New England Review

After | By Jane Ratcliffe


After the war, after all the pertinacious death, after the women have scrubbed the bathtubs and changed the sheets in anticipation, after the farmers have driven their produce to the nearest market and manufacturers have trucked their goods to the local stores, after the rabbits and chickens and pigs have been slaughtered in celebration, after the cows have been milked and the butter churned, after the children have had their ears washed behind and their manners coached, after the parents have settled their hearts to the inevitable damage of their sons which they know so well having been damaged themselves in the previous war, after the wives have washed and set their hair, and younger sisters and brothers have tried to remember their sibling as someone other than the face in the photo on the mantelpiece, after the cats and dogs have had whispered into their fuzzy ears news of the impending return of their beloved human, after the bars have stocked up on whiskey and the pool halls polished their cues, after the hospitals have opened their windows and the cinemas have reeled up movies about happy families and kindly priests, after the churches have polished their pews and the President has given his speech, after the men have returned–or what arms and legs and hands and ears and hearts and faces are left of them—Nora and I will go to the sea and swim. We will swim out as far as we can without losing sight of the shore. Then, on the count of three, we will drop deep into the water, the way the bombs dropped onto us for so many years, and we will stay there as long as we can without drowning, the salt of the ocean pardoning all that we have seen and heard and touched and smelled and tasted. And then we will surface again, perhaps together, perhaps one by one, breaking through the water with a gust of breath, and swim back to the land.

*

Secret Americas features writing about images from the U.S. National Archives.

Image via Wikimedia Commons – “Like girls from Mars are these ‘top women’ at U.S. Steel’s Gary, Indiana, Works. Their job is to clean up at regular intervals around the tops of twelve blast furnaces. As a safety precaution, the girls wear oxygen masks.” From the National Archives and Records Administration College Park. 

Jane Ratcliffe is a freelance journalist and fiction writer. Her work has appeared in NER 33.1, The Sun, The Intima, The Huffington Post, Vogue, VH-1, Interview, Guernica, and Tricycle. Her novel, The Free Fall, was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most notable books of the year.

Practice Falling Asleep | By Alissa Nutting


My horse was not opposed to its mask. The other horses had to be broken against fighting the respirator, but my horse loved the feel of its flannelette bag, opened its mouth readily to accept the canvas mouthpiece. Perhaps it loved the moist smell of its own recycled air and was calmed by the faint reminder of oats on its breath.

We were told to practice falling asleep with the mask on, and I was surprised at how easy this was to do. The amplified sounds of my filtered breathing were a type of lullaby; in the mask, I thought of nothing but the sound of my own breath once the lights went out.

My masked dreams were a different story. In them, my masked self and my masked horse jumped together through bright clouds of poison that looked like fog made from paint. Everyone around us was masked; it was hard to tell whom I should help and whom I should kill, who was man and who was horse. The eyes of my mask became opaque with colorful poison until I was completely blind and could hear my respirated breaths becoming panicked.

Other nights I’d dream that the tubes of my horse’s mask were connected to the animal’s organs. Trying to remove his mouthpiece, I pulled upon a long cord whose corrugated cylinder went from grey to pink inside its throat—too late, I realized I was pulling at the horse’s intestines. When I removed my mask to inspect further, I felt the wind stir at a vacancy beneath my eyes and looked into the reflection of a pail of water to find my face was largely missing. I reached out to take off my horse’s mask and saw that he too had no nose once his mask was removed. I quickly put his mask back on, and mine as well.

One morning I woke with a start to remember that I’d forgotten to remove my horse’s mask the previous evening; the poor creature had worn it all night. Running to the barn, I spoke soothing words to the animal and removed the apparatus from its face. Overall the horse seemed unaffected by its prolonged wear, though once the mask was removed, the horse’s top and bottom lips pulled apart immediately as though he urgently needed to get air to his teeth.

*

Secret Americas features writing about images from the U.S. National Archives. 

Image via Wikimedia Commons – Gas masks for man and horse demonstrated by American soldier, circa 1917-18, National Archives and Records Administration College Park. 

Alissa Nutting’s debut novel, Tampa, will be published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2013. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at John Carroll University.

 

Bernice Effulgent | By Joy J. Henry


Grandma Bernice bobbed up and down, her freshly dyed hair shielded from the chlorine. She flew down from Wisconsin for my second wedding and hadn’t left the hotel pool in days.

“You career women,” she said as she water-cized. “You think you invented work.”

It was 1982. I was telling her about my new job in downtown Tampa, where I wore a suit with neon piping and did graphic design in front of an IBM PC XT all day.

