It was my first time. I had slept badly. Imagined all kinds of horrible possibilities that could happen to me. I stepped into the shower. Scrubbed till I shone. Toweled off and applied moisturizer all over, for a healthy glow. I examined every inch of my naked body in the full length bathroom mirror. After 39 years, I still looked darn nifty, considering all the shit I’d been through. My boobs were still perky, my butt was tight and shapely. No stretch marks, facial wrinkles or crows feet. No, I wasn’t glamorous, but I was wholesome. A little chubby, but hey, a natural redhead. No, visible scars or imperfections. I kept those inside myself. 

As I got ready, I examined my life: Like some of my friends in high school, we were too young for marriage. He was a decent looking, tough talking guy. Didn’t have much education or ambition. As our life together bumped along, he started drinking with the boys. He became a devoted alcoholic.

We had two children a boy and girl born close together. Soon as, the youngest kid joined her brother in school, I went back to work. Did everything and almost anything. I learned shorthand and typing. Worked my way up to be the receptionist in a leading advertising agency. My husband never earned much and drank most of it. My regular salary was actually what kept us alive. 

Eventually the children had grown to adulthood. My daughter got married and moved out to the West coast. I’m in Manhattan, we kept in touch. Last year, my son Larry, got into a brutal brawl, defending me from one of his dad’s drunken rages.  He left, the apartment and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since. He’s in New York City, through, one of his former friends told me.  I was devastated.

Not long after, my unfaithful, until-death-us-do-part, abusive spouse departed, six feet underground. What money I had covered the cost of his funeral with a little left over. All I owned was some Goodwill furniture in a rented apartment.

The economy nose-dived. I was terminated. Sent out resumes attended interviews all to no avail. I recalled a conversation with the agency’s Art Director. Acting on what I had learned from her, I applied and got this job. 

I needed the money, and the work paid well. They wanted a mature, healthy woman. Fortunately, I filled the bill. 

I began to relax physically. I dressed casually in a skirt, and sloppy sweater. No bra or panties. The elastic would leave red marks on my body. I gathered up the stuff I needed for my work, stashed them in my backpack, went off to meet my client. I put on a brave front, inwardly I was jello.

I arrived at the institution early. The art room was already crammed with about thirty students, mostly males. The instructor escorted me into the room and introduced me. 

“Students, this is Gladys, our model for today’s drawing and anatomy sessions.” He pointed to a folding screen. I went behind it, removed my clothing. I put on my robe and slippers. 

A chill ran through me as I emerged onto the model stand. Took off my slippers placed them on one side. Then removed my robe.

Totally naked and vulnerable I stood there in front of total strangers. I placed my robe on the modeling cube. I was in shock.

I felt 30 pairs of eyes slide over every curve and into each crevice of my body. I fixed my gaze on a crack in the wall and avoided eye contact. I said to myself, I am an object, a beautiful thing. I’m not vulnerable or unintentional. I’m nude, not naked. Intentional, purposeful, and powerful. I’m the center of focused and uninterrupted flow of energy in this entire room.

The instructor directed me to create a series of quick gesture poses of about two minutes each.

Following my first few seconds of boldness, a remaining tremor of moxie was quieted.  Proudly, I had acquired composure and conquered my fears. Heck, every body is naked under their clothes. I actually enjoyed being an artist model. It was terrific and liberating experience.

The students got down to drawing. Translating what their eyes saw to their brains, into their hands, and onto the medium of paper. That was their task spread out with breaks over the next three hours.

When the final session ended. I pulled on my robe and slippers. Descended to the students level. They stood shyly by their easels and drawing boards displaying their attempts to capture my form using black or red Conté sticks.

Some released their spirits freely, slashed impressions on large sheets of cheap newsprint. Others coolly rendered visions of my form on expensive paper in large sketchbooks.

I was immersed in a kaleidoscope of visual energy. Having a live model up-close amongst them, made the students uptight.  

I made only light comments of what I saw. My flippant verbal evaluations were actually arrested as I arrived at a study that revealed my entire being. I was shaken. 

The artist had dived deep beneath my skin, captured the essence of a loving mother. This artist had seen my soul.

I stared for several moments. My trance was broken by the instructor as he asked, “Absorbed in that sketch?”

“Yes! which of your students drew it?”

“He had to leave for his Burger King job. Larry is a gifted young artist, about seventeen, draws like Michelangelo.”

“I’m learning about art, yes I was really taken with his drawing of me.”

“Gladys, you are a wonderful model. Would you pose this Wednesday?”

“A pleasure.”

