S.K. Stringer
a hundred little cracks
Yannick didn’t specifically try to date white women, but the first wife, white, and the second one, too. On the nights he didn’t have his son, he’d drive from Richmond to downtown Oakland for a date with a woman from the app Bumble or Cupid, and the Black women didn’t offer a second date. “You ain’t Black,” they determined after an hour of talking, or, more likely, five minutes, but Yannick was interesting or simply handsome enough for the women to finish their drinks, not rush out and ghost him.
A week before the world shut down, he sipped whiskey on the rocks with Tanesha while he studied his hand, so Black, in fact, the drink could appear as though it floated to his mouth, the bottom lip thick that the second wife had nibbled on, a gesture he liked.
“Last I checked,” and he swiped his hand across his face. “I get the same shit, white people crossing the street when they see me. When I was pushing my son in his stroller in Berkeley, a white woman gasped. ‘What are you collecting in there, cans?’ Like I couldn’t be a Black man caring for my son.”
“Okay, okay, I got you, but you ain’t Black like me.”
Yannick didn’t finish his story or dare mention how the FBI arrived at his doorstep in Minneapolis after he’d taken photos near a water plant post 9/11. Someone had called the authorities, saying he was suspicious, though his camera wasn’t pointed at the plant. The agent had sat at Yannick’s first wife’s kitchen table, one she made from a door, and in a very casual tone asked many questions while flipping through the digital shots from that suspicious day, all altostratus clouds. Yannick was impressed that the agent’s expression was stoic, no hint of showing the bullshit of what this was. But Tanesha didn’t want to trade racism-in-America tales. She wanted a cocktail with a Black American, not Guyanese. He wanted another drink. He wanted to make out with someone, their lips on his, their hands roaming. He knew instead what he’d be doing at home lying in his bed, tissues at his side, thinking of one of his first dates or another woman back in the clubs in Minnesota, late nights when he wasn’t married and danced with strangers to Caribbean music.
At night, he journaled, wrote a brief detail about each day. That night 3/12/20: She had too much perfume with a factory scent of flowers, but eyes on you that spoke more than any I’ve noticed, eyes that told her whole life story. The DJ at the bar lined up candles for sale from Oaxaca. After that, the bar smelled like sage. Better than a bunch of Frida Kahlo candles at least, Frida rolling in her grave at her face plastered on tote bags and socks. The ex said she better get to claim Soren on her taxes even though I have him more, a 4/3 split.
Tonight, three months into the pandemic and no dates since March, the bass shook the shared wall of his apartment with the neighboring family, they in the real house, he in the garage turned one-bedroom, a young couple with an eight-year-old and an infant. Yannick plugged his ears and pulled down his cap. He sneezed as the temperature dropped, the cold seeping through the poorly insulated walls as distracting as the techno music. No, he was too tired to whack off this time. He fell asleep with his journal at his side, opened to the most current page, 6/10/20: Soren’s new favorite line he said more times than I’d care to count—“According to my calculations.” After I gave him a new shirt with the planet Saturn he said, “useless gift.” His fact for the day: “The entire surface of Antarctica is considered a desert because it gets so little precipitation.” An unused tissue box stood on the dresser and, unknown to him, ants tunneling in line along the floor and up his wall.
* * *
At 8:30 a.m., Yannick’s son stood with his suitcase at his side in his mother’s Berkeley apartment building foyer. The day was gray and swollen.
“Little man, let’s go home.” Ashley shuffled her feet to the vehicle from her apartment. She leaned in and kissed her boy, darted her eyes at Yannick, eyes that didn’t have the nuance of Tanesha’s, eyes that said: I despise you. I’ll make your life miserable for leaving me. Or, eyes that said: I can’t look at you until I get a shot of vodka.
At home, the boy talked nonstop. He obsessed over his video game and described the most recent kingdom he was building that included a library where he used pistons for hidden passageways behind bookcases. In the morning light, the ants appeared as the army they were, moving brown spots with no specific destination as Yannick cleaned the floors, bleached the perimeters in the kitchen, and, after crawling on hands and knees, discovered the bedroom entrance. He plopped his son on the kitchen stool in front of the computer for class. The teacher, well-meaning, mentioned during one of their January lessons about Martin Luther King Jr. to discuss peacefully voicing one’s opinion. All she had to do was say the reverend’s name and Soren flew off of the stool and buried his head in the pillows on his bed. Though Yannick was much darker than Dr. King, his son thought of them as the same. When the teacher had explained during Black History Month how Dr. King died, his son feared for weeks that someone would shoot his dad. He’d lied to his son to soothe him. “It’s not the same, little man. I’m not famous. People don’t know me,” as though fame were the reason for all of these Black men murdered in America.
