She has wants something. She can't get it. If she doesn't get what she wants, she will face consequences.

Simple. Right?

Ugh.

At my last critique group meeting, I felt as if I lose the ability to create motivation for the most rudimentary of stories. I will now practice writing character motivations without a net in three sentences.

Pink Promise
I promised to buy my ill little sister a rare pink gecko, but I'm stuck in detention and the pet-store will sell the gecko at five o'clock to a greedy customer. It's my own fault I'm in detention and if I don't get that gecko, my sister will see me for the promise-breaker I always am. 
Who doesn't like pink geckos? 
 
Purple Majesty
She wakes up with purple hair the day before the senior prom. All her efforts to remove the purple from her hair end in disaster-a wig spontaneously dissolves-and the school has banned the color purple from the prom due to a bullying incident. If she doesn't attend the prom, her best friend will fall in love with a creep that will ruin her life. 
I thought it was funny.

Contemporary, coming of age. 
Fist Heart
He's a cynical senior madly in love with a junior girl who's in love with a drop-out punk. The punk threatens to harm my best friend. If the senior intervenes, he risks losing the girl or his best friend.
Holy unrequited, Batman! What now?

This exercise seems easy enough. Now why the hell can't I get it to work on manuscripts in progress.

Arrrggg!

Dispatch #53: Writing In The Field

La Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe

by Lupe Fernandez

I sit in La Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe church. Romita, GTO Mexico. I'm here with my mother to mourn the death of her brother after a prolonged illness. I'm am in the field. Another country. Another culture. Another language familiar and not. A fresh breeze flows through the open side door. The interior is cool at 12:48pm. Three viejas in scarves, blouses and skirts sit silent, contemplating the mysteries of Christ, crucified on a gold laden altar.

What should I write about? I've read many accounts of writers who travel to foreign locations and write about their experiences. What should I write about? So much history has swept by this town founded 140 years ago. Revolution. Drought. Flood. Birth. Death. Miracles. Perhaps I'll write stories my mother recounts with her sister over sweet bread and atole.

How in 1957 or 59', my parents walked from Leon to San Juan de Los Lagos. My father had promised La Virgin he would walk 81.9 kilometers (highway distance) if his paperwork to reenter the US went smoothly. They walked two days with blankets and bad shoes, over rocks, dirt, hills and hot sun.They traveled with a group of other pilgrims, slept at night in the open, fed by locals who recognized their purpose.

Pilgrimage from Leon to San Juan de Los Lagos

"I was so tired. I was so hungry but too tired to eat," my mother said.

When they reached the church in San juan, my mother asked my father "Why did I have to come? It was your promise."

"Pues, you have to come with me." My father implied it was her wifely duty.

Shall I write about the old days when merchandise traveled by burros? Roads were dirt or non-existent. Rain produced torrents of mud blocking travel. To save the merchandise, travelers would cover the burros first and then sleep by the animals, exposing themselves to the elements.

Or I could write something contemporary. Leons de la Tierra played in El Jardin Friday night. Donald Trump - at the time of this writing he was the front runner for the GOP Presidential Primary - made a guest appearance. Mr. Trump renewed a few campaign promises. One of the singers summarized all the promises Trump had made during his campaign, including building a wall across the US Mexican border to keep Mexicans from stealing valuable American jobs no one wants. Upon finishing the litany of Trump's promises, the singer concluded in English, "Fuck You!" The crowd cheered. I was proud of my kinsmen. They are no strangers to US military incursions and they will fight.

And now the flip side. It's hot outside. Probably low 90's. What do I know? Temperatures are measured in Celsius. The hard wooden bench hurts my butt. I'm writing on a legal pad against the bench arm. I genuflected ad hoc before I sat down. Shirt sticks to my back. Stomach cramps. I ate a delicious bollo de  carnitas and tomato from a trusted vendor - Tia Delia vouched for her - I carry three five peso coins in case I need to use El Publicaa Sanitoro (restroom). My handwriting is sloppy. Will I be able to read this page later when I type it? No I didn't bring a laptop, iPad or tablet. I have two sheets of paper towels in my back pocket of my sweaty shorts.

I lug around - wait a minute - I have to go.

