Contraceptives Work Better When Explained

It was late one January night. We got on a bus and made our way to the sweeping, white bridge that jutted over the ocean. Someone needed to go first, find out if there were hidden rocks under the water. Our entire excavate had been my idea; I was the leader, so I would go first.

And so, when the tide was high, the water was icy and adrenalin ran high, I leapt off of the 30-foot bridge into the black, liquid salt.  Below the arch, the cars sounded magnified; the scrape of tires on cement echoed off the water. 

“It’s fine. There aren’t any rocks.” I shouted to the group above.

One by one, they climbed over the railing, faced the water and let go.

Freedom.

My mother learned early on to avoid asking her children questions whose answers might be literal or use grandiose statements like "Eat your peas, there are starving children in Africa." She didn't need to tell us--we fed starving kids. 

When a Sunday school teacher asked the classroom of young middle-schoolers: "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?" I answered with the foresight my father had taught me.

“It depends," I said. "Is there water at the bottom, and if so, how deep is it? Can the people with me swim? Does someone know CPR?”

I was told to sit down and not be a smart-ass.

I asked because I never actually followed the infamous jumpers. 

I always tried to jump first. 

Leap by example, and all that. (Miraculously, the only bone ever broken was my tailbone, and that was from trying to run up marble steps while wearing rollerblades.) 

For me, it was never about bridges and whether I would jump. Because I have jumped off airplanes, cliffs, bridges, buildings, ledges, rocks, moving vehicles, and can tell you that--if raised right--your child can learn to successfully grab onto a moving vehicle while wearing rollerblades.

Knowledge equals power. Knowing the difference between alcohol poisoning and being drunk is more empowering than instilling the mantra of "Don't Drink and Drive" (which you should never do). Teaching the proper use of contraceptives prevents more births than guilting/scaring kids into false abstinence. Knowing how to properly load and shoot a gun, why re-using needles is dangerous, the difference between crack and meth...this is more important than trying just to keep peer pressure at bay.

Kids are going to jump off of bridges whether parents want them to or not. I sure as hell did.

If I could, I would write to that Sunday school teacher, asking her to respect the intelligence of each 11-13 year old in that room and at least provide us with enough knowledge to empower ourselves. It would go something like this:

Dear Random Lady I Will Never See Again, 

The real danger is not jumping off high bridges, but doing so in an improper fashion. Instead of instilling a life of paranoia, I suggest you tell children the following bridge-jumping techniques:

- Do you like freely using your arms and legs? Do you enjoy walking and having feeling below your neck? Check the water's depth.

- Look around first. Are the people you are with able to help you if you break your leg? Can you stop the activity if something goes wrong? 

- Could you look your friends' parents in the eyes and explain why their child is now a cold corpse? If not, relocate to a safer jumping point.

- Is anyone drunk/high? Yes -- this is stupid. No -- Jump on.

- Point your toes and clench your butt-cheeks together. You are too young to have an accidental enema. 

Sincerely,

Actual Experience Bridge Jumper

We are more human than we know

We are badly bent people with no remedy for our twisted condition. One thing, however, binds us—liars, whores, nuns, teachers, lawyers, kings, peasants, starved, gluttons, accountants, businesspeople, artist—we all look at the squalid world around us, put our hands to our faces and whisper “oh my God.”

None deny that we’ve inherited a world sagging under the weight of our selfishness.

At some moment in our lives we feel the terror of a parent whose infant simply will not wake, and in that moment our helplessness to change anything burns to the quick. 

So out from the lips of rapists, fathers, mothers, homosexuals, presidents, immigrants, addicts, priests, students, everyone, comes the humanizing cry “oh my God.”

“Oh my God,” we say:

When a bride returns from the honeymoon with a beaten face.

When we sit in a sun-baked car.

When children matted with debris from their once-home stumble into our living rooms, crying into our television.

When small towns, choked full of churches, pass laws making it illegal to be homeless.

When the world becomes enamored with reality television weddings and becomes bored with warring nations.

When soldiers, unable to handle war-memories created from serving their country, take their lives.

When a fed-up flight attendant flips off the passengers, opens a beer and activates emergency landing.

When gas costs more than food.

When starving people kill each other for garbage.

When a New Yorker kills a three foot rat. 

When millions are wasted on making commercial goods while homes smashed by tornadoes still sit in jagged heaps for years.

When a woman feels a lump.

When the market crash strips a family of everything.

When women and children are exploited, raped, sold, bought.

When we receive the toothless smile of a freshly bathed baby.

When we get our credit card bill.

When we smash our thumbs.

Gender, race, social status, sexual-orientation and culture rise to the same level, stripped of their chasmizing differences when we make the same plea.

“Oh my God.”

