O:JA&L Prose Discourse: Fiction
Itto and Mekiya Outini
The Indisputable Master of Her Craft
The footfalls reached Alyssa before Alyssa reached her car: hard, flat slaps on sunbaked asphalt, sharp as gunshots, and beneath those, like brown water guttering in a culvert, ragged panting.
She spun around and pepper-sprayed him.
He was a big man, but he went down without a sound, clawing at his face as if it were a mask he wanted off. The sun was low, peeking through chinks in the walls of green that blotted the horizon, but there was plenty of light to see his curly hair, his swollen belly, his shredded blue jeans, and his Ospreys tee. No scars. No birthmarks. No tattoos. Nothing to make him stand out in a line-up. He might as well be any man.
“You know what I just did in there?” She aimed a stubby finger toward the wedge of glass and steel behind him, the Adam W. Herbert University Center. “You don’t sneak up on a woman who just gave a talk about sexual assault. You don’t effing do that!”
Gaggles of stragglers, platinum blonde in sorority tees, were slowing, turning, rubbernecking, arrested mid-diffusion.
“Unbelievable.” For good measure, she gave him one last squirt of pepper spray. Up went a cheer. Those girls didn’t notice how the breeze was shifting, how her wrist flicked up and back and swiped her own face, quick and kneejerk. “Unbelievable,” she repeated, making her voice carry, level in spite of her burning eyes. She took her sweet time retreating, not relinquishing him from the fist of her gaze. He knelt on the asphalt, whimpering, not even trying to flee. His lips moved like water. There were sounds coming out of him, almost like words:
“But it happened to me.”
She was in her SUV before he caught his second wind, pulling her skirt clear of the door before he threw his head back, roared those words into the twilight: “It happened to me, too! It happened to me!”
“That’s no excuse,” she said.
“Excuse for what?” His voice was savage, rough, un-planed, and his hands were still over his eyes, not like the pepper spray was hurting him now, more like he couldn’t bear to see. “I was just coming to talk to you. You said come and talk to you. My daddy did it to me. My daddy. I never told no one.”
Slow and easy, that was how she backed out, never mind that half the parking lot was just a teary blur. Words clung to her lips—“Didn’t happen to you”—but she didn’t spit them out the window, didn’t want him to get even that much from her. One fist up, brandishing her middle finger, she sailed past him like he didn’t mean a thing to her and kept on going, past the faces of those girls, curling up at the edges with contempt or confusion, and out onto Betty Holzendorf Drive, the hot wind whipping greasy hair around ears.
Getting told you were too fat and ugly for raping—that never happened to you.
Getting told you must be poor because you dressed like you were trying to make a living whoring—that never happened to you.
Getting called stupid, stupid, stupid, always stupid, even by your dumbass brother, who couldn’t even keep himself out of jail or pass his GED—that never happened to you.
Getting invited to speak across the country, wined and dined and ushered into university lecture halls because you’d finally cracked the code on female ADHD, pioneered a diagnostic method no one else had ever thought of and saved a million lives from sexual assault and exploitation in the process—that never happened to you, either.
None of it happened to you.
It was half past midnight by the time she scaled the cinderblocks up to the trailer. Heat lightning flickered in the sky, and the yellow bulb above the steps was on, but otherwise the night was total: no stars, no moon, no sodium-vapor lights, not even any neighbors’ incandescent panes. The boys’ room was dark. Only the light in the windowless kitchen was still on, glaring down on dirty dishes and a casserole tray, caked with pasta chunks and red sauce, empty.
“Where the hell you been?”
Jay hovered like a shadow in the bedroom doorway, a Pabst can sweating in his hand. Rising from his scalp, his cherished orange stalagmites, dyed and gelled and calcified, looked like a crown of thorns. He didn’t have a shirt on.
