"Transcripts with the Witch's Daughter"

File 30918
Dr. Olga Vyrensky’s notes with patient No. A9041
Transcript 2 of 8

Doctor: When you think back on your mother, what do you remember?

Patient: Her soft smile, musky breath of herbs and roots, the way her voice sounded when she sang me to sleep, like delicate wind chimes, somewhere far away, somewhere still in the old country.

Doctor: Where did you go afterwards?

Patient: To another home of healers and seers. She had always told me that if anything happened to her that I should follow the holly bushes into the woods until they ended and then track the bloodstones until I saw a cave. I grew up in that cave.

Doctor: Ironic, isn’t it, that you ended up following a trail of stones?

Patient: That’s not an original thought, Doctor. It’s already been mentioned in the papers.

Doctor: So, your mother planted those holly bushes and placed those stones there for you?

Patient: That’s right.

Doctor: Didn’t you think about going to the police?

Patient: (laughs) Police? As if they would do anything to about a “witch’s” death, and not just any witch, but that witch, the one from Dark Woods, the one everyone was trying to get out of Farayland. And what should I have told them? ‘Hello, I’m the witch’s daughter, the one no one knows about. I’m seeking justice. The Radvich twins just murdered my mother. Please help me put them behind bars. Oh, I know, Officer, it’ll be tricky because they’re the children of the richest mobster around, John Radvich, who runs all of Farayland’...

Doctor: John Radvich was a poor woodscutter…

Patient: (laughs) And Hansel and Gretel were innocent abandoned children…

***

I used to wish, when I was a little girl, that I had my mother’s brown skin and eyes so deep green they looked black, except in the full moon where they glimmered with light like the waning sun upon Dark Forest.

My eyes were slightly like hers, except paler and a touch narrow at the corners. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to be just like her. Long wavy black hair to the waist. Skin the color of wet earth. But she would say, it’s good, Marjoli, that you inherited your father’s hair of sun and skin of milk.

It’s good that you can pass. As one of them.

***
From a crack in the bedroom door I watched as the girl beat her on the head with a cast iron pan and the boy shoved her into the fireplace. My mother had always loved fire, loved sitting near it while roasting herbs, built a fireplace for herself big as a cave. It was a cold night so the flames were roaring. The full moon flooded the living room. Even from where I crouched I could see her eyes glimmer. I think it scared the twins for a second, right before the fire took her, to see them change color like that.

My mother didn’t scream. For this I am thankful. They couldn’t get her to scream.

They ran out as soon as they could. The house smelled first of burning hair then flesh as smoke filled it room by room. I stayed behind that bedroom door for a long time.

To this day, the smell of burning hair reminds me of her. Sometimes I burn my own hair just to feel her next to me.

***

Doctor: So, you’re saying your mother wasn’t a witch?

Patient: (chuckles) No. If anyone was prone to trouble-making, it was me. I was the one who liked to fry ants under magnifying glasses and dissect worms to watch them grow. My mother was kind, too kind, you could say, hated to see even a wasp suffer.

Doctor: How was she too kind?

Patient: Well, the most obvious example is how she let the twins in that day, even after they had been egging our house and burning her rose bushes for years. Even after she caught them red-handed eating all her herbal homemade candies that she had left outside to cool.

She probably thought if she invited them in, they’d see that our house was just a normal house. She made them lemonade and lavender jelly sandwiches. They stayed all evening and seemed to be enjoying themselves. They said their father was out of town and that it would be okay for them to head home late by the light of the moon.

She probably saw their happiness as a good sign, hoped they would put a good word in with their father.

Doctor: Why do you think they did it?

Patient: (long pause) Why does anyone hurt what they don’t understand?

***

A warm rush fills me as I place the candies in his mouth. He is smiling up at me. I am straddling him, his hands running along my smooth bare back.

“Mary Jane,” he whispers. “Your candies remind me of being a child again,” he moans as I feed him another and thrust myself down on him. “So familiar…”

And just as he is about to come, his body becomes rigid and then I know they’ve taken effect. Total paralysis, yet totally conscious. I toss my hair back and laugh, wildly. His eyes are the only part that can move as they widen in shock and confusion.

From my nightstand drawer, I grab a thin switchblade and place it against his neck.

He tries to scream, a soundless scream. The full moon’s light pierces through the blinds. I bend close to him so he can see how my eyes too glimmer with the last light of Dark Forest.

“I have her eyes, see?”

In that instant I know. That he knows. Who I am.

Twenty years I’ve waited for this.

The blade is quick and sharp, sharper than he deserves.

***

“I knew it was you all along,” she raises her head from her bed and startles me.

I thought she was asleep. And yet, part of me knows I always wanted this, to have her awake, for her to see me. The flames have already started to rise, devouring the gilded long tapestries, the silken ivory curtains, the mahogany gold-lined armoire, the empty bottles that she hides under it all.

“You have her eyes.”