Abbigail Caldwell Was Primed For Death Before Her First Tooth Fell And

Tea leaves remind me of Abbi.
Little lungs bobbing in our river, the Tankey.

Air bubbles, protective parents, push

Her back to an arch, head still down to stare at lush

Golden brown algae, gray gator gar, mercury coated minnow – all swayed

By whorling eddies, moved along this lazy river back’s way.

She dragged both feet through two miles of mud.

Past the Mills, shoe laces move along and scud

Down the bank, till deep, one crag snatched her.

First one foot. Then the other.
Hung there crucified, hair out like fingers,

Catching dead leaves, scum and silt between

Suspended, decaying hair.

And she stayed there.

Till the rescue snorkeler found her milk-eyed stare,

Arms wide, dress moving in wet breeze, little pinky nibbled bare.

Pulled her tiny water-logged corpse up, up-and then

Let mother’s bewildered mourning finally begin.

“Found her half-eaten, finally, poor soul-“

Neighbors words give less comfort than their soggy casseroles.

How We All Knew She Was a Fake

She told us to call her “Aunt Sandy”, but I was wary the moment she insisted she knew what it felt to be from another culture since her family moved a lot when she was younger. We were at a conference for kids who grew up in other countries, which meant we were all bound to each other by our common unfamiliarity with the Western culture.
What credentials "Aunt Sandy" had to consider herself a TCK (third culture kid), I’ll never know, since she admitted to only living in the United States.
     “But I know what it’s like to leave friends,” she said as she looked sympathetically at each of us.
The girl from Nigeria caught my eye, half-smiled and shook her head. By instinct we all knew: leaving people was not the same as living with people; being the only white person; running from car bombs; eating monkeys; being forced to live on a compound; or drenching oneself in another culture.

So, while this “Aunt Sandy” implored us to embrace bittersweet friendships that would end in four days, we busied ourselves with making memories. We did not fear leaving. Rather, the knowledge inspired us to climb a mountain at 4:00 a.m., skinny dip after the bonfire and explore the Colorado mountainside in the middle of the night with nothing but two flashlights and a large stick to keep away the mountain lions.
Instead of learning names, we called each other by our home countries.
Moldova: the black haired boy who went with us to hike the mountain and whose violin looked like fire in the sunrise as we sat on boulders twelve hundred feet above sea level.

Russia: the girl who showed us how to braid flowers into a wreath; who taught herself sign language because her younger sister went deaf after a high fever.

Japan: the boy who got road rash from the afternoon we decided to play hockey using nothing but sticks and a coke can.

Kenya: who puked for an hour after he drank an entire bottle of hot sauce just to win $75.

Thailand 1 and Thailand 2: the brother and sister team that borrowed their parent’s car so we could cram thirteen people in and drive downtown and watch “Finding Nemo” at the dollar theater.

Names and pasts didn’t matter, only making memories. Because, in the end, they were the only things we carried with us. Memories were the only things that permeated our being, stuffed unseen cultures beneath our skins and changed our paradigms.
“Aunt Sandy” would never know us truly, not till she understood how to be an alien in her own skin. (Months later, we discovered that “Aunt Sandy” had taken notes on each of us, met with our parents and had given them psychological evaluations of each of us. To my knowledge, not one person from our group ever contacted the woman again.)

We were, by nature, episodic, pieced together with shards of what past we could remember. After all, we who felt aborted from our nations loved our cultures with an unnatural ferocity for we ourselves were unnatural, born of two worlds yet belonging to neither. Protecting our past and our country from ignorant comments became part of navigating Western culture. Like when my parents put me in a one-week American camp when I was fifteen and the counselor told us all to sit in a circle and introduce ourselves.

That was when I began learning to protect my past by gauging my audience, because when I mentioned growing up in China, the pimply boy across from me jerked his head up.
     “Do you know anyone that, like, died from SARS?”
No one spoke, but I felt my throat tighten and grow hot.
     “Excuse me?” I asked.
     “Do you know anyone,” he raised his voice and spoke slower, “that got that SARS thing and died?”
Without missing a beat, I snapped out the coldest lie of my life.
     “Actually, my best friend died two days ago from SARS.” I cocked my head sideways, still staring at him. “She had to suffer for a week without medication before her lungs filled with blood and she drowned.”
My lie sank in; I saw the weight of my words slap the boy, turning his face red and opening his mouth to flap like a dying fish on hot pavement. Everyone was silent. I continued to stare across the circle,  not caring.
I wanted them to feel the magnitude of his ignorance.

Since that day, I’ve wondered many a time why the fifteen-year old me could not simply smile and forgive the high school jock and why his rude question spurred such a vicious retort.
Perhaps it was because I remembered my entire family wearing pale green masks during the SARS epidemic.
Perhaps it was because I could not forget how a stranger’s cough brought a surge of fear.
Perhaps it was because I know what the hospitals were like, and what primitive treatments awaited the unfortunate.
Perhaps it was because the memory of my younger brother burning with fever, limp, flushed and coughing still makes my heart ache; how we knew it was only a bad cold but had to hide him so the health inspectors would not take him away and lock him up with people who actually did have SARS.