“Good. Larry wanted you to have his sketch.” the instructor said and rolled it into a tube.

Is this serendipity, he has my lost son’s name? Before I wept happily, I had turned away. “It means a lot. Thank you.” I whispered. 


John Brooke is an expatriate Canadian living by the Sea of Cortez in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He is a senior advertising scribbler and an emerging writer of  poetry, flash fiction,  novels, and screenplays. 

"We learned something really interesting in English class today," Lynette told her husband Hugo over the crock-pot chili she had made for dinner. "Professor Madgek told us that compound-word adjectives are groups of two or more words that come directly before the noun they modify." She leaned toward Hugo and pulled down the corner of his sports section. "Here's the interesting part--you have to use a hyphen when the compound-word adjective comes directly before the noun, but not if it isn't directly before the noun."

Hugo looked up from the basketball box-score reports and stared at her.

"Yeah?" he said. "You think that's interesting? Is that the kind of useless-ass crap you're learning at that fancy-pants community college? I hated English in high school, and I got negative-zero interest in hearing about it now."

Lynette dropped the corner of the paper, which floated down into Hugo's half-eaten bowl of chili.

"Here's another thing about that college," Hugo continued. "If your smarty-pants Professor Madgek knows so much, why ain't he teaching at the state university instead of misfit-toys community college for brain-damaged teenagers and washed-up, middle-aged housewives?"

Lynette glared. "For your information, Professor Madgek is very smart. He used to teach at a university in the Midwest, but he likes community colleges better. He said it's a community-outreach thing for him, make the world a better place by providing learner-centered education in a nurture-based environment."

"Sounds like he missed his life-long calling," Hugo replied, wiping chili from the point-spread listings for this weekend's football games. "He ought to be a bleeding-heart nursemaid instead of a professor."

Lynette grabbed Hugo's bowl and dropped it into the sink with her own. Hugo didn't notice the nerve-jangling clang as he kept talking in his cringe-inducing voice.

"You know what? Your precious Professor Madgek seems like a pansy-ass fruitcake, if you ask me. He spends his whole day running off at the mouth about adjectives and poetry--that sounds pretty queer-ball homo to me."

Lynette rinsed the chili residue from the bowls and rubbed them hard with the scratchy soap pad. She resisted a near-overwhelming urge to break one of the bowls over Hugo's suitcase-sized head as he left the table, carrying the sports section to the upstairs bathroom for his nightly half-hour, post-dinner session on the toilet.

While she dried her hands on the flower-bordered towel, she thought of how she rubbed those same hands over Professor Madgek's rock-hard abdominal muscles that afternoon in his office after class. He had kissed her with that heat-probing tongue of his that always made her head spin. Pansy-ass fruitcake? Lynette chuckled. Queer-ball homo? Not hardly.

Then she thought of the new ingredient she had added to Hugo's chili just before she served it to him: detection-proof poison.

During the week of Sukkot, Yitzok learned that teachers come in many forms. For instance, when he entered his study hall with the corners of his lips turned down, because he had lost the money he was saving for his wife’s holiday flowers, his friends pressed him to share his problem.

Yitzok wept that not only had he no means to buy his wife a proper gift, but that he also hadn’t given any of his funds to charity, either. Simply, his folded paper and noisy coins had somehow spilled out of his pouch.

Saying nothing, his pals reached into their own, mostly empty, pockets and instead of keeping their change for breakfast rolls, gave Yitzok ten agarot here and half a shekel there for the cost of a bouquet. If they could help Yitzok make his new bride happy, they’d skip a meal.

Yitzok extended his thanks toward his study group. When their rabbi appeared, all of the youths tried to apply themselves to their lesson. Most of them had trouble focusing.

Afterwards, Yitzok’s instructor spoke to Yitzok, privately. The older man sent Yitzok to the yeshiva’s office. Yitzok was supposed to call Yitzok’s brother-in-law to make sure he understood his wife's family's holiday customs. Blossoms were nice, but they might not be enough for his new wife’s joy.

Later that night, feted by half of a loaf of strudel, the two men sat together. Talking to Raphael helped Yitzok a lot. He had not known, for instance, that Tamara liked to use extra long candles during holidays or that she had the habit of using cinnamon and vanilla in her holiday cooking. Before going to sleep, Yitzok walked to the corner store and bought those items.

When Sukkor arrived, Yitzok and Tamara hosted the seven legendary guests, the ushpitzin, as well as Yitzok’s parents, Tamara’s parents, and Tamara’s coworkers. The couple also graciously received nieces, nephews, and neighbors. On the last day of the festivities, Yitzok brought home the friends who had paid for Tamara’s flowers.