I pause. I am just about to reach for the far window, the only one I left unlocked so I could make my escape. In a second the flames will touch her white damask bedspread, her sheets, her nightgown, and, given the amount of chemicals I soaked everything in the day before (five years it took me to create this phantasmagoric solution, odorless, ten times more flammable than kerosene) the home and existence of world-famous socialite, Gretel Radovich, will be mere ashes flecked with gold.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment too, you know,” she calls out, as calmly as when she first met me, the day she agreed to hire me to be her housekeeper two years ago.

There was nothing I could have done to save her, even if I wanted to. And the truth is, I didn’t want to.

The smell of Gretel’s burning hair rose and I remembered my mother. I hurdled out the window and slid down the drain pipe, embers singeing my skin, etching it black, the color of night.

"Escape from Burning Man"

The way I pictured my 40th birthday was not like this—standing in a desert, blinded by sun, mouth full of dust, skin cracking, feeling all alone, stranded, having just walked in on the guy I was supposed to have a romantic weekend with, having just walked in on him with not one, but two girls, and not one, but two guys, entwined on some filthy fuzzy white carpet under a camouflage tarp, naked and sweating as one.

And to think all he did was look up and say, “Oh, Jeanine. You’re here early. Everyone, this is Jeanine.”

And to think those kids actually rolled over, opened their eyes and said, “Hi, Jeanine. Welcome home,” like a bunch of fools.

I hate how they call it home.

The outside of their site was walled in with a Ryder truck with large letters painted on it that said Cuddle Puddle Camp. A couple of guys on a motorized couch wearing nothing but green body paint and blue feather boas almost ran me over as I walked out. Then a whole brigade of people on bicycles flew by chasing a dragon made of scrap metal.

For as far as my eyes could see it was just naked white people and dung-colored mountains.

I was in hell.

This is the way I once pictured my 40th birthday.

I thought I’d be married, to some great rich guy who loved jazz and recited poetry. And I’d have a few kids who loved us and wore matching tennis outfits. We would have a party with our friends in the Hamptons, successful doctors, lawyers and accountants, who were simultaneously creative and compassionate types. I would be celebrating not only my fourth decade on the planet but also some recent promotion or award for being the most innovative and powerful executive of something or other in New York.

But you see, that ain’t how it went down.

I’m not married, not seeing anyone except my two cats who I feed twice a day. I just recently lost my job. (“We are overhauling the culture of our sales team,” my boss told me, which was code for “we want to hire younger, skinnier women to sell pharmaceutical products to doctors.”)

And since most of my friends are hitched with kids and they all had plans for Labor Day weekend by the time I decided, last minute, to have a get-together in my Brooklyn studio, all 500 square feet of it, I found myself facing the prospect of spending my supposedly most pinnacle, most epic, birthday alone.

Yes, my mother offered to have something at her place in Jersey, with her friends, but that just sounded even more depressing, what with the images of the aunties gathered around a table of Costco deli meats and Cheetos, smiling sadly at me, trying to avoid the elephants in the room: my single status, my joblessness, my existence.

It was my baby sister, Dena, who, bless her, a few weekends before, had taken me to a club because, as she said, “you gotta shake that ass now and then otherwise it’s going to start collecting dust like a piece of furniture.”

I hadn’t danced in years and I also hadn’t drank in a bit, which is what I did that night, in excess. I guess the music and tequila lit a fire in me because I ended up dancing, bumping and grinding something fierce with this pretty young thing from California, Ronin, who grabbed what the good lord gave me, and then some, out on the back deck behind the club under some blue lights, and I have to say, for a second, I saw heaven.

I knew all along it wasn’t a great idea to come here but Dena told me it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and better than sitting in Ma’s place listening to Auntie Betty tell us that story about her botched colonoscopy for the tenth time.

“Burning Man!” Dena said when I told her, like she was saying the name of some exotic island. “It’s supposed to be so wild and fun. Plus it’s only for one night and then he said he’s going to take you to Vegas.”

***
“I told you in my email that I was into poly-am,” Ronin said to me as I huffed out of his tent of human pretzels. “And you seemed okay with that.”

This is the problem with younger guys. They speak another language.

I thought poly-am was some new emo band. He then tried to explain to me that it’s short for polyamorous, which apparently means you like to fuck anything and everything under the sun all at once and everyone around you is supposed to be okay with it.

Well, I, for one, am a mono-am woman and this is where I drew the line.

He was trying to catch up to me as I walked faster and faster away from his site.

“You said you wanted to shake things up for your birthday!” he called out. “Well here’s your chance.”

I was looking for the kids I carpooled with from the airport but they were long gone.

“Talk to me, Jeanine,” Ronin said. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” I shouted. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You’ve been wooing me by phone and email all these weeks, saying how you want to see me, and I haul my ass across the country and drive three hours in a Yugo with a bunch of hairy, smelly kids out to the middle of god knows where just to find you rolling around with your hand in a bunch of cookie jars, and you ask me what’s wrong!”

A few girls with parasols in tutus and silver boots walked by and whispered, “Oooh, playa drama.”

“Shut up!” I hissed.

He put his arm around me.