I know now that the memories of brutal reality spilled over into rage when asked such an insensitive question. Now I have learned to guard my memories as much as my tongue. Our memories shape us, inspire actions and stitch together who we are as people.
Warp them, and they will warp you.
Idolize them, and your past will forever trump your future.
Ignore them, and you ignore yourself.
Come to peace with them, and you will learn to love your colorful, patchwork past. 

Making a Baby Is Like Catching Fish

People usually trickle into the village market long before the birds start their half-startled calls. Dogs pick through shadows and wander back to their self-claimed hovels. The bitches trot through the streets; several litters have weaned their tits so long they hover and dance above the dust, each step making the teats quiver. Some walk with their brood next to them, a tumbling swarm of warm puppy fur that follow their swinging breakfast.

A long row of boards, propped by cinder blocks or bits of stone, lines both sides of the market like a gauntlet, the stalls arranged in their own food demographic. First the fruit, then the fish and finally the meat, propped on damp, blood worn boards. He stops in front of the first vegetable stall.
          “How much?” He picks up the bok choy, feeling the firm groove of while stalk and feathery green leaf. She mumbles something, sizing up the tall, thin man before her.
        “Too expensive”, he says putting it down, knowing she will then shake her head, pick it up and thrust it again at him, telling him to name his price.

He feels at a loss, like a child told to prepare a meal. Buying food is his wife’s job, but she could not get out of bed this morning for the nausea wracking her body as their baby violently splits from cell into cells into cells. Mei Ah had smiled while he put the bucket next to the flat, bamboo mat bed, happy to be sick with child again. 

This was the third try, the third attempt to incubate life inside her without letting it slip out in a wave of cramps, blood and lumps of baby. The doctor said something about hostile environment, unstable uterine walls. Their parents told her she should lie still after love making to ensure implantation. Like trapping a mass of cells is as easy as catching fish.

The ground is wet from the red, blue and green plastic buckets filled with last night’s catch. Each basin traps different aquatic delicacies—urchins inch along on their black needles, blue dart fish nibble at each other, sting rays hover at the bottom, tails poking from the rims, shrimp flail legs over each other, their heads up like race horses. 

Tubes of air filters snake into the water, providing oxygen for sucking gills. White foam bubbles at the edges of the basin and the fish sit below, eyeing him from below the slick, opaque shield. 

Occasionally one will escape, jumping over the edge in a spray of hoary water to gasp and flop with unblinking eyes till the owner leaps up to re-catch it.

Everything smells of dirt, water and salt. Mei Ah would know which vendor to talk to, the one who would give an honest price. Now she huddles at home, creeping from room to room like her bones are made of hollow glass.

He walks towards the pig heads hanging on wire hooks, the ones with tongues rolling from their mouths like white swollen worms. Flies lick at their open, still eyes. Three cow hearts are lined next to each other, white tissue clinging to the muscle walls like cobwebs, strings of veins just visible between each groove of muscle.   

        “I need ribs.”
        “Hoof? Tail? Cheap price today. Only here. Not like that son of a bitch next to me. He’ll rob you blind.”
        “Sure.”
And as the owner crushes ribs with the cleaver, he backs away to avoid the blood, skin, and bone residue on the block which sprays up with each chop. Looking at the skinned rabbits, naked and ivory white, the ducks hanging by their plucked necks on red strings, he wonders why he is not a vegetarian like his wife. Familiarity breeds hunger.
But he does remember the first time he felt the sting of regret for taking a tiny life. It was a morning like this one, the same dirt and dust, the same yelling between stalls covered in raw food. Pig, cow and dog blood tainted the air with a metallic twang, one he could taste at the back of his throat when he breathed in. He was here to buy sparrows—six of them.
        “Here! Buy! I’ll clean them for you!” The woman motioned towards him, her hand covered with dried blood. Small feathers stuck like flags to the back of her fingers.
        “Skin them for me, will you? I don’t want to have to do that later.”
        “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” She had already turned and had picked up the scales and bundle of plastic bags. Brown crust had gathered under and around her nails.

A wire cage, rusted and woven from pools of metal, sat beside her foot. Inside huddled the mass of dusty brown feathers, wings and blinking eyes. Her hand dove in, searched for a warm body and brought it up. The tiny thing did not struggle; merely shivered. The woman thrust her thumb between the neck and chest, piercing through with her nail, pulling skin and feathers off in one swift stroke. 