Those half dozen youths danced their way between Yitzok and Tamara’s door and balcony. Tamara bit her lip as she watched more and more young men enter her home. She fled into her and Yitzok’s tiny kitchen.

When Tamara reappeared, she was carrying a tureen of chicken and onion stew spotted with bright carrots and tasty okra. Tamara had transformed the two chicken legs, which she and Yitzok were supposed to have eaten that night, into a jolly dinner for eight. She did not know her husband was bringing home so many friends. She wanted him to love their home and her.

In addition to their two undersized buns, which Yitzok sliced as though there would provide enough portions for twenty, Tamara brought out rice, salad, and apples. Tamara was unsure if the young men would notice the food since they were busy singing and praying. Yet, every bite was eaten up.

Tamara returned to the kitchen. She came back to her and Yitzok’s sukkah with a heavy, crystal bowl of compote. Compote was messy, but could be served on the newlyweds’ prettiest plates. Also, compote’s sweet cinnamon and vanilla made Tamara feel like she was being a good hostess.

Although she had frozen that desert for the coming Sabbath, Tamara had chosen to rewarm it in a double boiler and to rededicate it to the present holiday. Her husband’s friends’ smiles made her feel glad she did.

The following morning, Tamara put away the crystal dessert plates. Yitzok soaped, rinsed, and sorted the plastics. He used the small space on top of his and Tamara’s washing machine to store those utensils. Yitzok sighed, imagining filling their washer with pairs of tiny socks. He looked forward to squeezing room from their tiny kitchen for a cradle. There were cinnamon and bright candles in his dreams for the future, too.

KJ Hannah Greenberg's a verbal vagrant who gave up academic hoopla to chase a hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs and to raise children. She broadcasts brief fiction about gelatinous shrubs and two-timing algae.

She was soul keeping. Alone.   Now Francine Black Crow, fifteen, scrambles up the steep path back to Wambli, a village on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Something big is in the arroyo down below. Something not good. She saw it move. Heard it.  

It’s easy to die on the rez, a million ways.  Two of her friends are dead. Her Dad just died. Her grief for him is like ice, inside her, day and night. But now, suddenly, in the dark, in the ponderosa forest, her own dying seems real. Something that could happen to her. Right now.  

She climbs the steep sides of Craven Creek. In the pines she can’t see stars or moon. She hears something behind her coming up the path. She’s Oglala. She has to be courageous. She clenches her teeth; her heart pounds. Whatever is behind her has passed the place where the offering is, has crossed the shallow stream.  

On top, beyond the ravine, she runs hard, nearly hits the barbed wire fence. Horses loom out of the darkness; surrounded by sky, stars, wicked sickle moon, the horses glimmer in the half light like creatures of legends. She reaches for the barbed wire, tries not to panic or move too fast, gets part of the wire down, holds it with a booted foot, climbs through. The paint horse nearest shies, huffs, backs up. But she knows the animal, grabs its mane, pulls it to her, swings up. She slams her heels into its side, and they burst west across the pasture.  

Was it a man? Was it something else? What was in the canyon bottom? Was she doing something wrong? She meant to honor her dead father.  

The Milky Way lifts over the pasture. Do the dead really go there? Do they go to the Episcopal heaven her mother believes in? Do malevolent ones stay in the world, show up in the dark? What does happen?  

Her mother despises soul keeping, traditional ritual grieving, maybe still despises her father. Her mother acts as if she knows everything. The horse slows, and Francine slips off. Her mother does not know Francine is out, does not know about the ritual, the grief. Francine runs back toward the circle of houses up by Crazy Horse School. Her mother is asleep, oblivious, as Francine slips in the door.  

The knowing dark slides into place outside the village as a hungry cougar, up from the White River Valley, frustrated, continues hunting.  

It’s 8pm. Misty is already asleep. Ben is watching TV--one of those old black and white sitcoms that are always being re-run. I hear a car crunching on the gravel outside. I lean over and kiss Ben on the cheek. Not a peck, but a kiss. I put my hand on his head. His hair is thick. He turns to look at me. My heart beats. I’m surprised. His eyes are very, very round. He has lashes that girls would love to have. He sits up enough to kiss me on the cheek close to the crease of my lips--not a dry touch--not a child’s greeting or goodnight, no, a kiss that leaves me longing.

Jessie Carty is the author of three poetry collections including Paper House (Folded Word, 2010). Jessie also writes prose in between teaching. You can find her at http://jessiecarty.com.