“So, what I hear you saying, Jeanine, is that you’re disappointed. What I hear you saying is that you don’t want to share me. But there is enough of me to go around. And the same goes for you. Don’t live with thoughts of scarcity. The universe is abundant. Everyone is here for you. There is so much love here for you. You just have to open up and receive it.”

“I’m gonna open up my fist and see if you receive it.” I shoved him off.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. I’m out of here.”

I thought he might keep following me, but instead he said, “The Universe is telling me to let you find your way, Jeanine. But, you can come back anytime. Right here at the corner of Bliss and Redemption. It’s just you and the playa now. Good luck on your journey toward survival. And remember, leave no trace.”

And to think I was going to sleep with that fool.

What a joke. And what a joke this bullshit about survival. Survival is walking through parts of Brooklyn and not getting shot, survival is some people living on a dollar a day. Not this place of yuppy tribal posers.

At first I assumed here in the land of peace, love and understanding that some fool would give me a ride back to Vegas, or at least to somewhere with a god dammed hotel and a shower. But I was wrong. No one wanted to leave!

I went up to every campsite I passed and people walking or riding by. I even offered money. “No way, sister, can’t miss the Burn!” is what they all said, looking at me like I had just suggested missing out on the return of the second coming of Christ.

Soon I had other problems. I was burning up, thirsty as hell, top of my head and my eyes frying under the sun. My feet blistered. My tongue felt like a sandbox. I couldn’t even buy water; you couldn’t buy a god dammed thing in this place.

“No currency. Currency is evil,” one girl with flabby tits and a live snake around her neck said. “Plus you’re supposed to come prepared for survival, with your own water. But I’ll barter with you.”

I wanted to punch her in the face and stomp on her snake, but instead I gave her my I Love NY keychain for a bottle of warm water.

Time after time, people turned me down for a ride. Even after I finally made it to the information tent, I was told I had to wait until the morning.

“We discourage traffic on the big day. You’ll have to stay the night.”

But there was no way I was going back to Ronin’s tent. I had to find a way out.

I passed the Yoni Temple, a giant paper mache vagina, and the Penis Slide and watched people wait in long lines to go in and out of one and up and down the other.

At midnight, I was going to be forty and I needed to be anywhere but here.

Walking around in a daze, I started to get harassed by a bunch of people sitting high up on lifeguard chairs. Next to them was a line of bikes marked, Borrow Us.

One guy, with a bullhorn, shouted at me: “No spectators! Tee shirt and jean shorts is not a costume!”

“Fuck you!” I screamed, and gave them the finger.

They turned around and mooned me with their hairy asses.

I kept going until it dawned on me that I could see the highway in the distance and if I could only bike across the desert to the road I could hitchhike to Vegas or the nearest town.

The mooners were happy to see me again and to give me a bike.

But of course there was a catch. I had to put on a costume.

I agreed, reluctantly, and rode off into the slowly setting sun wearing a bra made of fake pink fur, matching panties, gold boots and a paper birthday hat feeling like an idiot but thrilled to be that much closer to getting out.

The desert is much bigger than it looks. And the bike was much shittier than it looked. So by the time I rode to the edge, the two tires were totally flat and I was exhausted.

There was no one in sight, nothing except a small wooden door hinged on a post with a sign on it that read: You have reached the edge of existence. Exit at your own risk.

I opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind me.

The sun was melting hot orange and magenta all over the desert. For a second I felt a great sense of relief. I had made it. But more than that I felt untethered, as if I had truly left the entire world, reality, my life, behind.

The feeling didn’t last long. I saw the tiny headlights on the road, still far away, and started running as fast as I could toward them, screaming these primal screams like a crazy woman.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear it charging up from behind me.

This beast, this giant pink rabbit with a maniacal grin the size of a billboard barreling toward me.

At first I just thought it was just another stupid art car out for a cruise but then it became very clear it was making a beeline, for me. I started running, now in the direction back toward the Man. I wasn’t taking any chances. You had all sorts of fucked up people on all sorts of stuff out here and I knew full well this could be some bunch of fools driving around totally high seeing if they could scare the shit out of some lone tripper out past the edge of motherfuckin’ existence.

Then, the rabbits came out.

About a dozen of them, dressed in full rabbit suits, jumping out of the van, sprinting after me. My left knee, my bad one, gave out. They caught me and covered my head in a pink mesh bag. I started punching and kicking them and even caught one in the jaw, but all they did was laugh and sing, “We’re the love the brigade! Here to love you!”

They carried me into the van, and took off the bag. The walls inside were covered with pink fur and silver glitter.

I reached for the door.

“Y’all better let me the fuck out of here or I will sue your asses for assault, abduction, battery and anything else I can think of!”

But they just sat next to me, smiling like idiots, trying to tell me that someone ordered a “love abduction” on me because I needed to be pampered and loved. They were offering me whatever I wanted, free massages, champagne, a gourmet meal; they even had a shower in the back if I wanted to wash off.

“I just want to get out of here! I want to leave Burning Man!”

