101 Words

Madeline sat there, unaware of her power. Pouty lips and eyes charged with flecks of cobalt blue. I was desperate to find something that would enthrall her.

Time was growing short. I needed to make a move. My mind raced, groping for ideas. Finally, my resolve melted, and my shame rose; I chose the easy path.

I took the jar from the bottom drawer and extended it. Her head turned, whipping delicate brown curls. A tiny hand grasped a fistful of jelly beans.

“There, Sweetie. Take as much as you want. Just be quiet while Daddy is on this conference call.”

3:22 a.m. I am snug and warm. Pressed tight, in fact.

Oh, my! A bright light, and cold, and strange sounds!

Something is touching me. Cold, and hard, and—alien. I flail and writhe.

I cry out in agony. So very loud!

More lights, noises, textures. What is happening to me?

I’m tipped and whirling. So many sensations! Life as I knew it is gone. What IS this existence?

Okay, somewhat snug again. A little warmer. But that light! I squinch my eyes tight.

“Mom, Dad, we had a boy! Asher Jackson. Eight pounds, eleven ounces. Born at 3:22 this morning.”

She was buried three blocks from the school. I stood at her grave. There were five years of teaching in her casket. My teacher murdered by my friend. My grief split brain was damaged; one side wanted revenge, the other comfort. I watched a butterfly, gentle and firm like her, land on her stone hat. The word “why” occupied my thoughts and nightmares. I turned to leave when I heard a chuckle behind me. I whipped around. No one. I looked at her tombstone’s engravings and smiled as I read, “Here lies Sarah Yue who taught us to laugh at death.”

“They’re expecting 100,000 people,” Lea said as we rode the D Line.

“Are they expecting us?”

“Zooey, you’re either very funny, or a moron.”

“Why can’t I be both?”

We emerged onto Park Street and joined the current of people heading toward the Common. We could hear Sen. McGovern speaking. How would I know who was right if everyone was wrong?

We were told the country needed a revolution. I almost believed it.

But I doubted the revolution would be about ideas. It would be about bloodshed.

And I didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the bullets would flow.

A rubber ducky bobs lazily on the water’s surface, its garish, painted smile pregnant with plastic sadness.

Raj cleans the pool, silent. Each dead leaf extricated from its depths is another page of a life they once contemplated, now defunct. Annie sits nearby, her sobs matching the carefree dance of the floating toy. The test results, still fresh in their minds, were unequivocal; the verdict, unforgiving. She could never be a mother, nor Raj a father. They wouldn’t know the miracle of creating new life, never hold their dear baby. Their dream, like leaves, had drowned.

Unwavering, the rubber ducky smiles.

Purple lightning shot across the sky, that night old farmer Harrison wandered out to his cornfield. Newly widowed, with a bottle of Russian in his blood, he stopped below the grey cotton ball of thunder, raised the TV–antenna, and waited.

A bolt struck two feet away. He stretched himself and elevated the antenna.

Eventually, the cloud drifted away.

For a moment, antenna still in hand, Harrison contemplated the mistake he nearly made. He didn’t see the second thundercloud until it roared.

For weeks later, neighbors wondered why he wouldn’t step outside to remove that ugly, bird–infested scarecrow lying on his cornfield.