I exit the church, cross the baking plaza, leave the gates for the secular world and head for El Publica Sanitoro. I pay the lady behind a cart four pesos. I need the coins - some lady just verbally chased out two young women for breast feeding in church, the other was chewing gum - El Publica Sanitoro lady does not change big bills. She hands me several sheets of toilet paper.

I wonder if she's calculated the minimum amount to get the most value out of a roll vs. what a customer needs to avoid a mess. Hence the paper towels in my back-pocket for insurance. The stall is cramped and the door is misaligned with the frame. I lean against the stall to shut the door. Bathroom is clean. I've seen worst in certain restaurants in good old U.S. of A.

I walk back to the church and complete this post. I lug a backpack with camera gear, a used paperback about cosmonauts and snacks for emergencies. My stomach feels settled.

Now to shoot a self portrait without appearing sacrilegious.

Snap and I walk out into the dry heat.

Dispatch: #52: Pain is a Time Traveler

by Lupe Fernandez

April 27. I am in Romita, Mexico with my mother. The last of her brothers had died. Mom is here to pay respects. I am here to make sure mom gets through the airport without getting lost or exhausted or injured. Out of the Leon GTO Airport. Fierce sun. Acrid smell of petrol and burning wood. Mom is fine and enjoys the company of her two sisters.

I miss my wife, my house, my girls, my cats, fishy the fish, and my routine. This is the first time I've been away from my wife and house for a long duration. Mom intends to stay two weeks. This is my fourth trip to Romita. I know the narrow streets packed with cars. I know where to buy tortas con pollo. I know to guzzle bottled water. know the family and can speak rudimentary Spanish to get by.

I miss my wife. An ache in my abdomen. That's where my pain goes.

Tears stream down my face the first day here. Complicated by anxiety of traveling. I'm not afraid of planes or doers of evil.

Pain is a time machine. I'm five years old, stuck somewhere. I don't want to be an adult, but I'm most qualified to accompany Mom on this emergency trip. As a five year old, I badly want to go home regardless disappointing Mom or the expense of changing airline reservations.

A tear drop tumbles me backward, to 2012. I spend two weeks with Angel during our dating phase. We wanted to see if we could live together. After the living trial, I drove back to LA weeping at 70 miles per hour. My heart torn. I didn't want to leave.

A tear drop shoots me back to Fall 1980, first quarter of UCLA. I buckled over, homesick. Freshman in the dorm partied. Beer flowed. Girls everywhere. The great university beckoned.

Tear drop. Fall 1977. The first day of high school. A cold fruit drink pours from the locker room vending machine. Cigarettes smoked in the quad. Lockers clang. Bells ring. I want to go home. I'm overwhelmed. I keep the gnawing fear to myself.

Drop. Drop. Kindergarten. First day of school. Stephanie E. points at me and announces to our teacher Mrs. Meanes, "Teacher, he's crying." Snot. Crayons. Tan bark.

I wipe my face. Fall asleep on a hot afternoon in a spare bedroom at my tia's house. Portable fan rumbles. I wake up an hour later. I've returned to the present. April 2016.

As an author I often take time trips to a character's past and future. But I'm the tour guide. I'm in control. I say when, where and how long.

As a writer, I often have to emotionally go to some dusty, humid, cold, bright aching place, dry mouthed, nausea paralyzing place in an ocean of memory. It's the job.

But wait.

Is the pain burning backward or forward? Am I still in kindergarten and a five year old's hot tears drip into the 21st century? Or do they originate from some middle place? The locker room at Winton Jr. High smelling of bleached towel. I put my jockstrap on backwards. I didn't know how to wear it and Chris Whatley and Michael Lee laugh at me.

Pain travels through time. Who's to say which way?

Dispatch #51: The Tax Man

by Lupe Fernandez

From the Department of Where Ideas Come From

I watched the final episode of The Walking Dead. Yes, there was zombie action, but the greatest horror was what people did to each other. I've always wanted to write a horror story, but I didn't want to use the usual suspects. Vampires. Werewolves. Zombies. Asparagus.

I wanted something bland and ordinary. Something appearing non-threatening at first appearance. Something or someone we face everyday or at least once a year.

The Tax Man. Everybody pays taxes. Sales tax. Gasoline tax. Income tax. If you don't pay, the consumer is penalized.