But that’s one thing apparently the Love Brigade would not offer. So I sat there while they drove around, realizing they weren’t about to let me out unless they got to do something wonderfully loving for me.

Finally I told them that I was sorry for being such an agro bitch, and that yes, I wanted a group massage, but not inside the van because it was too hot. The roof was much cooler and that way we could watch the sunset together and chant to the playa goddess and thank her for her abundance.

The bunnies clapped and hugged me. I then told them I wanted to shower first, but that they should wait for me above where I would make my grand entrance in the buff.

“It’ll be like I’m being reborn to all of you,” I said, and the fools ate it up just like I knew they would.

While I listened to them get settled on the roof, I made my move, got in the driver’s seat, started the engine and began roaring back toward the road.

They banged their fists and shouted, “what the hell are you doing?” “slow down!” “fucking bitch!” Eventually I stopped and told them to get off, now or never.

A line of rabbits chased after me until they got too tired.

“Eat my dust, bunnies!” I shouted.

Then it was just me, Jeanine Stintson, at the wheel of this crazy mother fucking rabbit machine barreling toward highway 34.

I pulled off my birthday hat and threw it in the back, tossed my hair and saw myself in the mirror. I looked good in pink.

The sun and my smile melted into one. I was on my way.

(photo by photographer, Declan McCullagh)

"Rescue Me"

I’ve lost myself.

The sun is shining. People walk by oblivious, drinking frappacinos by the bay.

I’m no where to be found. I’ve looked everywhere.

It must be frightening, dark, lonely there where she is.

I feel like a fool, all this time, looking in the mirror thinking that was me, when really it was that imposter, damned ego.

Ego’s got my self locked up somewhere. Got to find her. I went so long without even noticing she was missing. But then it dawned on me—last month, at that party.

***

Surrounded by women in Dolce, men in Armani. The smell of new money in the air. I heard a conversation; within it a voice that sounded like mine, and yet not.

“That’s really beautiful, where did you get it?”

“My boyfriend bought it for me.”

“Really? What does he do?”

“He’s a banker. He drives a Porsche. What about your boyfriend?”

“Well, I don’t have one, currently. But I do have a Mercedes.”

“Really! Nice. Isn’t this a great club? They’re so good to be so selective, so exclusive about who they let in.”

I saw my reflection off the glass wall. Something wasn’t right. Wine red lips ($100 tube of Mishima). Mascara (flown from Paris). Manicured fingers (Beverly Hills).

I heard a whisper from far away. That’s not me.

I’ve been on the hunt ever since.

***

Wherever I search, ego is a few steps ahead.

Went to therapy where I asked the woman, can you help me find my self? Try the Peace Corps, she said. So I signed up and it was hot and dirty in Ghana where they sent me. I tried to look to see if I could get what I came for but ego kept knocking me off my feet: You’re too good for this. This is a waste of time.

I went to Burning Man, tripped on ecstasy and had a glimpse of myself but ego threw playa dust in my eyes and sneered: This is just a fantasy. Put your boas away.

Traveled to India, joined an ashram, meditated and did yoga every morning until one day I saw my self half-smiling, floating, shifting left and right around me. I could almost grab her and put her inside my heart where she belonged. But of course ego beat me to her—snatched her away: Your knees are getting tired. Plus you don’t even like Indian food. Go home.

Gave up meat. Sold my car. Bought a bike.

Gave away all my nice clothes. Started donating to charities.

Ego was getting tired, weaker, I could see it in her eyes.

Quit my job. Started teaching.


Yesterday, I went to tutor a little boy named Rico at his house. It was raining outside. A chilly Saturday. I was soaked after riding over. His mother offered me some of her dry clothes, a flannel shirt and some sweats. Rico and I worked on subtraction problems for hours. He was really starting to get it. I was proud of him and told him so.

“Miss Jenny, does math work for everything?”

I thought about this.

“Yes.”

“Then what’s Rico minus Miss Jenny?”

I smiled, shrugged.

“A whole lot less, Rico!” He whooped, always loving to crack himself up.

I laughed and gave him a hug. Saw something in the rain-smoothed window.

Rescued at last.

"Small-Time Jersey Hero"

I see my girl again sitting there, knees folded, a new book, of course, up close almost covering her face cause she probably needs glasses.

I call her my girl but she’s not—not really. Okay, not at all. Been checking her out for like half a year, about when I started here. I can watch her for hours, even from my post, where she can barely see me.

I think sometimes: knucklehead, stop being such a stunad—just go up to her and say hi. And say what? Hi, I’m Donnie Migliozzi, I work as a mall cop, I mean security guard here, would you like to go out some time? Would you like to go out with a goomba like me?

You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not a goomba.

As if I could even get those words out. Like she wouldn’t just run away like she just saw some freak. Anyway she’s probably too young, jailbait. I don’t need that, do I? That’s the problem with them oriental girls, they’re cute as hell but all look twelve. This one looks maybe 15, but who knows, could be seventeen, thirteen.