He shook his head, sent the teacher a text he watched her read while on Zoom.
“Can we please take the focus off of MLK. It’s causing a lot of anxiety for Soren.” No, not a question, a demand.
Though the teacher was Black, most students were white or Asian American. As far as Yannick could tell, his son was the only mixed child in the group, his skin pale, closer to his mother’s than Yannick’s. The teacher bit the inside of her cheek and dropped the assignment that fast, and now the kids were counting, and Soren, head down, who’d returned to his father’s lap, sighed. “Boring.”
Yannick grabbed the paper and Soren was drawing in the air before his pencil touched down. Soren knew his numbers into the hundreds, surpassing the ease of fifty that his peers were struggling to recite. On his paper world, he drew sharks, orcas, and otters swimming, starfish flattened on rocks. Yannick’s own heartrate slowed after his son settled into routine, not what the teacher had prescribed, but that didn’t matter. Soren balled up onto his father’s lap, sitting too heavily on his left so that it forced his thigh open into a butterfly stretch. Children’s voices wafted through the open windows. Some days, if he hadn’t written the date in his journal, he wouldn’t even know the season. Richmond was generally an overcast morning where the fog lifted by eleven, and after that, it could be spring or fall.
Soren jumped off of his lap and ran outside. Yannick’s knee throbbed with the release of pressure, his thigh tingling to numb. Brick walls divided the properties, the Mexican neighbors east of him and the Tibetan neighbors west. The Tibetan neighbors had two young children who had only begun learning English and moved in just before the pandemic. The grandmother set up a tent in the backyard and practically lived outside except for nighttime and rainstorms. The boy, only four, was rambunctious, and always had his hair tied back in a sloppy ponytail. When Yannick called him Tenzin, as he was introduced, he said, “No, Panchen Lama.” Yannick asked Siri what that meant and was shocked to learn this little boy could be second in spiritual authority to the Dalai Lama. Tenzin existed to throw his toys over the wall and for Soren to fetch them. Soren, boy of honor and all that was right. The girl attempted to talk to Soren. She was his age, Yannick guessed. She said things like: Soren’s dad, why do you live in small room? Or, Soren’s dad, where is Soren’s mom? Ah, a child mind that never had to imagine divorce. Some weeks, these were Soren’s only interactions with other kids, a truth that cracked Yannick’s heart. He had few options, knew none of the parents since his son’s first year was all online. Soren’s best friend from last year had moved back to Singapore.
“Did you have a best friend?”
He loved his son’s questions more than any others.
The day was a Thursday or a Friday. His early morning work for the grocery store, running reports, was the same. The days blurred.
“Yes. Krish. He was shy with strangers but really talkative as a friend. He liked to take things apart.”
“Like you, Papa.”
“Yes, like me.”
“And now?”
“I still take things apart.”
“No! Where’s Krish?”
“I lost touch with him.”
“We must find him!” His son, inspired, drew a pirate ship with Krish’s name on it, though it appeared like “Kish” because his son wrinkled the flag to show it flapped in the wind.
His son returned to his mother’s, and Yannick worked long days at the office to offset the many days he worked remotely while with Soren. On his breaks, he walked to get his 13,000 steps, surprised by how few people he witnessed outside in Berkeley. The supermarket was an entire block in the location of the old Berkeley Rink, now called the Berkeley Dish, a multi-million-dollar operation owned by a Japanese family. Few Black men like him were high up. Tonight, which was Monday or Tuesday, he was going on a date with a woman from the Dish. Desiree worked as a cashier, not someone he ran into at all. She’d asked him out, had slipped upstairs to management offices, bold.
Desiree was early, sitting at the park bench. Without her knowing, he snapped a photo of her, her lips tucked under, which would be a nervous habit he’d observe that evening twenty times or more.
She waved, pulled her mask up, and they air-hugged.
Desiree had green eyes. Close up, the masks drew your attention to whatever was left visible, the temples, the eyes, the arched shape of the eyebrows.
In her hands were glasses. “Came early with margaritas. Want one?”
“Even salt-rimmed. I’m impressed.” He imagined her blushing, imagined what he couldn’t easily see.
“I know some things about you, mister.”
Mister, he didn’t like. “Such as?”
He pulled down the mask to let his lips linger on the glass, absorb the salt before tipping the drink to get to the liquor and sour.