Was gazing upon a flimsy tax table? Was sitting in a dark room listening to the howl of coyotes? Did I smell the acrid burning of hair?

No, I was in the bathroom doorway on my way to the commode. The window was open. A pleasant breeze ruffled the curtain. Sun washed the gray driveway below. The faint laughter of children echoed in the neighborhood.

Then I thought...

The Tax Man will make you rich. But if you owe, you’d better pay or he’ll take a 50%...of everything. Your house. Your wife. Your life.

The Tax Man offers to make clients rich, but clients must be a steep tax. If they owe or refuse to pay, The Tax Man will pursue his clients for payments. Nothing will stop. Not death.

A poor guy shows up rich at his new school. Brags he won’t pay taxes on his new-found wealth. He’s warned about The Tax Man, but he’s not scared of a short, portly man, wearing wrinkled clothes and carries a shiny briefcase. But our poor guy turns up dead. Fifty percent of his body is messing. Literally sliced in half.

The Tax Man works on a sliding scale. He starts with 10%.

Ten 10% of your organs, limbs, brain.

Want a tax break? Inform on others who owe.

How can the The Tax Man be defeated?

I envision a YA contemporary horror story.

What happens next? I have no idea. Perhaps I should step into the bathroom doorway again. Seek out the commode.

Or should I flush this idea down the toilet?

Dispatch #50: Dream Trap

Fifteen Miles Across Los Angeles

by Lupe Fernandez

I am trapped in Downtown Los Angeles; I know I'm dreaming, but I can't walk myself up. I can't find the subway; I decide to walk out.

I worked in Downtown LA for twenty-two years; I moved to Northern California four years ago.

I am trapped in Downtown Los Angeles near the financial district. I know I'm dreaming. The Pershing Square Metro Red Line stop isn't available; I decide to walk out. There's a woman walking next to me. I can walk out; It's a dream, I can do anything. It's fifteen miles from downtown to my apartment in North Hollywood located in the San Fernando Valley.

It's a long walk; I decide to fly. I spread my arms, lift my feet and fall face flat on the pavement.

I walk up in a panic, bed sheets up to my chin. I reassure myself the dream isn't real. I'm not stranded in Downtown Los Angeles. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is not an alternative reality.

Or is it?

When I'm 102, will I be able to tell the difference?

Not to worry. The differences are sensory details.

Eye-burning car exhaust. Onions sizzled on aluminum trays heated by propane tanks, mounted in grocery shopping carts. Squeal of Metro bus brakes. Random shout of a wandering man. Burble of suited men discussing the Lakers. Crunch of fractured walk under my shoes. Throp, throp of an LAPD helicopter overhead. Greasy touch of a revolving office building entrance.

Protestors chanting.

I am trapped downtown, but it's not real. I wake up the next morning shaken. I tell myself I don't have to go back there. I look out my bedroom window at soft rolling hills surrounding Mt. Diablo.

I write. My daytime preoccupation is imagining places I've never been and describing them in detail.

When I'm 102 years old, will I be able to tell the difference? How about tonight?

Next time I get stuck downtown, I'll seek out someone with rank body odor. If I recoil, I'll know the difference.

Dispatch #49: The Grief Scale

by Lupe Fernandez

I read a memoir called The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp. She chronicles her grief over the diagnosis of her son Ronan from Tay-Sachs disease. I was struck by her concept of grief hierarchy. Are some personal losses more important than others? My grief is deeper than yours and therefore more deserving of sympathy, empathy, etc…? The flip side, she writes, is that your grief isn’t worthy of tears and rage so get over it.

I’m walking from home Burbank Elementary school and my watercolor painting in my hand flies off. I chase after it. The paper tumbles on the sidewalk, almost within my grasp, but the wind hurtles the painting into the street. I’m not supposed to go into the street; I lost the painting and I’m sad.

I’m in the sixth grade and standing in line on the black top for something important – I don’t remember what – and Christine Hills cuts in front of me. I protest. She punches me and I cry. My best Ramon Vasquez asks if I’m crying. No, I got dirt in my eye. Sure, he doesn’t believe.

Loss and humiliation. Where do these do these feelings place on the grief scale?

1 is Amusing Laugh

10 is Psychiatric Hospital Admission

Not the same as terminal illness.