She just pulled some gum onto her finger and swirled it back into that sweet mouth. What’s that thing Shakespeare wrote? Wish I was that glove on that hand?

What I’d give to be that gum.

These shoes are killing me. Hate posting the Macy’s entrance, stinking perfume counters, but gotta stick it out.

Johnny says Pergo’s got connects on the force and every now and then he recommends someone from here over to Red Bank P.D. I’ll do whatever it takes. They can’t stop me. I’ll file some ADA shit on them. My first test came back non-passing but I know it’s cause of this, this mouth. My situation. That can’t be legal. It’s not like I’m deaf or nothing. Dream killing mother fuckers. Stugots.

Those girls are fucking with my girl again. Why they always on her shit?

I step closer, try to get a listen in but I’m too far. Something about those benches? Like they own them? The big one does all the talking, one hairy chick, mustache and all. Nasty. I’m looking casual when my girl puts on her backpack, looks up and tosses her jumbo Orange Julius in the hairy girl’s face. Sploosh! It’s like slow-mo orange lava smacking her right in the eyes!

Oh shit, it’s on! My girl takes off. The big girl, slapping away the two friends who are trying to help her wipe off, flies after China Doll. I sprint to catch up with them. She’s outnumbered. This is my chance.

The mall blurs by. All around me all these stores become obstacles, miles of merchandise between me and my baby—GAP, Express, Victoria Secret, Bun ‘n Burger, Friendly’s…

She is a small black dot with a backpack. I can hardly see her. Fuckin’-A, she runs fast!

The big girl is slower but gaining, I see them – racing past the food court, the frozen yogurt counter, the kiosk where you can get your photos on mugs and teeshirts, Spencer’s, the rhinestone jewelry stand.

The three of us getting closer to one another now—dodging the two groups that make up most of the mall at this time—students and retirees—one group on its way in, the other on its way out. We three weaving and bobbing—under fluorescent lights, skylights, elevators, escalators…a massive Easter egg, the Easter bunny (that’s Johnny in a suit). Can’t let that hairy bitch get to her first. She won’t stand a chance.

I lose them. Where’d they go? I look up and see them scrambling up the escalator. Man, I’m winded. Gotta keep going.

They both look back and realize I’m chasing them. I go to shout, “Hey, stop!” but nothing comes out, just hard breath. You’d think they’d stop but it just makes them run harder. Where is she going? She’s getting tired, I can tell, almost just knocked over that guy with the walker and portable air tank. That would’ve been bad.

I grab the big girl by her tank top, and then remember I’m not allowed to touch anyone unless they’re like already pounding the shit out of someone else. To protect the mall against lawsuits.

“Get off me, fuck head!”

She stomps on my foot real hard. My fingers slip and I almost trip and fall.

This is the end. We’ve covered the entire mall. The beginning is Macy’s and the end is JC Penny’s. They’re heading into JC Penny’s. Guy on the piano is playing Yesterday. Now he’s trying to stop the girls but they both give him a shove and take off again.

I find the two of them in the junior’s department in a rack of pink sweats on sale for $9.99. Wrestling—the big one pinning down my girl, punching her in the head. A swarm of skinny sales girls are screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!” No one’s in control. I am ready to step in, get my arrest, get my girl, get my P.D.

A lady dives down out of nowhere—she breaks them up. She’s older, oriental, probably my girl’s mom, takes one pull back and clocks the big girl right in the nose. Blood squirts everywhere, onto the pink sweats like dalmatian spots. The air smells like Orange Julius and sweat. The big girl screams. My girl looks in shock. I guess I am too.

“Well, officer, aren’t you going to arrest her? She was assaulting my daughter! I was just defending her.”

The ma’s talking to me. It’s my time.

I hand Big Girl a handkerchief from my pocket. She wipes up. She’s crying now. I open my mouth.

“Y-y-you are un-un-der a-a-a-rrest…”

Everyone is silent.

“Y-y-you ha-have the ri-ri-right…”

Eyes widen. I’m used to this. I’m out of breath so it’s ever harder.

“…to re-re-remain s-s-s-silent.”

I get it all out, hold her hairy wrists as if my hands are cuffs and lead her away.

On my way out, I catch my girl’s eyes and think I see a mix of stuff: gratitude, pity, sadness, confusion, and maybe, just maybe – love.

"White Men's Adventures"

Harvey Wilson is listening to the rhythmic hard breath of the sherpa upon whose back he is strapped. The blue sky above is clear and sweet as he had imagined Kilimanjaro would be. How amazing it is to think that only days ago he was watching the video on his computer, the advertisement that changed his life.

Mr. Wilson is a man you don’t know but you may have seen him before driving by in a nice car with the windows up and doors locked. His weekly games at the racquetball club keep him fit and belie his age. The silver at his temples he keeps neat with pride and never colors.

But even with all his good fortune, CEO of one of the largest chains of luxury cars outside Columbus, chair of many boards governing this and that, Harvey Wilson had, over the past few years, grown slowly aware that he was spending too much time in Ohio and not enough in the world. This became immensely clear when he saw the ad:

“Are you a man who works hard and deserves more? You deserve to see the world. At White Men’s Adventures we cater to men just like you. On our adventures you’ll feel like you never left home, yet the world will feel all yours! The world is your playground!”