“Tire blew.” Alyssa stood over the casserole dish, peering into it as if it were a wishing well. Her stomach was a plastic bag turned inside out for easy picking-up of dogshit. She’d spent thirty minutes on the shoulder of I-10, another thirty in the tow truck, and then a few more hours in the shop, waiting her turn. She ran a finger along the glass tray’s crusty rim. Not much came off. “Where’s mine?”
“The boys were hungry.” Jay slurped from his can. “You change the tire?”
“Triple A did.”
“You called Triple A? Jesus.”
“Don’t Jesus me.”
“You know something?” Jay chased an ant along the baseboard with his big toe, stubbed it twice, then squashed it. “You’re the only southern gal I ever met can’t change a tire.”
“For your information, there was nothing to change.” She rummaged in the fridge for sandwich fixings.
“You bought a car without a spare.”
She rounded on him, stabbing herself in the chest with a finger, ham and mustard nearly flying from her other hand. “That’s right. I bought that car. You didn’t buy it, did you? I did.”
“I got a car.”
“You got a piece of shit is what you got.”
“Piece of shit with a spare.”
“Do a few more French braids,” hissed Alyssa, “and maybe you can buy the next one.”
“Shut up!” It was Leroy, the elder of the brothers, hollering from the far end of the trailer. “Trying to sleep!”
“Go ahead and sleep, then!”
“Got recitals in the morning!”
“What I do saves lives, you know.” Alyssa thrust her chin after Jay as he grabbed another beer and headed for the door. “Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up all alone on the side of the highway if I weren’t married to a goddamn invalid. People know who I am, Jay. There’s guys out there that want to hurt me.”
The storm door slammed.
“Shut up!” roared Leroy.
“We’re shutting up!”
“Shut up!” bellowed Bill, the younger. “Shut up! Shut up! Everybody shut up!”
They all shut up. All but the tree frogs. You couldn’t even hear yourself think for the mating calls.
Alyssa threw together a sandwich, tore open a bag of Doritos, and sat on a folding chair facing the door. Through the glass, she could see Jay making aimless circles, chugging from one can, the other crumpled, swinging at his side. In the circle of light from the bulb, his flesh was the same vivid orange as his hair. “When the ETs start sending transmissions,” she’d told him once, back when they’d first started dating, “you’ll be the first to know.”
He’d been a forklift driver then. She’d been a cleaner, working night shifts, making half what he’d made. He’d had style, muscles, income. If he’d only had his accident a little sooner, if that disc had only had the courtesy to slip before they’d said their vows, she might’ve paid a little more attention to the part that no one ever means—“in sickness”—but that disc had been like any other then, those words like any other words. But words were violence, or as good as—hadn’t she learned that from her brother and his friends?—and it wasn’t a that man she’d married so much as a hernia. An ornery one.
That hernia’s disability benefits had dried up, its forklift license had expired, and after a few years of ornery loafing, it had finally gone and found another job. A whole new career, in fact. Second in command at a salon.
“Second in command”—like he was on a goddamned starship.
“Unbelievable.”
She watched him haul off pitcher-style and fling his spent aluminum ball into the night. In the fridge was one more can. She took it, mostly so he couldn’t have it, and stuffed the plastic loops into the trashcan: fuck the turtles.
What did she need his approval for, anyway? He was a bottom-feeder. Worse, he liked it at the bottom. Nothing was stopping him from doing up his resume the way she’d done up hers, adding a degree here, a certificate there, until one day, voila, he’d be a world-class expert—but he’d never thought of it. Too stupid. That was why she was the breadwinner. She’d bought the car without him. She was paying for Leroy’s tuition without him. She was signing on a house without his even knowing. She’d closed on the property last weekend, a spacious one-story in Fanning Springs. The seller was staying an extra three weeks while construction was wrapping up on his new condo, but that was all right with her. Eager as she was to get out of the trailer, the most important thing was that the new place would be ready by the middle of May, when she was planning a party to celebrate Bill’s graduation and Leroy’s first year of piano school.
She’d never even heard of that when she was growing up—piano school—but that was progress, wasn’t it?