“You’ve got a son, an ex, you’re good with numbers. You’re a creature of habit. I’d guess you like ritual.”
“We’re not around each other much. How’d you get all-a that?”
“I have my surreptitious ways.”
“I like a person who observes.”
“Because you’re an artist.”
“Yes. Again, how’d you . . . ?”
“It’s in your style.” She pulled her mask down to take a sip.
Yannick raised his eyebrows. His first wife had told him his face couldn’t lie because he was too expressive.
“Nah, you mean you searched for me on Google and found my photography website.”
She tucked her lips, gestured zipping them up and tossing the key. Cheesy.
“I’d rather get to know you face to face, didn’t look you up or ask around. Are you inspired by any specific art?” He heard himself, the words turning like rocks in a dryer, awkward, cacophonous. He regretted the phrasing.
“You mean am I an artist?”
“Sure.”
“Yep. Barragão, she creates these evocative underwater worlds using recycled waste yarns from the industry. Badass. Isabella Despujols. Her work combines geometry with color modulations. I could go on, but most humans don’t know textile artists.”
“Guess I’m most humans.” Yannick imagined her living in a loft apartment, yarn hanging down in macramé patterns reminiscent of Rapunzel’s braid, a loom center stage with scraps of wool scattered like pollen. He noticed her sweater just now, how it looked patched together.
“One of my creations,” she said. “I buy in thrift stores and knit or crochet over sections to redesign it.”
He wasn’t in love with her this fast, but he could listen to her talk. He felt that feeling he hadn’t felt for some time, the early days with Ashley, hopeful. They drank. She reached down for the mason jar and poured seconds. He felt loopy, drinking it too fast. He hadn’t eaten. Days without his boy he’d forget to eat a meal.
“You have a son.”
He nodded. “You have any children?”
She shook her head, and he swore her mood shifted and his first thought: infertility.
“I wish men had to care for children. The world would be a different place.”
Desiree leaned over and kissed him, close-lipped.
Yannick kissed her back, his palm pressed at the back of her skull.
“I’m really careful. I work at the Dish or make art. I haven’t seen my friends.”
“I am too. You’re a wild card.”
“Sometimes.”
Yannick turned to face out toward the playground. The yellow caution tape had been torn either by hands or the elements, the basketball hoops stripped of their nets. A few families ignored the signs, and their children were running all over, climbing, sliding, and swinging. He couldn’t tell if the kids seemed more feral or if he was no longer used to this, watching groups of children play. His legs nearly slid out from under him, his entire body relaxed, this strange new woman who broke the rules, the liquor spinning him ever so mildly. He forgot what it felt like to rest.
“We’re seeing each other again.”
She smiled. “I have to get back to work, Yannick.”
At work, he’d look for her from the second floor, easy bird’s-eye view of the first floor where the customers shopped. He’d once seen a customer stealing wine, slipping the bottle into his backpack; another shoplifted mangoes. He texted her images of textile artists’ work, one of a woman wearing a crochet bikini, and she’d respond with a thumbs up or down. She’d send photography images and writing, a poem by Phillip Larkin, another by William Carlos Williams, writers he hadn’t heard of and didn’t know if they were torn from the pages of some esoteric literary journal or famous.
* * *
At the Dish, more cases were coming in. He wrote his supervisor about working more remotely for the time being, trying to make a case for safety, but he refused him, saying that they only had him three days a week and his staff needed him there. Mark was an ass, and his response was a lie. What Yannick would have written if he was being truly honest was that he couldn’t die. His son needed him. Yannick decided to go above the supervisor, and in doing so, got what he wanted, more time at home. On Wednesday, he pulled up to his Ashley’s apartment. His son stood with his suitcase of toys in his hands, so heavy the weight curved his torso like scoliosis, his left ribcage sloping and collapsing the right side. Tears streamed down his face.
“What happened to your hair?”
“Mama cut it off.”
Yannick felt his skin like a seal tighten. His fingers started to curl into themselves, but he released his hand. He’d promised not to fight, though she had a propensity for it, in front of the boy.
Yannick’s thumb swiped away the tears. The boy, accustomed to using his father’s clothing like a large Kleenex, rubbed his face on Yannick’s biceps, today a plaid shirt, back and forth.
“Let’s go have a talk.”
Ashley had bags under her eyes, cigarette pack in hand, thinking she was free of the boy and could now smoke with less secrecy. She was layered in jogging pants, some long-hanging t-shirt, and a knitted sweater. Despite it all, she still had the power to stun him, beautiful as she was unkempt.
