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Watching Glory Die
By Judith Thompson

In Watching Glory Die, two-time Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Judith Thompson tells the tragic story of Glory—a character inspired by 19-year-old Ashley Smith who died in 2007 of self-strangulation in Ontario’s Grand Valley Institution for Women after guards were instructed to not intervene while she was still breathing. (A coroner’s jury ruled Smith’s death a homicide in 2013.) Although the play’s inspiration derives from a specific event, the themes explored in the narrative are, sadly, evergreen.

The lack of empathy and compassion toward Glory illustrates toxic attitudes toward women and girls in the judicial system, particularly those struggling with mental illness. We’ve all heard someone talk in the same way the prison guard speaks about Glory—as if she’s an abstract problem and not a real flesh-and-blood human—that needs to be dealt with. Watching Glory Die is an utterly disturbing but eye-opening call to address deep-rooted, fatal attitudes toward women and youth.

The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence

A distilled theoretical work regarding oppositional views between Indigenous culture and Western social science, The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence, a debut by educator and counsellor Jeffrey Paul Ansloos, introduces critical-Indigenous peace psychology, a holistic alternative to existing forms of Indigenous youth care. In addition to condensing complex terms and theoretical frameworks into digestible forms, Ansloos also invites readers to witness his personal journey as an Indigenous youth. The scenes from his past humanize the concepts presented in the chapters, creating a well-rounded reading experience. Although Ansloos provides minimal steps moving forward from his initial thesis, the book serves as a thought exercise in reconnecting Indigenous youth with their cultural identities.

This Accident of Being Lost

This Accident of Being Lost is a powerful collection of short stories and songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who is quickly becoming known as one of the country’s greatest storytellers. Unique in its fragmented and casual, yet lyrical and elegant language, This Accident of Being Lost introduces readers to memorable and resilient characters, most grappling with uncertainty. From boreal forests to the Great Lakes, and from urban centres to rural communities, This Accident of Being Lost forces readers to look at Canada differently.

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer provides an illuminating look into the multi-faceted history of queerness in Toronto. From a peer into the formation of the Unity Mosque, to an exploration of one of the world’s largest lesbian hockey leagues, each story presents moving anecdotes and historical accounts surrounding the people, places and spaces that make up Toronto. When brought together, the anthology sheds a candid light on the wide and colourful history of the city’s marginalized communities.

Illustration by Jessica Dryden.

There was a knock on the door. Mum didn’t answer it. Maybe she didn’t hear it. I heard it. But I’m not allowed to do more than look through the screen.

I was only left alone twice or three times. One of those times someone knocked on the door and it was a big man. He asked, “Is your mother home?” and I said “no” and he asked, “Is your father home then, please?” and I said “no.” I remembered that I should not have said no but I couldn’t say yes so I fixed it by saying, “My big brother is home but he is busy.” But I don’t have a big brother. The man went away.

Later there was a knock on the door and I didn’t answer it in case it was the big man again. My mum didn’t go and see who was there because she didn’t hear it. I know because I waited on the stairs until the person went away. I went into the kitchen and asked, “Mum did you hear someone was knocking on the door?” and she said, “Oh? I didn’t hear it.” Then she went to look through the screen and no one was there.

My big sister asked me to tell her a story so she could sleep and I told her “once upon a time there was a knock on the door.” She said, “Ooh good beginning” and I kicked my feet together because I do that when things feel good. It was becoming morning and I tried to open her curtain to look for strangers but my sister said “dark.” I said, “It doesn’t smell like vodka this time,” because her favourite is vodka and tomato juice and she told me no it was whiskey and I should tell the story or get out of her room.

I said, “Once upon a time there was a knock on the door” and she said “good.” I said, “But nobody answered.” She said, “I don’t like that. I want to know who it is.” I was nervous she would kick me out but I still said, “No, no one answered it but I will tell you about the man who it was.” My sister closed her eyes and said, “Okay” and I pretended in my mind I was laying down a picnic blanket, because that’s what it feels like to start a story.