That was the American dream.
The boys were all gone, Jay to work, Bill to school, and Leroy to the university, when the sun woke Alyssa, leaking through the screen and making a big, hot puddle on the bed. She fixed herself a plate of cheesy scrambled eggs and ate them at the table, still littered with crumbs, pining for a beer to cut the protein, or for an angel to come along and wash the dishes, and scrape the crusty red sauce from the pan, and maybe even make a grocery run, then cool her with its wingbeats on its way back up to heaven because the AC, for all the racket it was making, wasn’t really doing much else.
In a week, she had another gig, all the way up in Atlanta this time, in the big convention center—they’d even put her up in a hotel—but from now to then, her life would be all shopping, cooking, cleaning, laying traps for ants and mice, and being told, “Shut up! Shut up!” It wouldn’t be much longer now before things came together into one long string of speaking gigs, all spotlights and microphones and standing ovations in air-conditioned rooms, one peak rolling into another rolling into another, but for the time being, there were still these troughs.
The troughs were why you needed fortitude. You had to tell yourself, while you were wading through them, that there was something better on the other side. You had to convince yourself. Had to believe.
No one in the world had as much of that fortitude as Cora, Alyssa’s best friend; but there was a problem with visiting Cora. She lived in a nursing home. It smelled of asbestos and black mold. That smell, in and of itself, was not the problem. The problem was that it was the same nursing home where Alyssa’s own parents were languishing, and it wasn’t always simple to make the nurses understand that she was there for Cora, only Cora. For that reason, she hadn’t seen Cora in over a month.
She missed Cora.
Courageous landscapers had beaten back the kudzu tide, leaving un-choked the crape myrtles and live oaks and southern magnolias that studded the nursing home’s lawn, but all along the access road, greenery had eaten the utility poles and disappeared the power lines. In the lobby were two other visitors: a skeletal man with wisps of beard and gnarled, insubstantial hands, old enough to be a resident himself; and a middle-aged woman in a dark dress with a balled-up tissue in her lap, forgotten, and a seahorse tattoo on her arm. Tears were streaming down her face, possibly due to something that had just transpired on the television in the corner, where a cooking show was playing, in whose direction she was gazing blankly.
They were both white. That was all right with Alyssa. Whenever there were black folks in the waiting room, she couldn’t help but wonder whether they were there for Cora. They never were, but it always got her worked up, the dread thought of sharing her friend.
Cora had been her friend for almost nine years, ever since the day she’d come to sign her father in. During a perfunctory tour of the nursing home’s facilities—farcical because she’d already made her decision, even more so because she’d done the same tour two years earlier, for her mother—she’d spotted the old black woman sitting alone in the common room in a rickety wheelchair, gazing despondently into the fireplace where fake flames were licking a fake log. Before leaving, she’d asked for the woman’s name.
It was true that Cora was Alyssa’s only black friend, but being a hundred and seven years old made her roughly equivalent to two fifty-five-year-old black friends, or four twenty-seven-year-old black friends, or even nine twelve-year-old black friends. It was also true that she never could seem to remember Alyssa’s name, but that was because her long, eventful life had left her with so many memories that there wasn’t any space in her head for the new ones. Alyssa didn’t mind. The important thing was that they were spiritually connected. Cora couldn’t ever remember the names of the nursing staff, either, and she saw them every day.
The only names that Cora could remember, in fact, were those of her lovers—and she’d had a lot of lovers. Some of them had fought in World War II, some in World War I, some in the Civil War, some in the Spanish-American War, and some in the War of 1812. Some had even fought for the American Revolution.
She’d always had a thing for men in uniform.
The fact that a national treasure like Cora was wasting away in a godforsaken nursing home like this one told you everything you needed to know about America and the direction it was going, as far as Alyssa was concerned.
“Cora,” she said to the woman behind the reception desk. “I’m here to see Cora.”