The video came to him in an email. He had never heard of the company before but liked the ad. In fact, it had such a profound effect on him, he signed up right away. Maybe it was the announcer, a good-looking kid, bright, clear eyes, voice full of confidence, who reminded him of himself as a young man. Or maybe it was all the shots of exciting things to do: yachting in India, race-car driving in Egypt, hang-gliding in Peru.

Harvey’s wife, Nora, who was always busy with her ladies and lunches anyway, was more than happy to see him take a vacation.

***

The ad was right. Harvey had never been on such adventures in his life! And all with such comfort!

He explored all the cities of China on rickshaws and in limousines. In Kenya he went on safari in an air-conditioned Mercedes SUV, where he shot at game using a computer-operated rifle. In India it was a luxury double-decker bus all to himself with tinted windows and a full bar.

Everywhere he stayed the hotels were like mansions, far from where locals lived and full of beds covered with imported goose down and silk sheets. All of the food for the entire trip had been pre-selected by Mr. Wilson, who only liked steaks, pasta and arugula salads. So as such, WMA pre-packed many days’ worth of food with a private chef who prepared the food he liked when he wanted it.

Also, he had no need to worry about local water. The company provided him with endless bottles and tanks of Evian.

The ride on the sherpa’s back was the closest he had ever been to a man with such dark skin. He had not gotten a good look at the lad, but from what he remembered he was sinewy and glistening with sweat with dark shiny spots for eyes.

The trip culminated in a visit to Bangkok, where, as the client, Harvey Wilson was invited to partake in the local offerings, namely the women.

Now, WMA was not about to serve up any old batch of prostitutes; no – it catered to its customers, offering women both local and from around the world. Harvey contemplated and finally decided, what the heck – it was his adventure after all. So he perused the catalogue he was offered and chose, upon more contemplation, a fair-haired Russian gal who reminded him of his first boyhood love.

The woman disrobed and her flesh was as bright as the snows of Kilimanjaro.

Mr. Wilson licked his lips and fought a pang of guilt, replacing it with thoughts such as: is it a coincidence the name of this city and the nature of its wares?

Upon entering her thighs, he was still pondering this coincidence, simultaneously pleased with his swift readiness. The old man’s still got it. In his reveries, eyes closed, he thought he imagined what in fact was truly happening. Harvey Wilson was getting sucked in – cock, balls and all, into the young woman’s cunt. He groaned and opened his eyes and started to scream.

No sound came out as he watched his hips then his thighs sink into the hole. It clamped down and pulled him in with a slurping sound. He looked up. The woman’s face had turned into the young man’s face from the video, except it was different. It was brown.

***

The man known as Harvey Wilson looks around. Had he blacked out?

The young man stands before him holding a bell, the kind used in boxing rings.

The bell rings and the air around them swirls until they find themselves on a prairie full of white people, on horses. On the horizon a group of dark men with guns are charging toward them.

“Harvey, Harvey, Harvey,” the young man says. “Well you wanted to go on an adventure, and you’re about to get one. A real one. Start running!”

Harvey, too scared to ask questions, starts running. He notices the other white men on the horses are running away too.

“Welcome to Afrasia!” the young man shouts.

Harvey listens as he explains, but he can hardly believe it.

White Men’s Adventures is a cover. It is in fact an experiment paid for by the wealthiest non-whites in the world. Men like him are being put through a virtual world experience, a “what if” take on history to give white men a taste of, and brown people a glimpse of, what could have been.

Harvey’s goal is to survive lifetime after lifetime in this parallel world (albeit virtual). He will eventually be allowed to wake up. The amount of time in real life will only be a few hours.

Harvey starts to scream. “You can’t do this! This is illegal! You’ll hear from my lawyers!”

Then he feels his memory fade and in seconds this reality feels extremely real. It is all that matters.

***

Harvey is now one of the natives, that is, the white men, on this mass of beautiful green land. The brown men have just “discovered” it and want it for themselves.

They are shooting at him. He has never run so fast in his life. His feet are burning. He still feels confused.

He cries out, “I am Harvey Wilson!”

The men don’t understand him. They laugh. They speak Swanese. Most of Afrasia does. A man on horseback with a gun shoots Harvey in the back. Pain rips through his lungs. The bell rings.

Ding ding.

Harvey Wilson gropes in the dark. A foul stench makes him vomit. Voices around him pray and cry. He tries to run but he is chained.

The ship docks and a boot kicks him onto a platform. He is naked. He sees his wife, Nora, being pulled away, her pale flesh bleeding as a man whips her. He hears his children crying, further and further. Fingers pry his mouth open.

“Danu lo chang.”

Swanese. He can’t understand. He panics, shuffles off the docks and drowns.

Ding ding.

Harvey Wilson is on Kilimanjaro. Except this time he is the sherpa. His back is weak and sharply shooting with pain. He stumbles, falls off a cliff and dies.