“What?”
Her voice, the aggression, expunged any past glimmer.
“We make these decisions together.”
She slipped the pack in her pants pocket and crossed her arms.
Soren wouldn’t let go of his suitcase, his knuckles white from squeezing the handle.
“He hates it. Gets in his face.”
“Soren, did you tell Mama that you hate your hair or that you wanted her to cut it?” Yannick quickly regretted bringing the boy into this. He’d feel like he was choosing sides.
He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“You don’t need him to tell you. If you have eyes, you see the curls blind him.”
“He was fine. Now he’s crying.” Yannick studied the boy, how haphazardly the hair was cut, his thick spirals of locks so uneven across his head. Now he had what looked like springs for short bangs, awkwardly poking out from his hairline.
“You’re on the clock now. You should go. I did him a favor.”
Yannick whisked the suitcase from the little man. “You don’t do things like this without a discussion.”
In the vehicle, the boy’s mood shifted in a minute. “Papa, I learned how to make a medieval city. I now know what medieval means.” The boy always surprised him.
Yannick thought about his last date with Desiree. They’d committed to being in a pod in order to have sex. He’d been right about her apartment, how much yarn filled the rooms. The first time they slept together, he told her he hadn’t had sex for two years. Pregnant pause. “Is this where I share how long it’s been for me?” They laughed. She rested her head on his stomach, stroked his thigh after sex. She’d asked to meet his son and Yannick paused, concerned about Ashley’s reaction.
“Papa, I didn’t ask for the haircut.” They were home. He unbuckled his son although the boy knew how.
“I figured.” He wouldn’t tell his son that hair didn’t matter. No, not to a Black boy. “I’m sorry. Did you know your hair is an accessory organ?” He’d distract his son with facts. “And nails.” In his arms, his boy kissed his shoulders and face.
At home, as Yannick worked and the boy sat in front of the screen, his brother called. He lived in New York and was Yannick’s closest sibling.
“It’s Mom. She’s in the hospital.”
“Did she catch it?”
“Yeah. Look, she’s been through worse.” His brother’s attempt at consoling him.
“Made it through raising us,” Yannick said, playing along.
“Try calling tomorrow. She has her phone.”
Yannick told his son he was stepping outside for another call, but all he did was lean against the brick wall, eyes closed, until the little Tibetan girl called out, “Soren’s dad, you sleep stand up?”
Soren liked ritual. Every day at his dad’s, he stepped onto the planter to peer over the brick wall where he could view the orange cat on the neighboring property, a cat he named Clementine. He stacked the rocks on the wall that he and his father discovered during their walks the way people stacked stones at beaches. Yannick took a daily photo of him at minimum, and that one photo was consistently of him stacking stones, a time when he was so focused that he didn’t see the camera lens pointed at him. One day, just as he was finished stacking, the neighbor boy darted across the yard, and Soren’s face lit up, the first time he’d seen him here. Soren waved like the neighbor boy was his best friend who’d moved away. Yannick stepped into the house, still in earshot of the boys.
“I’m Oscar, and I’m eight.”
The boy and his infant sibling were almost always indoors or sitting in the truck outside of the apartment. He never understood why.
“My name’s Soren.”
“My dad said I can never play with you. Even when Covid’s gone, we’ll never be friends.”
Soren’s smile dropped. He opened his mouth, but no words formed, odd for a boy who talked incessantly.
Oscar ran back to the house, and his mother slammed the door behind him.
“Why, Papa?”
“When it rains, it pours.” The hair, his mother, the little Latino boy being taught hate. “He probably means the pandemic, little man. No reason he can’t play with you after that.” There was a limit to the amount of stress in a day.
“Okay.”
“Scientists believe the pink fairy armadillo shell helps with thermoregulation,” Yannick said in an effort at redirection.
Soren’s teacher had taught the class about uncommon animals, and the pink fairy armadillo was Soren’s favorite.
“Papa, what’s thermoregulation?”
“The armadillo can control the amount of heat it gets because its blood vessels are so close to the surface.” That simple. The boy was fine.
Yannick received word that his mother was released from the hospital. His son was back with Ashley. His son was back with the ex. On the phone, Yannick’s mother reminded him of the kite parades and how he’d walk back home from the city, able to find his way at ten years old. “I never worried about you losing your way.” She had her taste again. She promised she’d visit after she got the shots. Almost like nothing had happened, four days of holding his breath.