If her brother had been there to see this receptionist—freckled, lantern-jawed, as tall as she was wide—he and his high school friends might’ve just gone ahead and retracted everything they’d ever said about her, Alyssa, being too fat and ugly for raping. She might have big bones, that much she would cop to, but at least hers were reasonably arranged. If all you saw was her silhouette, you’d still recognize her as a human being. Not like this specimen, this hideous holdover from some bygone age of permafrost and megafauna. But, of course, her brother and his high school friends were not there. They were in the state penitentiary: larceny, assault and battery, breaking and entering, etc. Where they belonged.
The receptionist opened her mouth to speak—even this small motion of her jaw seemed enough to get her sweating—but another voice beat her to it:
“Cora?” It was the middle-aged woman with the seahorse tattoo. Her gaze was no longer fixed on the television. It was fixed on Alyssa now. She’d scooted forward to the edge of her seat, where she perched like an anxious bird, her eyes moist and sorrowful, her head on one side. She said, “Cora’s gone.”
“Yep.” The receptionist raised and lowered her gargantuan head with what appeared to be tremendous effort. “That’s right. Cora’s gone.”
“Gone?” Alyssa echoed. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Passed away.” The receptionist made a fist above the desk, thumb downturned. “Capoot.”
“Two weeks ago,” added the woman with the tattoo.
“Passed away?” Alyssa shook her head a little, hoping to clear it. “What do you mean? How?”
The receptionist let loose something that began as a snicker and ended as a high, strained whinny.
“She was, like, a hundred.”
“A hundred and seven,” said the tattooed woman.
“I’m sorry,” said Alyssa, turning toward her, “but who are you?”
“Jenny.” Still grasping her tissue, she extended her hand. “I’m Cora’s friend. I mean, I was. I mean, I guess I still am. I’m sorry. I’m still kind of in shock. Who are you?”
“I’m Alyssa,” said Alyssa. “I’m Cora’s friend.”
Jenny removed another tissue from her purse, tore it in two, and offered the smaller half to Alyssa. She blew her nose into the larger half, then folded it, then scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “I didn’t expect to lose my friend today.”
Alyssa took the seat beside hers. The words were there, on the tip of her tongue—“Me neither”—but she couldn’t bring herself to say them, to make the two of them the same.
“I mean….” Jenny folded her half of the tissue into an even smaller square, held it in both hands, and stared at it glumly. “I was just here three weeks ago, and she seemed so…seemed so…I don’t know. So alive!”
“So full of vitality,” offered Alyssa.
“Yes! Exactly!” Jenny’s face brightened. “That’s it exactly. Vitality. That’s what she was full of!”
“She was young at heart,” said Alyssa. “That’s why we got along so well. She was young at heart, and I’m an old soul.”
“They do say that opposites attract,” said Jenny pensively. “They do say that. I think that’s true for me, too. I’m an old soul.”
“Adam,” grunted the receptionist, “she’s ready for you.”
The old man got to his feet, emitted a deferential sneeze, and tottered out through a wide set of creaking doors.
“Where do you think she is now?” asked Alyssa, watching the doors ease shut behind him.
“I don’t know.” Jenny frowned. “Maybe the morgue?”
“I’m thinking heaven.”
“Oh,” said Jenny. “Right. I’m sure she’s in heaven. I just didn’t know what you were talking about.”
“Do you remember that cross of hers?” asked Alyssa. “The gold one?”
“Of course I do.”
“I gave it to her,” said Alyssa. “I’m the one who gave it to her.”
“Oh!” Jenny cranked her body ninety degrees to face Alyssa. “How long have you been coming to see her?”
“Nine years.”
Why was it that two words, two true words, could come out sounding so much like a lie?
And why was it that lips got dryer every time you licked them?
“I see,” said Jenny. “I’ve been her friend for five.”
Warm relief and relaxation sloshed through Alyssa’s body. She almost smiled. “I’m spiritual,” she said. “Very spiritual. But not religious. But Cora was religious—”
“They do say that opposites attract.” Jenny’s lips were now a thin, unhappy line.