Ding ding.

Harvey Wilson finds himself in a place like a city in present day. For a second he thinks he is back to his normal life and sighs.

Taxi cabs roar by. He waves to hail one. He wants to go to the police station. But none stops. A man, paler than him, walks by and laughs.

“You won’t ever get a cab in this town. White boys like us don’t stand a chance.”

The man is speaking Swanese and to Harvey’s amazement he can understand. That’s when it dawns on him that he’s still stuck in the program. He runs into a store and asks the dark woman behind the counter to help him.

“You people are all the same,” she sneers. “Why can’t you learn to speak Swanese? Now get out of here before I call the police.”

So Harvey finds while he doesn’t get killed right away in this time period, he still must continue to struggle to survive.

He bellows at the sky, “Please let me go! I want to go home! I get it!”

People walk by and shake their heads at him. The police come. The woman from the store points at him. They shoot.

Ding ding.

Harvey Wilson wakes up in his hotel room and the Russian girl is gone.

For the first few minutes he lies there, recalling everything, knowing that it wasn’t a dream. But then that knowledge fades. And then it feels only as if he had a fitful night of sleep. A card lies on the girl’s pillow. It reads:

Thank you for participating in White Men’s Adventures. Your adventure is over.

"Found"

The woman across the café table holds my hands. Her palms are rough from years of housework, but her face is still youthful for her age, much younger than someone in her mid-forties.

Her eyes are dark and diamond cut, with one eye slightly wider than the other, like mine. Her nose is flat and broad – like mine. The heart-shape of her face ends in a pointy chin, the one I’ve hated on myself since I was a kid. I wanted a round chin like my sister’s.

The woman says something. I don’t understand. My Chinese, from a few classes in college, is shaky. I look it up in my palm pilot. Genetic testing. She wants to know if I want to go in for testing together. I open my mouth to answer and my phone rings. It’s my mother.

***

My life was already complicated enough. A week ago I was at home, in Jersey, at my parents’ house. I had lost my job as an artist-in-residence at a school in L.A. Cutbacks, recession. All that bullshit. I hadn’t been home in about a year.

I hadn’t meant for so much time to go by. It’s just that my mother’s health, for the most part, was improving, lung cancer in remission. It was a miracle actually.

The last time I was home we had fought, as usual. I had screamed at her for smoking. She refused to stop. “You can’t deny a dying woman her last pleasure,” she said and laughed. But I knew she was scared and that she knew how it was hurting us, my father, my sister and me, to never know when it would be the last time. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself! You never have!” I shouted.

I was back to check out jobs in New York. And yes I wanted to see how she was doing. She looked frail but not bad.

My first night home the phone rang. I answered. It was a man with an Asian accent.

“Mrs. O’Connell, we’ve found her.”

“Who?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.

“Your daughter Dana’s birth mother.”

He went on. “The Chinese government has recently started a campaign to reunite adoptees with birth parents through monthly gatherings. This month the Little Sheep Orphanage of Wuxu village in Hunan, where Dana is from, is part of the gathering in the Hunan capital of Changsha.”

I hung up on him. My mother remained calm as I railed away at her. How could she, look for her, behind my back?

“It’s what you wanted,” she said. “Your sister told me, you’ve been trying on the Internet since you were in college.”

I glared at Patty who was home from grad school on Spring Break. Her green eyes turned away from me.

***

When I was ten, my mother found a Christmas wish list under my bed that I had meant for Santa. At the bottom were things like Barbie Dream House, gumball machine and Merlin. At the very top was: to find my real mom.

***

“You know, Mom really wants you to go.”

“So what? So what if I find her, then what?”

“Then you’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“Who she is—where you came from.”

***

My parents insisted on buying our tickets. It was Patty’s idea to tag along, as usual, and though much of me always dreamt it would be a solo journey, part of me was glad to have her there—my kid sister, the one who came two years after I was adopted, the one with the dusty blonde hair I wanted, the freckled nose, the green eyes like my Skipper doll, the rosy skin that burned and never turned dark like mine did and made me look dirty.

We arrive in Changsha, a smoggy, crowded city full of new cars and old trucks, bicycles pulling wagons full of meat and vegetables. The gathering of the province’s orphanages was like that game we played as kids, Red Rover. Red Rover, Red Rover, calling Johnnie over. And kids would run to the other side. In one line, Chinese women, and some men, looked over at us with wet anticipatory eyes. Across, our side was Chinese girls of different ages, ranging mostly from elementary school to high school.

I seemed to be among the oldest ones there. Also on our side, a number of white men and women, adoptive parents, well meaning, here to help their little girls find some connection to the people who made them, and left them. I wanted to yell at them, you’re making a mistake, they’re too young! Or maybe what I wanted to say is, you should never have let them leave this country in the first place. They’ll be all fucked up.

My head hurt. I was sweating.

“They all look like you,” Patty said.

“Don’t be stupid. That’s like me saying all white people look the same.”

She looked hurt and I felt sorry.