Via text, he told Desiree he wasn’t dating anyone else, didn’t want to. He wrote the word “boo” but deleted it. He left the comment sparse, wouldn’t elaborate as to how this was not only romantic but practical. He’d no time to see other women and didn’t want to. He’d expected a fast reply. But nothing all day. Before sleep he wrote: I scare you off?
* * *
With his son back, he felt calm. His refrigerator was full of vegetables from Costco, not his store, where produce was too expensive. His laundry clean. After the suitcase was dropped on the back seat, the boy melted into Yannick’s arms.
“I’ve been thinking.”
His son cracked him up. “About?”
“Just living with you. We can visit Mama every Saturday.”
“But she’d miss you terribly.”
Yannick slammed on the brakes. A homeless person was wandering across M.L.K.
“No, Papa. She wouldn’t.”
His skin tightened again. A six-year-old understanding his mother’s feelings. His heart cracked, all of the small cracks from infancy, his father’s neglect, his mother needing to abandon them for a time, his teen years without either parent, a wonder how his heart was whole.
By Saturday, the fourth day with his son, Yannick was exhausted. From that fatigue bloomed a new ritual, getting fried fish and fries at the soul food restaurant near the laundromat. He pulled his son in the wagon. Strangers used to stop them in the street to comment on the boy’s locks, but no longer. Cars sped down McDonald Avenue, some with a bass that shook his ribcage and caused his son to squeeze his palms against his ears. With the food in the wagon, they crawled through a hole in the gate where the geese gathered on the grass in the park. It had been fenced off, but some human cut through it. The BART train whizzed by with its hollow metal hum, a nearly empty train. They leaned against the wagon and ate the fried food, fingers glistening. The boy always kept his food separate, ate one item, like tomatoes, until gone before starting on something else. Yannick’s eyes pulled wide as Soren bit a fry in half, and then switched to the cod, back and forth.
“Maybe we can live in Guyana.”
Soren knew where his father was born but not much else. In a moment of calm such as this, he could envision his son in his homeland enduring the oppressive heat so intense that people rubbed their necks and arms with Limacol to cool down, the spiders and large cockroaches a nuisance, silty brown ocean water, coastal waters his son would feel trepidation about, so unlike the clearer water of the bay. Soren would have to get over his fear of heights, some of the houses in Guyana on stilts, so much unfamiliarity, but he could imagine his son working through it. He wouldn’t have a choice. Before he’d met Desiree, women typically asked where Ghana was, and he’d reply, not Africa, South America, not two syllables, three. He easily had women’s profiles memorized: “Sharp incisors, and she flosses!” Quote from dentist. “She not as crazy as she looks.” Quote from ex-husband. Another profile: “I once joined in a game of pick-up basketball with a group of kids in Zimbabwe—best game of my life! Message me if you’re fun-loving, fit, and up for anything because I am.” These were the first dates, the dates that didn’t lead to a second. He’d made the mistake of repeating a line back, thinking he’d been showing he paid attention to detail, but more than one woman tossed it back as unnerving.
That night, after he put his son to bed, Des appeared unannounced at his door. They sat outside on the small bench he’d made for himself and his boy to soak in the sun, but now, the moon, a crescent. “I lost two babies. The first a miscarriage early in the second trimester, the next ectopic, liters of blood lost. When they told me how much was lost, all I imagined were Coke bottles containing my blood. Firemen had carried me from my bed to the ambulance. I’d passed out, and my partner at the time luckily was home to call 911. In the hospital, I supposedly cried out for my mom who’s estranged from me.” Des pulled down the waist of her pants. “You can barely see one of the scars,” she said, pointing to her sprouting pubic hairs, and Yannick saw the phantom line, a line he’d missed in the dark the few times they had sex.
No words came to Yannick’s lips, nothing that felt right, though he second-guessed himself too much. Instead, he held her.
She turned her head up to him. “I can’t have kids.”
“I’m sorry.” He stroked her forehead. “I wasn’t looking to have more.”
“I am. I mean, I need to be with someone who wants to adopt a baby.”
“I am barely holding on here with these financial responsibilities, with this life.”
In his frustration, he considered her profile, how she could have mentioned that, weeded so many men out.
“It’s not working.” She stood up, leaned forward, and kissed his cheek.
Inside, Yannick trimmed his son’s fingernails while he slept, nails like Ashley’s that curled inward. The boy slept through anything, nail cutting, neighbors partying, Des knocking on the door.