Throwing the inside-out coat of blood, down and hide with the pile, she jammed her middle finger through the chest cavity, grabbed the still beating heart and pulled it out. Putting the naked, slippery bird into a plastic bag, she tossed the heart in, too, weighing the whole thing before giving it to him.

The heart kept beating until he reached the bus stop.

As the butcher hands him the ribs wrapped in brown paper, watery blood dripping from the corner, he feels a wave of regret for the birds. Their hearts, smaller than his pinkie nail, could not have been bigger than his still-growing child, the one struggling to huddle in the dark coop of his wife’s womb.

The Real Savage

Anna had to urinate. The urgent tingle had turned to a frantic, dull pain that would not quiet no matter how she adjusted herself. Sitting on the train, watching Russian countryside flinging by, she knew that once she stood, another would take her well-deserved seat. Seven hours to Urumqi, not including immigration checkpoints. She couldn’t wait that long.

Four other women stood close to her, their hips, rough clothes and feet bumping into her body each time the train jolted against the iced tracks. They were waiting for her to get up; leave so they could squabble over who got her seat.

She had been breathing through her mouth ever since the famer had pulled his infant son’s pants down just enough to let a stream of urine splatter next to her foot. The urine specks on the seat had frozen over and now looked like misshapen freckles.

Dirt. Sweat. People bundled so thick that their arms jutted from their sides. Body odor seethed from any exposed skin, turning the compartment into a steaming enclosure of human stench.

Well, if these people were miserable they certainly were not showing it. Impassive, dark eyes, wide noses, black hair, ruddy cheeks—what was she, the only white person, doing here?

The train lurched, and woolen hips smashed her face. Hard. Anna let out a small bark of air and felt her cheek, sure that the farmwoman’s clothes had flogged her cheek raw.

Looking up, Anna saw that the woman simply stared at her with curious indifference before turning her head, closing one nostril with her thumb and letting a rocket of snot shoot to the floor. The content of her nose emptied, the woman sniffed once and continued to stare at Anna.

God, these people are savages.

She had come onto the train with her ticket between her teeth, arms clutching her one, heavy backpack. Maneuvering to her seat, she saw that a woman already sat there, a pile of sunflower seeds spilling around her feet and knees. As the woman cracked shell after shell with one hand, Anna tried to show her that the surely she was mistaken for sitting in the foreigner’s seat.

            “Look, this is my ticket,” Anna said, thrusting the pale blue paper into the woman’s face. “This seat, 23, is mine.”

The woman blinked and spat out a shell. Anna’s friends had been right. It was first come first serve, no matter who bought the ticket.

Frustrated, Anna took a deep breath and sat on top of the woman, backpack and all. The element of surprise worked; the woman shouted and tried to push Anna off, but she pressed all her body weight against the padded thighs and wouldn’t budge. The woman finally slid to the floor, glaring at the white girl and cursing under her breath.

Anna held up her ticket, pointed to the number on the seat and then the number on her little piece of paper. However hard, however wooden, however soiled, this seat was rightfully hers.  

Now, four hours later, the entire compartment knew about the white girl who snatched seats. This was one moment Anna was glad she did not understand the language.

She looked out the window.

Snow. Ice. Snow. Farmhouse. Trees. Snow. Snow. Snow.

Pee.

She had to pee.

The next jolt brought a stinging surge of pain and Anna uncrossed her legs.

Unable to bear the pain anymore, she stood, grabbed her ever-heavy bag and began to pull, shove, push, and squeeze her way to the bathroom door. Loud, thick voices behind her announced a winner, but she didn’t care which of these uncivilized creatures now sat on the cherished, cracked seat.

The slap of body waste and wind hit her as she opened the bathroom door.

A hole had been sawed into the floor, and she could see the tracks clacking below. Piles of waste and frozen pee clearly marked where others had missed—probably because the train swayed and lurched every few seconds.

With nowhere to hang her bag, and using one hand, she untied her ski pants and wiggled down three layers of leggings.

Cold. Oh dear Lord it is cold.

Holding her bag with both arms, she began to squat. Frozen urine covered the sides of the hole, and her thick-soled boots barely held her upright.

As she emptied her bladder, the steam from her body fluids misted the air. Like others before, she missed the hole.

Relief.

The train lurched sharply to the right. Her boots slipped on the iced surface and both ankles snapped inwards. Anna’s head hit the side of the wall; her backpack fell into the sick filth.

First heat radiated from both legs, then pain.

Her feet were pointing the wrong way.

Four hours later, an immigration clerk and two soldiers beat down the door to find a white woman lying with her pants halfway pulled up. 

It wasn’t till the soldiers lifted her by her arms that they realized that the blood had frozen her pants to the floor. 

taste dangerously random: towel thing.

taste dangerously random: towel thing.: It's a strange bird, being married. I haven't had to establish the importance of keeping my towel mine very own in a long, long time. Yes, ...