“Exactly,” said Alyssa. “Exactly. One day, I was thinking of her, and I said to myself, ‘You know what Cora would like? A cross.’ So, I went out and found her one, and I gave it to her.”
“The gold one?”
“The gold one.”
“She was always wearing that cross,” said Jenny. Then, hastily, she added, “But she never mentioned you.”
“She never mentioned you, either.”
“She was always very focused on whoever she was with, though,” said Jenny. “When she was with you, it was like you were her entire world. She would just sort of forget about everything else for a while.”
“She would go off on a tangent remembering one of her men,” said Alyssa, “and she’d be talking and talking like that for an hour, and you wouldn’t even know. I mean, what’s an hour when you’re a hundred and seven, right?”
“An hour’s everything!” cried Jenny. Then, more thoughtfully, she repeated the words: “An hour is everything.”
“All those men of hers.” Alyssa chuckled. “My God!”
“And she still remembered all their names.” Jenny sighed wistfully. “Every single one.”
“She had such a good memory.”
“Way better than mine!”
“I can never even remember where I left my car keys,” said Alyssa, “and meanwhile, there’s Cora, telling you where she left hers fifty years ago!”
“I can’t even remember where I left mine ten minutes ago,” Jenny agreed. “I mean, really, I shouldn’t be driving, not with my brain injury, but if I don’t drive, how am I supposed to see Cora? I mean, I guess that’s not really a concern anymore.” She frowned. “Did they really have cars fifty years ago?”
“What did you say?”
“I was just thinking, when did they invent cars—”
“No,” said Alyssa, “about your brain. You said it’s injured?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Jenny waved away the question airily, a light snapping on in her eyes. “I was just in a car crash. A big one. Motherfucker T-boned me!” She made cars with her hand, made them T-bone each other. “Can you believe that? Now I can’t remember stuff. I’m always getting brain fogs. I can’t seem to think straight. My brain’s injured. Dramatically!”
“That’s what they told you?”
“Yeah!” said Jenny. “And it sucks!”
“That doesn’t sound right,” said Alyssa. “That doesn’t sound like a brain injury. You wouldn’t still be walking and talking if your brain was injured.”
“That’s what the doctor says.” Jenny shrugged. “They said there’s nothing they can do.”
“But remember who pays the doctors.”
Jenny gaped at her blankly. “Who pays the doctors?”
“The drug companies,” said Alyssa. “The government. Big pharma. They’re the ones the doctors get their money from. So, how are we supposed to trust them?”
“I think I can trust my doctor,” said Jenny. “I’m the one paying my doctor.”
“If your brain is injured,” said Alyssa, “then how come you’re still walking and talking?”
“It’s just certain parts,” Jenny said. “Certain parts that are injured.” But she sounded less certain.
“Oh, honey.” She gave Jenny’s seahorse a sisterly squeeze. “Do you know something? Would you believe that this is what I do for a living? Symptoms like yours…let me just say, a lot of women have them. The stories I’ve heard, you wouldn’t believe. I can tell you confidently that there’s nothing wrong with your brain.”
“Then what is all this?” asked Jenny. “What’s going on?”
“ADHD,” said Alyssa. “Those are ADHD symptoms.”
“But I did have a car accident,” said Jenny, measuring the words. “And before that I didn’t have any of this.”
“You know what I think?” said Alyssa. “I think we were meant to meet each other. Here. Today. I think this was meant to be. I think this is Cora bringing us together. You know where I was last night? Can you guess?”
“Where?”
“I was at a university,” said Alyssa. “The one up in Jacksonville. I gave a big talk. Next week I’ll be in Atlanta. There’s a lot of women like us, Jenny, women who’ve been getting the short end of the stick from the healthcare system. What I do is raise awareness. I speak. I share stories. I help women understand the intersectionality between sexual trauma and female-type ADHD—”
“But I don’t have that,” said Jenny. “I don’t have that sexual trauma.”