* * *
Yannick’s boss set up a meeting for a day he had Soren. “You know I don’t have childcare.” The boss texted back the date and time of the meeting, the same text as the one prior. He wouldn’t budge. All day, it rained. All day, he felt the threat of his job being terminated and the power this company had, how unaware the higher-ups were that they could alter his life. Ashley agreed to watch Soren the following morning. The boy tried to bargain with his father.
“I can stay here, and the Tibetan grandma can watch me over the fence.”
“We don’t even speak the same language to talk to her. It’s an hour.”
Soren pouted, stared out the window. His quietest moments were only when the boy was brooding.
At his job, a line of seniors wrapped around the block. A man played reggae music and Yannick stopped in his tracks, “Natural Mystic,” his favorite.
His boss walked into the office five minutes late. “Let’s get down to it. One of your employees clocked out at one, but you noted three, a two-hour difference.” Behind his boss’s balding head were the photographs of vegetables that Yannick had taken for the website.
“Let me look back at her texts.” Yannick scowled down, saw Jasmine’s mention of leaving early. He’d forgotten to correct it, but such a simple mistake didn’t warrant this 7:30 a.m. meeting. It could have been accomplished over the phone or a chat when he was physically here yesterday.
“Yep. My mistake.” He wanted to be blunt, slide a twenty-dollar bill across the table, the insignificant amount that was at hand.
“We’re demoting you.”
“This isn’t some egregious error. I’m not sure why you’re inflating this situation. What’s the salary?”
“It’s all here.” He nudged the paperwork across the table. As the boss talked, the tip of the cucumber appeared like it was sprouting from the parietal bone of his skull. Whatever he said, Yannick hadn’t heard. He noticed he was hungry. He ran the numbers in his head. He would barely meet his expenses on that income. He might have to find an even smaller apartment or get another job.
* * *
At Ashley’s, Yannick sighed in relief from the absent suitcase.
“We’re going to the beach.”
“But it’s not even 9 a.m.”
“The beach is open, don’t worry,” but he knew his son wanted to plop down on the couch in front of his screen. “Papa needs a moment outside. Not having the best day, little man.”
“Papa, what can I do? Hug?”
Soren’s sweetness lowered the decibels of tension. At Keller Beach, the burnt orange seaweed piled at the shore frightened Soren. They removed their shoes, folded up the legs of their pants.
“Is Guyana like this?”
“The water feels like it’s mixed with flour, the heat sticky.”
With the cold water up to their ankles, Yannick pointed. “That’s the Richmond Bridge, the one you called Rabbit Bridge when you were three.” He needed to calm down or his boy would sense his fear. He closed his eyes, let the early sun beam on his face.
At home, the Tibetan children were outside, and Soren didn’t even go indoors but straight to the wall, this time picking up a remote-control car.
“My dad knows how to take this apart and put it back together.”
The little boy talked back, but Soren didn’t understand.
Yannick said, “He’s telling you that it’s fast.”
The boy let Soren hold the controls and drive the car on the Tibetan’s side of the wall while Soren stood in his yard. The children cheered as he maneuvered the vehicle around the tent, the scattered toys, the children’s feet.
“Soren’s dad, someday my brother Dalai Lama.”
Yannick tried to observe the boy in that light, that of reverence, but could only see the boy with his broken English as a privileged kid who destroyed his toys. Only in America, bookended by a racist man and the future Dalai Lama.
Night came at the same pace as most days, a steady unfolding as their routines were so scripted: work time, outdoors time, dinner, lap time, shower, stories, and bed.
He flipped through his journal to find his writing on the last night he’d seen Des in person. 8/19/20: Soren had a meltdown. Going to his mother’s is becoming more upsetting. Someday, he might refuse to go at all. Des is the kindest woman I’ve ever dated, a world apart from the others. Soren said: “Information zooms along nerves at 400 kmph, Papa!”
He imagined them residing in a tent or a vehicle, the only option he might have if he couldn’t find better employment, the slippery slope of sliding toward homelessness, a fear he’d not admitted having until now. The little man wouldn’t care, would think it an adventure—a smaller apartment or none at all. The little man who might intuit his papa’s anxiety but not the scope of it, not the proximity to poverty, this pudgy-cheeked boy who slept heavily as the neighbor’s music thumped the walls during another nameless night.
S.K. Stringer received an MFA from Portland State. Her short stories have received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Inkwell Fiction Prize. She has been published in Confrontation, Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared in CutBank, Propeller, and Boneshaker Magazine. In 2012, she was a Fulbright fellow and taught in Baku, Azerbaijan. She lives with her daughter, Ajzeya, in Oakland.