My brothers and I were playing softball on the front lawn. Somebody – I’m not naming names – hit the ball and shattered my parent’s bedroom window. We knew our father would be furious. Trouble was a cannonball in my stomach. I cowered against my dresser, tasting tears and snot rolling across my lips. Or my teen years when I never knew what mood my alcoholic father would be in when I came from school.

Where am I on the scale?

I limit these recollections to childhood and adolescence as I middle grade and young adult fiction.

Nobody close to me died – my father left his mortal coil during my first quarter at UCLA, thus falls out of the purview of Children’s Literature.

In my stories, characters suffer emotional trauma and some of them die. Their grief never happened in this world, so why would the reader care? It’s not memoir.

But writing fiction – aside from being a part of my depression management – allows some characters fall in love, participate in great adventures and become better people.

And they get to grief however the hell they want.

Dispatch #48: The Gospel According to Super-Chicken

by Lupe Fernandez

I ride in the Hyundai dealer shuttle service back to my house. The Volkswagen is hot and stuffy, crowded with four passengers, two coffee mugs and one brief case. We pass by a gouged Contra Costa hillside.

I say to the driver. “What an eyesore. At least they have their own Doppler 5000.”

“They do?” The polite driver says.

“No, I was joking about the army’s microwave dish.” Camp Parks is surrounded by housing developments. I proceed to explain the concept of Doppler radar and make fun of local news channels that bombastically promote Doppler radar for their weather reports.

“Are you a mechanical engineer?” The driver asks me.

“Huh?”

“You know a lot of about science.”

I laugh. “No, I’m a writer.”

“Have you published anything?”

Super-Chicken and Fred

“No, it’s a competitive business.” And then I paraphrase Super-Chicken, “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

Super-Chicken was a 1960’s cartoon, produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame. I watched the show as a kid and a few phrases lodged in my brain.

I knew writing fiction was a complicated, long term; low paying career filled with artists with far more talents than I.

Whenever mild-mannered Henry Cabot Henhouse needed to combat villains such as The Oyster, The Noodle or The Laundry Man, Mr. Henhouse donned his super-suit and drank the super-sauce provided by his trust lion assistant. After gulping down the mixture, Mr. Henhouse would have a seizure and transform into SUPER-CHICKEN. He would always remark about the super sauce, such as “A little heavy on the vermouth, Fred.”

When I edit my work, I often find my writing too heavy on confusion, Fred. Disheartening. So I came up with my own theme song, inspired by Super Chicken.

When my keyboard no long clacks,
When I can't figure out a plot,
When I get a rejection,
When it looks like I will quit writing', (puk, puk, puk)
There is someone waiting,
Who will hurry up and rescue you,
Just Call for Super Chicken! (puk, ack!) 

To the Super Coop!
To pick up my wife's car at the dealer.

Dispatch #47: Don't Slam the Door!

by Lupe Fernandez

Last month, I assisted my father-in-law install a new track for folding doors enclosing the laundry room. After grunting, sweating, hammering and hefting large white doors, we successfully aligned the doors in the new track. Open then gently and they work find.

I told my daughters, “Be gentle with the doors. Don’t bang them open.”

A thought slapped me like wet laundry. I sound like a parent. I regressed to my childhood, running out the back door, letting the screen door slam.

“Don’t slam the door!” my father would yelled. Sometimes, he’d order me back inside and leave again. This time gently closing the door.

Can there ever be a reason to slam a door?

“Where’s that Starbucks receipt? I’m mean who writes phone numbers on paper. He could’ve just sent me a text or, oh I don’t know call? Maybe he doesn’t want me to call him. Oh God, what if this some elaborate prank and he’s laughing to all his Mover & Shaker friends. He said he was sure I was an actress. I just rolled out of bed and was wearing my Kipper Kitty Slippers and was dying for a mocha latte with 2% milk cause I pulled an all-night for the friggin’ English paper about John Muir love affair with trees. I pick up my order and there he is and I act all normal even though I’m in dirty jeans, a Save the Library shirt and a pink robe full of cat hair. When I get home, I put my jeans in the wash and pace the room rehearsing what I’m going to say to him and I can’t find the stupid receipt with his number on it in my robe and what if he’s waiting right now for me to call and if I don’t his ex-girlfriend will call and they’ll get back to together and make cute babies. The washing machine goes slush, slush and damn, damn, damn and I tear open the laundry doors, they fall off the rail and almost kill me. I wish they had ‘cause I pull on the washer door; it’s locked and my whole life is in the rinse cycle.”