“After Fred went away I inspected bottles in a milk factory,” she said. “This was during the Depression, of course. They dumped half the milk in a big pond out back. Subsidies.”

She threw her arms in the air and did a twist. She’d had her first husband, Fred, committed decades ago after he ran into the backyard naked, on his way to work on Huey Long’s presidential campaign.

“I visited that damn hospital every single week hoping he could go back to work when he got out. The day he’s released he moves in with some woman from the red-light house. Ah well. They didn’t have no ‘bipolar disorder’ in those days.”

*

Ken and I got married in his mother’s backyard. He and his buddies were supposed to set up the food for the reception, but they showed up late stoned and drunk out of their minds. I sat in my mother-in-law’s living room, already in my dress and near tears. Grandma Bernice tugged the flesh of my ass between her fingers, trying to distract me. “Whale blubber,” she said. She went to the backyard and rounded up seven or eight guests to help put out the food.

Through the window, I watched Ken shadowbox with my son, Jonah, under a live oak. They wore matching white suits. A year earlier I’d jumped out of a second floor window, sure Jonah’s father was really going to kill me this time. Ken lived next door. Every Saturday morning, he’d watch me cook pancakes on a fire pit in my backyard, because we didn’t have money for gas. He’d bring me hot coffee with brandy in it. I made perfect pancakes on that open fire, golden brown.

“Men are the shits,” Bernice said, bumping open the kitchen door with her hip. She handed me a glass of beer and caught me watching the two of them. “Hey now,” she said. Her hand on my cheek smelled like Avon cold cream and cigarettes. “If Ken’s a nice man, you can figure the rest out later. You’re a woman. You’re an expert at playing the long game.” Then I was wed and she led us all in a polka.

*

Secret Americas features writing about images from the U.S. National Archives.

Image via Flickr – Organized Daily Exercises at the Century Village Retirement Community, National Archives and Records Administration College Park. This photograph was taken by Flip Schulke. 

Joy J. Henry is a writer living in California; she will join the MFA program in Fiction at Oregon State University in the Fall of 2013.

Secret Americas | The Lenores | Rita Mae Reese


The Lenores
The man stands behind his camera in Mama’s bedroom. Gene said the President sent him here to take pictures of the ugliest things he can find, but I know Gene just heard Samson saying that. Samson is the ugliest man you ever saw and wouldn’t let anyone take his picture.

I know the man’s not taking pictures of ugly ’cause he took pictures of us on the porch with all of my mama’s flowers and her ivy and even Gene wouldn’t dare say Mama’s plants are ugly.

The man asks me what happened to my dolls. The question makes Mama’s body stiffen so instead of waiting for my answer he asks me what their names are. I tell him their name is Lenore, which is from a poem that Daddy likes and will tell us some nights when he ain’t too tired to remember it and we ain’t hollering and acting foolish too much, which doesn’t happen much mostly because of Gene and Evelyn. Lenore is the prettiest name I ever heard and I asked Mama why they didn’t give me that name but she just laughs and tells me to go on.

I don’t tell him that the chewed feet and hands and the busted head are what made them become real. They don’t need feet anyway because I carry them everywhere. I am sorry about Lenore’s busted head though. I could tell him that she came that way, was like that when Mama found her and knew she needed a special little mother to take care of her. But her head was pretty then and her body all chewed up, left behind in this house by whoever lived here before us. Mama took the head off and sewed up a new body for her even with all the work she had to do cleaning up and getting us all settled here. Even though we’re not going to stay ain’t no call to live like dogs till we do leave, Mama said.

Lenore, the picture man repeats, and I can tell he likes the name too, and I straighten my neck, like a queen.

I could tell him that Gene did it, which is what Mama thinks though I never said he did and he swore to her that he didn’t. What happened is me and Lenore’s secret and it makes her love me even more.

What’s the other two’s names, he says, while he fiddles with his camera some more, asks me to stand over by Mama’s vanity. Lenore, I tell him, and he laughs, looks around the camera at me and then puts his face back behind it. All three of ’em are Lenore?

Well, I did want to give them different names but I felt too sad for the not-Lenores. It isn’t fair to give one the prettiest name and the other two something else.

When I grow up I’m going to name my baby Lenore, I say and watch the burst of light escape into Mama’s eyes.

*

Secret Americas features writing about images from the U.S. National Archives.

Image via Wikimedia Commons – Daughter of T. J. Martin, miner. Koppers Coal Division, Kopperston Mines, Kopperston, Wyoming County, West Virginia. National Archives and Records Administration College Park. 

Rita Mae Reese has received a Paumanok Poetry Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Stegner Fellowship, and a “Discovery”/The Nation award. Her first book, The Alphabet Conspiracy, was published by Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press.

 

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