SHORT STORY EXCERPTS


WHAT REMAINS

By Angel V. Shannon
Copyright 2004
All Rights Reserved


Three hundred twenty-two days, six hours, and thirty-seven minutes after a black shroud of dust and smoke has lifted above the city and the yellow ticker tape marked CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS has been removed from the sixteen-acre square; after one point eight million tons of steel have been carried away in the mouths of yellow steel dinosaurs; after the tattooed, sweat-laden men remove respirators from their faces and travel home with shimmering bits of glass stuck in the soles of their steel-toed boots; after nineteen thousand five hundred twenty body parts and bones and slithers of skin have been secured in freezer vaults; as the winds return to the ordinary smells of hotdogs and roasted nuts an American woman stands, figure slack, in the doorway of apartment 14B, where she has lived for nine years, seven months, and a day, holding an envelope that has just arrived. She eyes the address, fingers passing slowly over each letter, stopping at the offset J.

With a careless flick of the wrist she closes the door, plods to the kitchen where the noon sun glimmers with empty promise. She sinks into the chair, one of four, robe falling like a heavy sigh at the sides of her legs. She grips the letter opener, shoves aside a faulty stack of other mail -- nondescript white envelopes -- that have arrived in days recent. She finds this new arrival curious; the offset J seems a special case, she thinks as she slices the envelope in two. She peels open the perfect fold; the paper is crisp bond. She admires, without reason, the elaborate curls in the L and the P of Lexington Properties emblazoned in raised ink at the top middle of the paper. Down below there is an even more elaborate set of curls in the fountain signature of the sender: Mr. Joel Abromowitz. Attached is his business card, linen, bifold, announcing his authority as Director of Resident Relations and the telephone number at which he may be contacted. It seems that seven thousand, six hundred eighteen dollars and ninety-three cents is due and payable to Lexington Properties immediately, Monday the 19th at the very latest. Our sincere apologies if your payment has simply crossed in the mail. The letter is addressed to Mr. John Farley, with an offset J. Mental note to self: remind postman that Mr. Offset J for John no longer resides in 14B.

She stretches over the back side of her chair, reaches for the calendar that hasn't been changed since the ninth month of the previous year. She turns the pages, each passing month like a string of sour notes. There are four days between today and the day the money is due; and though, there are no markings in the squares, she knows that each of them is filled with things she must do, including today -- the day she must identify her husband's bones.

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BUTTERFLIES IN BROOKLYN

By Angel V. Shannon
Copyright 2004
All rights reserved.

“Let this be your last time bringing that boy up in my house.”

These are the words that rush like locomotive steam through the dentures in my mother’s mouth. Pearly white and clenched like a steel trap. Julia Mae, my mother. Widowed and still single. (By choice.) African-American. (Black, thank you. Get it straight!) This is her warning as she charges past me in the kitchen, wig tipped dangerously to one side, wiry shoots of gray peeking from above her ear. She wears the yellow cotton dress I bought for her fiftieth birthday ten years ago—which at the time was way too long (Don’t you see how short and bow my legs is?), much too bright (As black as I am? I’ll be shining like the moon in this thing!) and far too much money (Eighty dollars! Eighty dollars? Ain’ no fabric in the world worth no eighty dollars!). Ten years later she is still short, still black, and her legs are still bowed but she is beautiful and as the hairs of her arm brush mine I tell her.

“You look nice,” I say, admiring the attention she’s given to the crisp, flowing fabric. Her only response is two plump lips that curl into a frown at the right corner of her mouth.

“Just don’t bring that boy up in my house again and you’ll see how nice I can be.”

I lift the lid that covers the pot of mustard greens. Ribbons of scented steam curl into my nostrils and though I have given up all pork my stomach rumbles, my eyes rove the thick slab of pink meat that will give the greens their delectable flavor.

“He’s not a boy, Mother. He’s a man. And his name, for the record, is Amir. Amir Sukhjeev.”

“Hmpf,” she snorts. “Sook-a-jee Mook-a-jee, sound like some kind of disease if you ask me.”

She yanks open the oven door, smirks at the pale white batter, adjusts the tray closer to the blue rectangular flame, then slams the white door closed. Deftly she aims her wooden spoon into and out of the pot of greens, the candied yams, the brown thickened gravy. She wields her fork like an armed soldier, stabbing the ham until its juice bursts forth—the ham that neither Amir nor I will eat. Her round hips serve as prologue in the story of her life: eight pregnancies, six children, two stillborn. Her dark leathery hands fill in the details: more jobs than even she can count, including, but not limited to: cotton picker, domestic, seamstress, cook, and now, Nanny. Parentheses form on either side of her mouth; deeply carved lines that set her face in a perennial scowl, scaring my lover, Amir.

Amir Sukhjeev, a Pakistani American: thirty-one years old, a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, and only son of an esteemed Sunni Muslim biochemist well known for his study of bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor mutants and winner of the M. Razi Uddin Gold Medal of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. Amir was sent to the States for one reason only—American training. Karachi is where he is expected to return; where a hillside home and a suitable, fair complexioned Sunni girl have been promised. Amir: quick analytical mind. Sukhjeev: peaceful person. His dark plush brow, slick black hair and wide ivory smile are not what put Mother on guard. No. It is his skin—almond in the face, mocha on the arms—a vast terrain of confusion.

“Ah-meer? What kind of name is that to burden a child with? Lord, these here parents today. I just don’t know,” she says.

“Mother,” I begin to explain in the kitchen, speaking softly so as not to alarm Amir in the next room, “his parents are foreign. He’s Punjabi. From Pakistan.”

“Who?”

“Pakistan. The Middle East.”

“East of where? Don’t nobody east of here look like that,” she snaps.

Me: Zaida Jonesfield, the last of six children. The sixth reason Mother braced the downtown winds, pushing the little pink faced babies in their strollers, wind whipping tears from the corners of her eyes. The sixth reason she met the moon on countless Saturday nights, preparing spicy sweet potato cakes to sell after Sunday morning service in the basement of Mt. Zion A.M.E. The sixth reason my father would grit his teeth and answer suh’ all the while swishing his brush round and round in white porcelain. Four daughters, two sons, five graduate degrees—so far. The only child to run outta here wasting my good money. English class! Wasn’t you born speaking English? Zaida Jonesfield: Amir’s student. And lover. Mother’s problem child.

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