“Once upon a time there was a knock on the door, but nobody answered it. The man at the door was a big man. He had a cane but he didn’t need to use it. It was his dead grandpa’s and his grandpa was rich so the cane made him look rich, he thought. The cane had the face of a swan for a handle and red rubies for eyes.”

I was happy about the way the cane came out, because it sounded very nice. I have rubies in a ring for my birthstone, but they aren’t real.

“But the man leaned on the cane anyway so people would think he needed it at least a little.”

“It made him look dignified,” said my sister.

“Yes, dignified,” I said.

“What was the man’s name?” my sister asked but I told her she’s not allowed to know that yet and it’s my story. My cheeks got hot because really I couldn’t think of a name. I was still smoothing out the picnic blanket. She said “okay okay okay sorry” in my face and then I could tell I’d remember the whiskey smell for next time.

I said, “The man was the type who does bad things.”

My sister asked, “Like what?”

“Well, he had love in his heart for people but he would also maybe smash a bottle on their heads to get their money from their pockets.”

“Jesus,” my sister said.

“He would call the ambulance after, sometimes. He wasn’t a bad man.”

My sister’s stomach made a sound of trapped toots.

“He didn’t use the cane to smash their heads because he loved the cane a lot. He would never sell it or break it across something. He didn’t have a family any more but family was his utmost priority.”

I’ve heard my mum say that to my dad, “Family should be your utmost priority.” My sister made an ooh sound when I said it like making fun but also impressed.

“When the man knocked on the door of the house—it was a house like ours with people in it like ours—he wanted a lady to come to the door and for no men to be home. He knocks on a lot of doors hoping that.” “

But no one answered,” said my sister.

“No. There was a lady home but she didn’t hear the door because she was in the kitchen humming and staring at the oven door. But her kid heard the knock.”

“Is her kid you?”

“No, my age and stuff but different.”

“Okay.”

“Her kid hears the knock.”

“Can you get me some water?”

I was out of there fast. I love getting my sister water or whatever she asks for because she lets me stay longer when she feels in debt to me. My mother said to Mr. Carlson, “I am in your debt” and he said, “Then I’m a lucky man.” It was because he brought her a bottle of wine, and she told me you say that when someone does something nice for you and you feel like you should do something nice back, but you aren’t going to.

I was downstairs pouring water into a glass with a sailboat on it because it’s the glass that holds the most water. I did my trick which is: I put in three ice cubes and then stirred it with a knife really fast until the cubes were nearly melted so the water was cold. I made sure to hold the knife a very straight way where it wasn’t clinking too loudly against the sides of the glass. No one likes it when you make that much noise. Like forks on teeth, stomping when you walk.

When you put a knife only in water it’s still clean and so I put it back in the drawer.

My sister drank the water in one gulp, and some dripped down her cheek and was nearly at her neck before her sleeve got it. She made a loud sigh when the water was gone and looked happy and then upset.

“Oh my god I have a fucking ice cream headache,” she said and I told her to make the roof of her mouth warm with her tongue and then I waited for her to say okay keep going. She said: “Alright, keep going.”

“So no one hears?”

“The kid hears,” I said, and she said, “Oh yeah sorry the kid that’s you hears. You were saying the man.”

I didn’t tell her again it’s not me because I didn’t know who the kid was yet.

“I was saying the man. He wanted to come into our house, into the house I mean. So he knocked. The kid heard.”

“Whose head did he bash in?”

“That was the other time.”

“With a beer bottle.”

“Not beer. Other bottles. A bunch of guys who were coming from the bank.”

“Okay.”

She was not going to be awake after the next thing I said. I would have to make it a really good thing for her to stay awake. I remembered what I had practiced that day and I said my sister’s name and she opened her eyes and really slow I blew a big bubble with just my spit. She closed her eyes again before the spit popped.

“Maybe the kid does answer the door.” I could feel the room changing like when I listened to a recording of a heartbeat and suddenly everything became heartbeats. My sister’s eyes were closed and my feet were kicking together.

“Once upon a time there was a knock on the door. The mother was in the kitchen but the kid heard. The kid went to the window and looked through the screen, and – what did the kid see?”

My sister was breathing bigger from her belly.

“The big man,” my sister said.