Or this reason?

“Angel,” Five year old Nadia drags a large black shoe into her eleven year old brother’s room, “There’s a monster in the laundry.”

Angel puts a magnifying glass to her Nadia’s face. “That’s scientifically impossible. There’s no such thing as monsters.”

Nadia holds up the torn shoe. “It ate the fix-it man.”

Angel inspects the bite marks on the shoe belonging to the Alpaca Appliance Repair Man. Nadia follows her brother to the laundry room. The doors are closed. Angel knocks. “Excuse me, Senor. Are you missing a shoe?”

Something stinking like dirty feet skitters behind the door.
"I’m hungry,” Nadia says.

Angel opens the door. He makes a strangled squeak. The boy bangs the door shut, shoving his back against it.

From the living room, Papa yells, “Don’t slam the door.”

Angel, eyes bulging, tells Nadia, “I know where the other shoe went.” 

To slam or not to slam,
That is the question.

Dispatch: #46: The Fields of My Father

by Lupe Fernandez

 

In the fields of my father, they grow corn, alfalfa and lettuce,
a man chases crows away from newly planted seeds,
a tractor stirs of dust,
fallow burns.

In the fields of my father, they sprout power plants and warehouses,
a boy with a cell phone pedals by brick and cement houses,
a purple truck thump, thumps music from a stereo,
speed bumps grow like bruises.

 

In the fields of my father, they celebrate La Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe,
a wooden tower in front of the church spit red, green and white fire,
a devil, a drunkard, a dandy, a housewife dance with El Torito,
police dance with gangs.

In the fields of my father, they eat potato chips, hamburgers and hot dogs,
my father's half-brother - Tio Perico - counsels me to let go,
to let go of my father's cruelity,
and remember his frailty.

In the fields of my father, they do not mass at the northern border,
they cook chili relleno, mole, birria, agave tamales and beans,
they hold hands, kiss babies, go to church,
they go to work.

In the fields of my father, I smell dust, exhaust, ice cream, pollo, carnitas,
I eat fat tortas and drive on dark highways,
I stay in a hotel near Starbucks,
I dream of fields.

Dispatch #45: A Book's Life

by Lupe Fernandez

I read Violet & Claire by Francesca Lia Block, a YA novel about two girls who's friendship is threatened by the lifestyles they lead in the hard world of Los Angeles' show business. Violet is obsessed with writing a screenplay based on her life and creating a movie. Claire is a vulnerable loner who believes she's a faerie. Love. Betrayal. Loyalty.

I found this book at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley. The book was on a shelf for used books. The pages were marked up in green and red pen. Comments. Underlines. Circles. What was the previous owner doing with Lia Block's book? Class assignment. Writing exercise. Personal salvation.

I imagined a life for this book prior to falling into my hands.

The cover is worn, pages creased, spine split. The reader perches on a school planter, underlining "I asked if she was new to our lovely local prison" and scribbling the note "school prison" in green pen. She realizes, yes that's what this place feels like. The reader is in prison and needs to adapt to wait out her sentence, her crime not being in the cool crowd.

Another reader slumps in a library, groaning at the paper due about this damn book. He underlines "...like fallen stars trying to get back home" and writes "simile" in the margin. Who cares, he wonders. Two crazy girls. He'd never date them. Still, this Claire thought Violet was sleeping with this guy she likes and everything went to the shit. He sits up straight and determines to stop his own affair before his girlfriend finds out.

The last reader hugs the book like a talisman, a charm to ward off fetid hatred. Her best friend has been writing love letters to her boyfriend, hiding in the library. Says he a book report due. She strides across the quad to confront her friend curled up on a planter box, writing in a book. The same book she has. Violet & Claire.

The year ends. The book is tossed in a donation bin. Humidity curls the corners. The ink bleeds. It's stacked with other discards, weight crushing. Oily fingerprints mar the cover. It passes from storage to storage until the big day of the Bay Area Book Festival. Violet & Claire is shelved, breathing Berkeley air and waits.

Waits to be chosen.

Do you know where your book has been?