“It’s not the sexual trauma that gives you the ADHD,” said Alyssa. “That’s the big lie. It’s the ADHD that makes you vulnerable to sexual assault. It’s women like us, the ones with ADHD, who are getting screwed. We can’t even get diagnosed right because of the doctors, the male doctors—”
“Mine’s a lady doctor.”
“She gets paid, same as the men,” said Alyssa. “She gets paid through the exact same sexist, patriarchal, heteronormative, homophobic, racist, imperialist, colonial system.”
“So, then, what you’re saying—” Jenny hesitated, considering the proposition, “—what you’re saying, if I’ve got this straight, is that my brain damage has nothing to do with the car crash? Is that it?”
“You’re not damaged,” said Alyssa. “They’re always trying to tell us that we’re damaged, but we’re not, Jenny. You’re not damaged. Listen, I want you to repeat after me: ‘I am not damaged.’ I want you to say that to yourself five times a day. That car crash might’ve unlocked your ADHD, but here’s what I want you to say to yourself. Here’s what I want you to say.” She clasped Jenny’s hands in hers. “I want you to say to yourself, ‘Girl, you’re not damaged.’”
“But they can actually see the damage,” said Jenny. “They say it’s dramatic!”
“Of course they say said that,” said Alyssa. “They want to be in control. They don’t want you to be in control, Jenny. You’ve got to take back control. Isn’t that what Cora would’ve wanted?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “My head’s kind of spinning right now. I’m so confused.”
“Take a deep breath,” said Alyssa. “That’s just the ADHD.”
“I don’t know.” Jenny shut her eyes, chin tucked into her chest, breathing shallow. “I just came to see Cora. I wasn’t ready for all this. Who did you say you are again? A doctor?”
“I’m an expert,” said Alyssa. “I raise awareness. I’ve helped a lot of people, Jenny. I give talks all over. Listen, are you on Facebook?”
“Of course I’m on Facebook!” she said, brightening. “Facebook, YouTube, Twitter…all that stuff! TikTok is my favorite. All those cute iguana videos, and the funny costumes people wear, and the recipes!”
“Perfect,” said Alyssa. “Let’s connect on Facebook. Here. I’ll do it. Let me see your phone.”
Jenny handed over her phone.
“There,” said Alyssa. “You’re my follower now. And let’s do Instagram, too. Sometimes I forget and only update one of them, and I don’t want you to miss out, Jenny. I want you to be there at my next talk. Whatever else you’re doing that day, it can wait. Your mental health comes first. Do you believe me?”
“I guess so.”
“It’s what Cora would’ve wanted,” said Alyssa.
The fluorescent lights glinted in Jenny’s big, wide, hungry eyes. She asked, “Did Cora also have ADHD?”
“No,” said Alyssa. “Cora didn’t. Cora was strong.”
The sun hung directly overhead, broiling anything stupid enough, or ectothermic enough, or turned-around enough to venture onto Highway 47. The faster Alyssa drove, the less she could feel, just like sitting on the toilet, drily squeezing; but then, all at once, the feelings started coming, and even pumping the brakes, she couldn’t stop them.
She began to bawl.
From the right front tire, a familiar sound: rubber slap-slap-slapping on the asphalt like a big man’s shoes.
Fists clenched, she hammered on the steering wheel.
Fifteen minutes on the shoulder this time. Twenty in the tow truck. An hour forty sipping nondescript cocoa in a nondescript waiting room. It was half past four before she pulled into the space between Jay’s pickup and the trailer.
“What the hell are you doing home?” She let the words fly through the door ahead of her, flapping madly into the opacity like a canary down a mine. “Maybe do me a favor next time no one wants your stupid haircuts, maybe just go ahead and fuck your boss or whatever it is you do all day so I don’t have to feel like I’m the only one putting food on the goddamn table—”
She stopped when she saw him.
He wasn’t in front of the TV.