Some of the younger Chinese girls were crying. An official took our personal information and interviewed us all. Slowly matches were made. Some could be confirmed at once, by matching baby photos or if the adoptive parents already had the birth mother’s real name, age, date of birth, etc.

It seemed at least half were reunited. The tears and sobs of joy (regret?) were overwhelming. The lines thinned. I wanted to leave.

The officials said my case was too difficult. I’d been left on the orphanage doorstep at night. The only photo I have as a baby in China is at age one and a half, more than six months after I was abandoned. It was taken at the orphanage. In it I have stubby ponytails that stick straight up. I’m wearing a white tank top. My expression is of wonder.

“We’ll keep looking,” Patty whispered. “This isn’t the only way. Don’t worry.”

A woman in a pink shirt with full cheeks came running up to me and started talking excitedly. An interpreter said, “She says she thinks you are her friend’s daughter. Wu Shuli. She says you look just like her.”

***

So this is me at Starbucks in Beijing with Wu Shuli – who left Hunan after the Cultural Revolution, after her parents forced her to give up her baby girl, and after her lover was jailed for making a joke at a family dinner about Mao. He died in jail. He was my father.

She is in many ways the way I’ve pictured her. Like me, but older. She’s spunkier than I had imagined. She says she wants to take me shopping and even if we find out we’re not related, maybe we could be friends. I had heard American agencies who deal with Chinese orphanages warn about scams, of Chinese people who trick adoptees into believing they are family to get money, green cards, etc. But Shuli seems honest, she does well for herself, cleaning house for the wealthy, including some expats so that she even knows a bit of English.

“I think of you always,” she says.

We smile when we discover we both paint. In fact some of her paintings she sells at the flea market, which helps her make extra money.

This is me, mulling the words “genetic”, “testing”, when my phone rings.

It’s my mother.

“Don’t listen to your father!”

My father grabs the phone from her.

“Dana, your mother is in the hospital. It’s her organs. They’re shutting down. The cancer, it’s everywhere…” He begins sobbing.

My mother regains the phone. Her voice is all weak yet rough with all her strength.

“Dana, I want you to stay. Do you hear me? Patty told me you found her. I don’t want you to come home until you feel you’re ready. If you need time to find out for sure and spend more time with her…”

“Mom, Jesus, I’m coming home. Get off the phone. You’re using all of your energy.”

“Dana Margaret O’Connell!” she musters a final shout. “You better listen to me. I want you to stay—for me—please.”

***

There are times now I can’t believe I didn’t go back home. That I let Patty talk me into staying and getting the test, and finding out the results. But at the moment it seemed I had no choice, because whenever I heard my mother use my full name—Dana Margaret O’Connell, she was really mad, and she meant it. And it was usually followed by: “Because I said so. Because I’m your mother.”

In a few days the tests came back. Positive. Wu Shuli was my birth mother.

I called my mother and told her. She cried. It was with joy. I’m pretty sure.

“I wanted this for you, always.”

It was our last call. That weekend she died.

I went home for the funeral and stayed a few months to be with my father and Patty. It was not an easy time for us, and all of us felt guilty for our own reasons, missed her for our own reasons.

That summer I moved to Beijing to an apartment near Shuli’s. We became more like friends than mother and daughter. I took Chinese classes and started teaching English.

There were many things I thought about my mother, Sandra O’Connell, while she was alive—that she was stubborn, tough, too sensitive, and the truth is I’m all of those things too, and all I can hope for going forward is that if I ever have kids someday, I hope I can give them something that even closely resembles what she gave me.


(photo from Wang Chao's film "The Orphan of Anyang")

The lowdown on the One-Hour Story

So it finally happened. I've started a blog. Because there are not enough blogs in the world.

I'll try not to bore you with too much mundane drivel. That's what Facebook is for.

Mainly, I created this blog because people (two - Canada and Ana) started demanding (asking) that I share with them these one-hour stories I've been talking about. (Yes, I have a friend named Canada, and I now live in Canada. )

What's a One-Hour Story?
Pretty obvious: a short story that was written in an hour.

The idea came from my friend Nadia. We're in a writing group for writers of color I started this year. We call ourselves the Melodious Babblers (it's the name of a real bird in the Philippines.)

Nadia introduced us to this book, 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias. It's a shit book, terribly written, but a good tool.

She proposed that we all write one story per week based on each plot, so in 20 weeks we'll have 20 stories. The catch is you only have one hour. As soon as the hour is up, you have to put down your pen, take your fingers off the keyboard. No editing allowed except for fixing typos.

You're allowed to pre-think the story as much as you want, which I've found to be crucial. We text each other when we start, and again when we finish. But yeah, it's pretty much on your honor.

So these stories are here, not so much to be read as final versions, but to show what I came up with in an hour. Most of them I'm interested in working on more, so please, any and all feedback, suggestions welcome.

If you want me to email you a story as a Word document, just email me at sharlinechiang (at) yahoo.com and I'll send it to you. I personally hate reading things online and I'm sure I'm not the only one.