“The kid saw the big man. He was even bigger now. If there was sun behind him there wouldn’t be sun anymore.” “

Big,” said my sister.

“Big,” I said and I was feeling good. “In the shadow of the man the kid saw the rubies in the eyes of the swan and wanted to touch them. The man knocked again.”

“Answer the goddamn door.” My sister turned onto her side.

“The kid pulled the door open and the man filled it up. The man asked, ‘Is your mother home?’ and the kid said ‘yes’. He asked, ‘Is your father home?’ and the kid said ‘no’ and the man said ‘good’. ‘Let’s go and see your mother,’ the man said. The kid said, ‘Yes, I think you two will get along,’ and they went into the kitchen. The mother was humming but she stopped when she saw the big man. She asked him did he want some tea. He said, ‘Chardonnay, two glasses.’”

Her sideways mouth was smiling. That’s a joke my mum makes.

“The mother felt like the man had love in his heart and she was right. She made the kid some tea and got the bottle and two glasses. They all sat. They were very happy together.

“The kid’s dad came home from the bank. He had too many bills stuffed in his pockets. He walked in the door and he said to the kid to do the trick with ice cubes to make cold water, but also not to clang the knife. Then he saw the big man sitting at the table emptying the bottle into the glasses. He put up one hand towards the ceiling, meaning, what kind of a man are you that you are drinking my wife’s joke with her? He put his other hand up too, and moved it quickly, and bills were falling out of his pockets. But he didn’t go any closer to the man.

“The big man stood up and smiled at the father. He took the bottle from the table and gave it to the kid. He lifted the kid gently up on a chair, and the kid smashed the bottle on the father’s head.”

My sister was asleep. She drooled and her top lip was like a baby thumb. My father was lying on the floor and then he was gone. The man was standing but in the house the shadow wasn’t so bad as when he was standing in the sun. Mum said, “I’m glad you didn’t use your cane, it would be a pity to break it.” The big man said to her, “Oh yes, it is very special to me.” The big man held up the cane and said to me, “Some day, this will be yours. Thank you for letting me in.” He let me stroke the swan’s face and touch the ruby eyes.

Photo courtesy of L’Euguélionne.

On a Thursday evening in May, about a dozen women gather around a large wooden table at L’Euguélionne, Canada’s only feminist bookstore. The Montreal shop is filled with chatter as the crew, participants in a zine-making workshop, sift through piles of paper. Since it opened in December 2016, L’Euguélionne has become a hub, hosting public events like this one, along with launches, discussion groups, panels, and intimate concerts nearly every night—and Montrealers have been quick to embrace it, says Stéphanie Dufresne, one of the store’s six co-owners. “I think it’s magical in that we’ve received a positive reaction from so many communities,” she says.

Located in the city’s gay village, L’Euguélionne carries about 4,000 titles—from sci-fi and graphic novels, to poetry, critical essays, and zines. While most material is in French, the staff hopes to expand their English inventory this summer.

Still, for the owners, launching a feminist bookstore was about more than just literature. While they’re aiming to elevate feminist writers and voices—particularly those who tend to go unrecognized like queer writers and writers of colour—they’re also hoping to fill a void.

Dufresne says that starts with the neighbourhood. “The discourse that surrounds the village is that it’s for LGBTQ+ people but when you look at who uses the space, who owns the businesses, it’s mostly gay men,” she explains. “We thought it was a somewhat political move to… create a space for women, feminine-identified, and gender non-conforming people.”

Lack of space is something she also sees throughout the city. While there’s been an increasing focus on feminist issues in recent years, Dufresne points out that there are still few designated spaces where communities can learn about and share feminist ideas. To her, having a building where others can reliably meet and access information is key. “Media discussions are temporary. A story breaks and disappears,” she says. “But books are more permanent and can provide context.”

So far, L’Euguélionne has allowed many types of feminists to interact, Dufresne says. Parents arrive looking for books for their kids. Students come to purchase course material. A recent panel discussion between a number of academics was attended by a group of older women from a nearby women’s shelter, some of whom had participated in Montreal’s feminist movements in the 1960s and ’70s.

Moving forward, Dufresne says she and her fellow co-owners hope to continue to see patrons using the space to elevate and educate one another.