He wasn’t pawing through the fridge.
He wasn’t at the table, hands around a beer.
He was all the way down the hall, outside the boys’ bedroom, his head against the door. He didn’t unglue his forehead when he heard her, just cranked his neck and swung his gaze in her direction, crushing one of his orange stalagmites flat against the wood.
“I called.”
She’d never heard his voice like that before: flat as a beer left out too long.
“Well?” She faced him down the hall, certain that her tragedy, her grief, would outstrip his, but wary still, not about to wager everything until she knew. “What about?”
“Leroy quit school.”
“I did not!” Jay staggered as the door flew open, nearly toppling into Leroy’s arms, but Leroy shoved him hard, sent him reeling back against the other wall. “I did not quit,” he declared, his face red and purple, his fists at his sides. “Don’t you dare tell lies about me. Don’t you dare.”
“He’s just trying to help, you moron.” It was Bill, chiming in from inside the room.
“Shut up!” Leroy sprayed an arc of spittle at his brother.
“I’d rather quit,” Bill opined. “Maybe that’s just me, but personally, I’d rather quit than be too stupid to play a damn piano.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
“Enough!” Alyssa powered down the hall, slammed past Jay and Leroy, and stood over Bill, who was lounging on the lower bunk. She stabbed a finger at the door. “Out!”
“But this is my room.”
“Me and your brother need to talk.”
“But I didn’t get kicked out of school,” whined Bill. “How come I’m the one getting kicked out of my room?”
“Out!”
He slithered off the bed and slouched out, one part solid, two parts liquid, his eyes never leaving his phone.
Leroy stood in the corner by the closet, breathing like a hurricane. Jay was in the hall still. Alyssa made him disappear behind the door.
“Well?” She faced her son. “Which is it?”
His eyes hit the floor.
“Quit? Or kicked out?”
“What’s the difference?”
She grabbed the wooden chair from Leroy’s desk and sat on it the wrong way. It was too small for her, but at least she wasn’t as big as the receptionist at the nursing home. “This is the last thing I need right now,” she said, gazing fiercely, imploringly up at her son. “Do you hear me? The last thing I need.”
“Not my fault.”
“Do you know how much I’ve invested in you? Do you have any idea what all I’ve put into your piano school?”
“What part of ‘not my fault’ are you not getting?”
“Look at your father,” said Alyssa. “He’s a hell of a role model. He’s got a bad back, he dropped out of high school, and he’s then there’s that hair of his. That hair…my God! But he’s still making something of himself! Second in command! You think they give that to just anyone?”
Leroy snorted.
“Or how about me?” Alyssa went on. “You know I never went to college, right? And you know what I do for a living now. I go around talking at colleges. They pay to hear me speak. They pay to hear me.”
“Because you put a bunch of stupid shit on your resume,” said Leroy. “Shit you never even did!”
“We’re trying to give you a better life,” said Alyssa. “More opportunities. Everything we never had. I’m doing all this for you, Leroy. I’m just asking you to meet me halfway. To apply yourself.”
“I did apply myself,” said Leroy. “I applied myself, and all the instructors said I’m tone-deaf, I don’t pay attention, I’m stupid. That’s what they said, Ma.”
“Don’t let them call you stupid,” said Alyssa. “Do you hear me? Don’t you ever let anyone call you stupid.”
“You never help me with my homework,” said Leroy. “Other moms help their kids. You never helped me with nothing. I tried to tell them that. I tried to tell them—”
“How would I help you?” demanded Alyssa. “I’ve never been to piano school. Don’t you put this on me, Leroy. You take some responsibility. This is your education.”
“Was.”