“My definition of feminism is, if it’s not intersectional what’s the point?” she says. “If you exclude people you’re just reproducing what you’re trying to fight.”

Photo by Lindy Wilkins.

Tucked away in an alley off the corner of Bloor and Ossington is what looks like a two-storey garage with only a small purple neon sign acting as a beacon to passersby. This is home for a collection of hackers and hobbyists known as Site 3—a communal space that rewards curiosity of the trades.

Many are there because they simply do not have the space to tinker with machinery in the urban city. The atmosphere is relaxed and akin to hanging out in someone’s garage as saturated reds adorn the upper deck amid throwaway couches that make the space pop with vibrancy. Hanging on the shelf is a giant sign that reads, CHARCADE—a reference to the fire art installation made by a few members that ended up as an attraction at the Burning Man festival.

“The space was founded on a four-step mission: teach, create, display and inspire. It’s not strictly an artist studio. We are trying to build community around it,” says Seth Hardy, one of the co-founders.

The diverse membership includes machinists, coders, OCAD students, architects and prop makers. It strives to be inclusive by offering a LGBTQ and Ladies night on Tuesday evenings. At a given moment members could be working on any number of projects: whether it be hacking the vending machine to be accessed by their key fob, working on a way of using electroencephalography (EEG) technology to pour drinks into a cup or working on their latest fire art installation.

Members of the space have gone on to acquire various jobs or have used the space to start their own business. Teaching is done on a volunteer basis. The instructors are people who have hands-on experience working in some capacity with rarefied tools. Members will often pool their resources together to procure equipment as well as having items on site for other members to borrow.

No matter what project you have in mind, “chances are there are people here that can help you realize it,” says member Krista Cassidy.

Cassidy is now working on her own fire art project with a friend. Enthusiastic about her experience, she comments on the process: “It’s great if it serves a purpose, and it’s great if you want to build something that serves absolutely no purpose at all and is just there to be cool,” she says. “Anything kind of goes here—which is awesome.”

As many skills are lost through the convenience of technology, hard skills like welding and blacksmithing become a lost art. As Cassidy put it, Site 3 offers a space where people can “figure out where things work, taking things apart, and learn how to fix them.”

Eight students graduated from high school in Kugaaruk, Nunavut, this year.

That might sound like a tough year for education, but the graduating class of 2017 was the biggest on record for this Inuit hamlet of about 900 people. The milestone is all the more exceptional when you consider Kugaardjuq School’s secondary students finished the year after their school—the only one in the community—was destroyed by fire this past winter.

On March 1, the school’s 320 students awoke to find smoke and rubble in place of the 30-year-old building. The fire, caused by arson, was a massive loss for the isolated, fly-in community.

“It was tragic,” says Kugaardjuq principal Jerry Maciuk. “But after the initial horror, people really moved into action.” By mid-March, Kugaardjuq’s secondary students had been relocated to temporary classrooms in donated spaces around the community, like a daycare centre, a church basement, and local office spaces.

The toughest part was building morale and motivation among students, Maciuk says, who lost their regular routine and an important gathering space.

Educators in Nunavut have their work cut out for them, fires aside: Between 2001 and 2014, the territory had a 60 percent high school attendance rate, and only a third of 18-year-olds graduated from school in Nunavut.

The 2016 graduating class in Cape Dorset, another Nunavut community located farther east, on Baffin Island, knows all too well the challenges of trying to stay in school when there isn’t one.

Young arsonists (incendiary fires was the number one cause of fires in the territory in 2015) were charged with burning down the community’s Peter Pitseolak High School in September 2015, leaving those students sharing classroom space with students at the neighbouring elementary school on a split schedule. “It was hard,” says graduate Natasha Reid, who hails from Cape Dorset. “[There were] tons of students who just left.”

On top of being discouraged from staying in school, “It’s hard to forgive the people who did it,” she says of the young arsonists. “But it’s not healthy to keep a grudge. When you let go of that, you’ll be a better person.”

Reid and six other Grade 12 students persevered, graduating in June 2016.

But the school couldn’t host their graduation ceremony until this year because they needed to order new gowns, awards, and other supplies that were lost in the fire.

For students in Cape Dorset and Kugaaruk who’ll be waiting a few years until new schools are built, Reid has some advice: Don’t give up hope. “Education opens doors.”

After Shanghai, I caught a cheap flight to Bangkok. In the sky, I met a group of Australians who joked about North Korea and Kim Jong-il the whole time and who said “g’day mate” for my pleasure. We parted ways at the airport then I travelled to Ko Phangan, where I think I was roofied at the Full Moon Party. Good strangers took pity on me, and one of them reminded me of Kimia. This is what the group of girls told me later at breakfast, on the beach, pretty girls, sticky already with the nine am humidity. I saw now that the girl sitting across our small, square table looked nothing like my little sister. But when she smiled so gracious-like and thoughtfully, that was when I noticed it.

“You gave me tons of life advice,” she said, with that innocent, fearless tone only nineteen year olds have. “We’re from Vancouver by the way,” she added. “You’re Canadian too, right? You said washroom yesterday instead of bathroom.” Her voice had that bright, elastic West Coast warmth.

“From Toronto,” I said.

“You also said that all that putting my career first was extremist feminist bullshit.”

They were like words rising from a grave that hadn’t been dug for me yet.

“I said what?”

“And you said, strangers are only scary if you’re someone to fear. You said that like, um, what did she say again?”

She’d turned to the others, who were blank and beautiful and worthy of love—I thought, why did I ever leave my city? These people exist where I’m from too.

“She said that, like, people are only scared of other people if they’re, like, fixating on some evil part of themselves.”

“I did?”

“You’re wise as fuck,” the third one said. The fourth one stayed silent in my presence, and the other girls made fun of her for it. She didn’t care. She’d keep staring at me only with these black eyes.

“My sister, by the way,” I finally told them. “The one you reminded me of, Kimia. That was her name. She’s dead.” I needed to see their faces when I said it. I needed it the way I need to be fucked by strangers. But why?—I thought of him, and how his ears must have burned.

“Oh my God.”

“I am so sorry.”

“We’re so sorry.”

“Oh my God, so sorry,” they said.

They were young, and so sweet. They travelled with their parents’ money and had bodies that bended with confidence in strange lands, that spoke of such perfect, disgraceful privilege—and yet their smiles were not to be mistaken for empathy.

“I’m kidding,” I said. I couldn’t cling to the truth. I didn’t want to. “My sister almost died. But she’s alive,” I said. I lied. But the key to lying is to latch onto that idea as if it were the only fact in this world worth knowing.

I stayed with them a while longer. I learned that all four of them were trained Yoga instructors. They were travelling to India next, for further certification, but had decided to stop first in Thailand.

“The food is amazing here. Have you tried the stir-fried noodles?” they asked.

Which was when I thought of that famous novel turned movie, about eating and travelling, which was when I thought of how food had not been a concern of mine not once on this trip, and then I thought of the last supper that I had enjoyed.

My whole life, I told them, after a few more beers, my whole life, has been a giant sacrifice.

“For who?” one or all of them had asked.

“To who, you mean.”

“To whom.”

“To whom?”

“To life.”

They laughed. I laughed too, but by then my soul felt like wine. Like I had turned water to wine, and that’s the opposite of it all, isn’t it? Why did he do that? Why did I know a story that did not even belong to my people, and cling to it more than I did my own? Why would you turn water to wine, Jesus?

***

In the café, he sits. He stares. But I am still in Europe. In Asia. The images of countries I never visited stream past my eyes.

***

While in Thailand, I had very little money. Those four lanky, creature-girls who lounged on the beach like sirens, and whose beautiful white arms and names, amid the anonymity of everyone, surfaced, slowly, like individual badges by which I could tell them apart; they told me I was wise. I told them they were beautiful and light and airy. I watched them in the morning, walk from their tiny, rented bungalow to worship a sun-god, positioning their bodies into perfect statues. One position was called Child’s Pose, where they prostrated, and their arms like wings lifted then fell snugly to their sides. I was reminded of my father. Once, I had seen him prostrate, pray to Allah, but religion was a barred phenomenon in my household —though my mother wore Allah on a gold necklace around her neck and though my eldest sister, in high school, picked up the expressions, Allaaaaaah and Say Walahi—and so with my father, I never spoke of religion. But I watched these girls, and it was no different, how they moved their bodies for meaning. I’d looked down then at my cup of instant coffee, and seen my arm covered in ugly, long, black hairs, made wispy now from so many years of waxing but still there.