“You know what we’re going to do?” said Alyssa. “Tomorrow, first thing, we’re going to drive up there and get you back in. I’ll talk to whoever I need to talk to. I don’t care. We’re going to make this work. We’re not quitters. You know what happened to me today? I lost my friend. My best friend. I bet you never even knew I had a best friend, did you? Well, I did. Her name was Cora. And she died. And she was black. But do you think I’m going to let that stop me? Do you think I’m going to quit because of her? We’re not quitters, Leroy. And we’re not stupid. Every time I give a talk, you know how I start? Can you guess? I always start by telling them how I’m proud of you. How you’re the first in the family to go to the piano university, and how you’re talented, and how it’s hard, and how—”
“Wait,” said Leroy, “what?”
“That’s right. I always talk about you.”
“You say what about me?”
“That I’m proud of you,” said Alyssa. “That you’re the best son anyone could have.”
“But you’re proud of me for what, now?”
“For being talented,” said Alyssa. “For being good enough to get into the best piano university even though you came from nothing.”
“Piano university?” echoed Leroy. “Piano university? Are you freaking kidding me, Ma? You tell people I go to the piano university?”
“Yes,” said Alyssa, “and I’m not about to quit telling people just because some stupid teachers—”
Leroy dragged a big hand down his face, across his eyes. For a split second, from the way he was shuddering, weak-kneed, slumped against the closet door, she thought he might be crying. But he wasn’t crying.
He was laughing.
“Don’t you laugh at me,” she said. “You’re my son. It’s my right to brag!”
“Community college, Ma.”
“What?”
“Community college,” said Leroy. “Community college music program. Piano university? Jesus freaking Christ—they call me stupid. Piano university?”
The chair didn’t make a sound hitting the floor. Alyssa faced her son across it, breathing like a bull.
“There’s no such thing as a piano university,” he said, peering at her from his red-rimmed, ruthless eyes. “How many people have you said this to, about piano university?”
Later, when she came to her senses, Alyssa would remember those words, the way they’d curled at the edges, harsh, metallic, mocking: the last words ever spoken to her by her firstborn. The image of him standing there, against the closet door, the last she ever saw of him, would sear itself into her brain. Bill and Jay would still be with her, same as always, but she wouldn’t see them anymore. All she would see was the emptiness where Leroy had been.
The red curtain came swooshing down over her eyes. In a flash, he was transformed: not her son anymore, but her brother, sprung from his prison cell, contempt and malice in his eyes.
She lunged.
The closet door shattered. The other door sprang open, and Bill and Jay came tumbling in, both grabbing for her flailing arms, but she was too much for them, a windmill of speed. Only by sinking down under the maelstrom and plunging past her did that son-of-a-bitch, her brother, manage to escape; but there were his two friends on either side, trying to pinion her. She walloped one across the jaw. She punched the other in the eye. Together, they tackled her, slamming her into the closet, bringing down jackets and jerseys and tees. The dowel rod came loose and clocked her fontanel. A windbreaker shrink-wrapped her mouth and her nose. She screamed through the slick fabric, on her back like a beetle, limbs flailing, two bodies on top of hers. It was the nightmare come to life: all those threats, all those taunts, all those jibes, all those jeers, all those just-you-waits and if-onlys, always in her head, always with her, the fate that only other women could be saved from, too real to have never happened, happening now.
Their flesh came off beneath her fingernails. She screamed.
Out the window, seen by no one, a figure cut across the yard, keys flashing brilliant in his fist. An engine came to life. Dust bloomed from under tires. Then the SUV was gone.
About the writers:
Itto and Mekiya Outini write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. They’ve published in The North American Review, Modern Literature, Fourth Genre, The Good River Review, MQR, Chautauqua, The Stonecoast Review, Mount Hope, Jewish Life, Eunoia Review, New Contrast, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Their work has received support from the MacDowell Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. They’re collaborating on several books, running The DateKeepers, an author support platform, and co-hosting a podcast and YouTube channel, Let’s Have a Renaissance.
Image: Refugee from the Blessed Isles (AI-assisted digital image) by Kacien Kiscal, an O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
O:JA&L’S BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
Click on the titles below to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks in the O:JA&L Masters Series.
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
MORE TITLES IN PRESS