“They don’t turn paler in the sun? I thought everyone’s hair turned paler in the sun,” one of them had said, with thin, turned down lips and judgement that was only accident.

In the afternoon, we watched the waves and talked about tsunamis.

“The end of the world is coming. That’s what I think,” one of them said.

“I think.” My voice had aged. It sounded broken to me. Their four, young bodies around our little, wooden patio table, leaned in closer to me, and I tried so hard not to envy them, or hate them because they were nice, they were so nice to me.

“What?”

“Yeah, what?”

“This obsession with the end of the world. It’s not the end, end. Sometimes I think we’re so afraid of the Earth continuing on without us that we have to believe we’ll see it all go down with us.” It was a thought I had never thought until that moment with the sun above us, and our waiter, small and tan with big teeth, delivering our stir-fried noodles and chopsticks.

“You know, I always thought maybe that’s why insects scare us so much yet we’re like, so big. Like, they always survive. No matter what. And we won’t.” The quiet one with dark eyes spoke. She ashed her cigarette into the ashtray between us with one leg folded against her chest.

“They’re more evolved than us, for sure.”

“Right. I guess. In a way.”

“They know how to survive.”

A gust of wind blew through us, tipping their empty plastic water glasses. Mine was filled with water, still, and stayed put.

“Survival of the fittest,” another one of them said.

I watched the cups fly off the table and be pushed farther out onto the beach, where a group of young men walked in flip-flops and bathing suits, laughing at the sudden surge of sand that had got into their eyes and mouths. The girls watched them walk, and the boys noticed them too. They smiled at each other, and it calmed me. The guys walked up the steps into the restaurant to speak with us. And I, the only dark head among the fair, knew my role as the exotic one to taste.

***

I followed the Yogis a while longer. “For fun,” I followed them along the narrow streets where the Thai prostitutes sit and blink and hope for johns they don’t want to fuck and I thought, I am not like them, and again, and again, nearly every feverish night, they led me dancing with them. Again, the girls, sirens with long hair, their transformation by then for me was complete and they danced on borrowed legs, they belonged someplace deep down below the water, where they could breathe.

But it was comfortable and familiar to be surrounded by women instead of men.

“I was raped once,” one of them revealed to me one night. I told her I was so sorry. “I’m not,” she said. She smiled, so brightly, and let her hair hang loose. “We all were. That’s how I got into Yoga. That’s how I met all these girls. A support group, sort of.”

But then the shadow of the man came to us one night. We slept on hammocks inside of mosquito nets in a makeshift cabin on the beach in a different town. The girls had gotten drunk on the beach with another group of tourists, waving their oh my Gods like boobs at Mardi Gras.

“Teach us how you do it. I feel like everyone here wants to fuck you,” they’d begged me, sipping on warm beer, giggling and bubbling the way nice girls are taught to.

“Just don’t give a fuck. Just.” And when people start to view you as wise, you start to believe you are. “Just feel the weight of you until that becomes your power.”

Then in the ocean-loud, pulsing heat of two am, the shadow was slipping into one of their beds—the one whose body she claimed had been filled with water at birth instead of bone, the one who had reminded me of my sister that first night these raped women had saved me from a mayberape, and she was laughing. “What are you doing? How did you find me here?” She laughed again.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Shhh.”

I listened to them. She was quiet. He was entirely silent and I wanted to tell her never, ever trust a man who makes no sounds in bed. And I wanted to know if she was okay. But I was afraid. I think back to that night where maybe I could been made a hero—I felt that I should have stopped it. She never fought him. I never heard a no. I never heard a condom wrapper tearing. I heard only the bones of a knee crack, the sandy floorboard as he lifted his body into the cot – the darkness that was absolute. And the breathing I heard was my own. And I thought of the sister I was never kind to. I was never kind to her, as a little girl, or teenager. And I didn’t know, had she died a virgin? Had she ever done a thing she didn’t want to do? And I hadn’t known her favourite colour when she died. She was so decisive and yet so changeable. Did she regret it, her last favourite, in her last second?

“Hello?”

The voice was not hers. She was lost, in some other ethereal land, dark yet orange, she was blind.

It was him. The voice of my shadow-man. I tumbled out of bed and ran, I ran foot against floorboard to the wet, cool sand. Water rushed over my legs, and groups of tourists still partied farther off on in the distance. And is there any place so infinite as a dark black sky over dark black water? I saw fire in the distance, where the people danced a dance that was an omen and a sadness. My nightgown, wet, billowed around me. I was waist-deep now. I shot my neck backwards and looked straight up at all the stars, and it was the closest to outer space I’ll ever feel, the closest to God I ever got, the loneliest, the most insignificant I have ever felt. And I wondered if this is what she wished to touch on too early, too curious for her own good, my sister.

“Are you okay?” The man shouted from the edge of the beach. And to find solace in a man, I thought, like my mother, my older sister, my friends, is the worst cowardice of all.

“Kora! Did you have a nightmare! Come back!” One of the girls called out. She was made shadow next to him.

I started to laugh.

“You’re supposed to sing me into the ocean not out of it, mermaids,” I shouted. I was laughing or crying. But the waves carried the words away into dark. I swam sideways, hair matted against my head towards the party that when I reached it was just smoke and a few voices speaking intensely in French. They stared up at me the way raccoons do at dawn.

I imagined making love to the shadow-man, him folding me like a sheet of clean, white paper, having a baby. I wanted to call A— and ask her why I kept fantasizing for things I did not want.

“Because you do want them,” she’d have said.

But she’s wrong.

***

In the morning, the one whose mouth slanted downwards talked about how much bigger her boobs had gotten since she was in high school. Another complained of a sunburn. All of them begged me to come.

“You can be a Master, too,” they sang.

***

What I never would have revealed to them was how much I did not want them to leave me. The following morning, the sky was the color of jaundiced skin, and one after the other, their warm lips kissed my tired cheek while we watched the Pacific Ocean crash against our dirty feet.

“Did you know?” the darkest-eyed one said, “did you know that apparently in the Odyssey by Homer, that whole time that Odysseus travels the seven seas, or whatever, there’s no mention of blue. It’s always grey.”

“Yeah. Blue wasn’t invented yet.”

“Are you stupid?” They laughed like bits of light falling from the sky. “Not invented! That doesn’t make any sense. You mean, we hadn’t like, developed the idea of it yet so then we couldn’t perceive it.”

“Same thing. That’s what I meant.”

A long pause and a momentary sliver of sun escaped behind a cloud.

“Do you think the world looked like it does today every day then, to them? I mean like, how much power do words really give a thing?”

They turned to me for wisdom but I was only twenty-nine. Their bodies crowded me.

“I don’t know,” I said. I wouldn’t cry.

“We’ll miss you,” they whispered. The one who looked and breathed like Kimia slipped a paper into my jeans pocket. Another said, “I did it last night. I did it and it was magical.”

How close to the edge is the magic of life? But the time for wisdom was finished. Instead, to each of them, like a slow, unsteady cat stretching awake, “Be careful,” I said, and thought of my mother. “Byeeeeeeee,” their voices pierced the humid air between us as they packed into a cab and left for the airport.

I phoned my parents. This was the first time since England I had spoken to them. My mother cried. My mother called me flower in a language I hadn’t heard spoken since March. Then my father came on.

“Are you happy?” he asked. I remember so distinctly because I couldn’t remember him ever asking me before.

“Since when do you care?” He said nothing. I tried again. I said, “I mean.”

“You think this is cool? What you’re doing? I know what you’re doing,” he said.

“What am I doing?”

He did that Iranian thing with his mouth to express shock and disappointment… something about the tongue against the roof of the mouth. So much shame in one sound. I felt small and full of rage.

“What am I doing? Tell me. What am I doing?”

You know.

You know, you know.