Tag: fiction

Sundress Publications 2023 AWP Off-Site Reading

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that the readers for our 2023 AWP off-site reading include Barbara Fant, Kimberly Ann Priest, Stacey Balkun, Athena Nassar, jason b. crawford, Sunni Wilkinson, Nicole Arocho Hernández, Amanda Galvan Huynh, Cynthia Guardado, Dani Putney, and Donna Vorreyer. The reading will take place on March 10th, 2023, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM PST at Old Stove Brewing Co, 600 W. Nickerson St., Queen Anne, Seattle, WA 98119.

A brown woman with dark black-brown hair smiling against a blue and green backdrop. Her arms are crossed over her knees, and she is wearing a white blouse with two strings hanging down from the collar. The top of a reddish-brown pair of pants or skirt is visible.

Amanda Galvan Huynh (She/Her) is a Xicana writer and educator from Texas. She is the author of Where My Umbilical is Buried (Sundress Publications 2023) and Co-Editor of Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making: An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (The Operating System 2019).

A brown woman with long black hair gives a small smile as she sits on the edge of a black chair. She is wearing a black top, a black jacket, and black pants against a grey vignette background.

Athena Nassar is an Egyptian-American poet, essayist, and short story writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of the debut poetry collection Little Houses, published by Sundress Publications. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets, The Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, Pleiades, The Chattahoochee Review, Salt Hill, Lake Effect, New Orleans Review, Zone 3, The Los Angeles Review, PANK, and elsewhere. 

A Black woman sits on top of a wooden stool against a grey and white background. She has black hair and wears a yellow top, a pendant necklace, blue jeans, and a pair of brown heeled shoes.

Barbara Fant has been writing and performing for over 15 years. She has competed in nine National Poetry Slams and is a World Poetry Slam finalist. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Paint, Inside Out (2010) and Mouths of Garden (2022). Her work has been featured in the Academy of American Poets, McNeese Review, Button Poetry, and Def Poetry Jam, among others. She believes in the transformative power of art and considers poetry her ministry.

A black and white portrait-style photo of a woman. She has long hair that starts off black and the roots and grows lighter as it continues down her shoulders, a hexagon-shaped earring visible with her hair as well. She has a tattoo on her one visible hand and is wearing bands on her wrist.

Cynthia Guardado (she/her/hers) is a Los-Angeles born queer Salvadoran poet and professor. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Cenizas, (University of Arizona Press 2022) and ENDEAVOR, (World Stage Press 2017).

A portrait-style image of a person smiling against a background of a white column and greenery. They have short dark hair, a visible earring, a green shirt, and a red jacket with a light pattern on the front.

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, and neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. Their debut collection, Salamat sa Intersectionality (Okay Donkey Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. They’re also the author of the poetry chapbook Dela Torre (Sundress Publications, 2022).

A selfie-style photo of a white woman with short whitish-blonde hair in large teal glasses and a bright blue t-shirt. She is smiling and standing against a background of flags and a dirt-covered ground.

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. She hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

A selfie-style photo of a Black person wearing a pale pink beanie-style hat, glasses, dark blue lipstick, and a black sweatshirt with white letters on the front. One hand is up on their cheek, and they have a small amount of black facial hair.

jason b. crawford (They/Them) was born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. They are currently an MFA Candidate at The New School in Poetry.

A white woman with reddish-brown, windswept hair looks into the camera against a blurred, wheat-coloured background. The photo is taken from a nearly fourty-five degree angle looking down at her face, and her black shirt is also visible.

Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird, finalist in the American Best Book Awards, and chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place, Parrot Flower, and Still Life. She is an associate poetry editor for Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and assistant professor at Michigan State University.

A brown woman with dark brown hair and black wire glasses smiles. She is leaning against a tree, and she is wearing a purple and white striped top with a pendant necklace on black chord.

Nicole Arocho Hernández is a Puerto Rican poet and translator. Her poems have been published in The Acentos Review, Electric Literature, Honey Literary, The Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, I Have No Ocean, was published by Sundress Publications. She is the Translations Editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review and an MFA candidate at Arizona State University.

A black and white portrait-style photo of a woman with dark wavy hair wearing dark framed glasses. The top straps of a dark top are also showing, and she stands against an outdoor background..

Stacey Balkun is the author of Sweetbitter & co-editor of Fiolet & Wing. Winner of the 2019 New South Writing Contest, her creative work has appeared in Best New Poets, Mississippi Review, Pleiades, & several other anthologies & journals. Stacey holds an MFA from Fresno State & teaches online at The Poetry Barn and The Loft. 

A white woman with straight red hair. She appears seated on a white-grey background with a black bar fence. She is wearing a black and dark green garment only visible from the torso up, and the garment has a small greenish-white pattern on the dark green parts of the clothing.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of the Sundress Chapbook Prize).  Her work has been awarded the New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, and the Sherwin Howard Award.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents November Reading Series

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the guests for the November installment of our virtual reading series. This event will take place on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, on Zoom (http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress, password: safta) from 7-8 PM EST.

Joy Jones is a trainer, performance poet, playwright and author of several books, including Private Lessons: A Book of Meditations for Teachers; Tambourine Moon; and Fearless Public Speaking. She has won awards for her writing from the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and the Colonial Players Promising Playwrights Competition. Her most recent book is Jayla Jumps In (Albert Whitman & Co, 2020).

Anna Leahy is the author of the poetry collections What Happened Was:, Aperture, and Constituents of Matter and the nonfiction book Tumor. Her work has appeared at Aeon, Atlanta Review, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Poetry, Scientific American, The Southern Review, and elsewhere, and her essays have won top awards from Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing program at Chapman University and edits the international Tab Journal. More at https://amleahy.com.

Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress 2021) and chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place (forthcoming Harbor Editions 2022), Still Life (PANK, 2020), Parrot Flower (Glass, 2020) and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP, 2018). Winner of the 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize from New American Press, her work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Salamander, Slipstream, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Lunch Ticket, Borderland, etc. She is an Assistant Professor of First Year Writing at Michigan State University and serves as an associate poetry editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry. Find her work at kimberlyannpriest.com.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writers residency and arts collective that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more. The land on which Sundress Publications operates is part of the traditional territory of the Tsalagi peoples (now Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians) and Tsoyaha peoples (Yuchi, Muscogee Creek).

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Seven by Farzana Doctor

The auditorium dims, and the audience stills. The moderator welcomes the crowd and introduces me as the first speaker. God, why did she have to put me first? I take a sip of water, clear my throat, and click on a slide that shows a compilation of news headlines from 2016 to 2025. 

“Much has changed in the last decade. As you can see, khatna was made illegal in India. There have been dozens of court cases — starting in Australia, then Detroit, and later all across the U.S., Canada, Europe, India — cutters and parents prosecuted. There are now hotlines for victims, specialized therapies for survivors.” 

I run my thumb down the cool glass of my tablet’s screen, and provide the audience with background information and statistics about Bohras and khatna’s emotional, physical, and sexual impacts. The energy downgrades in the room. I move on to the next slide, a photo of our high priest posed with a dead lion five times his size. I hear a couple of gasps. Good, I have their attention again.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that khatna is still being secretly practised amongst those who are most closely aligned with the apex leader of the Bohras. Thankfully, he has fewer acolytes now as more Bohras have shrugged off his control and have formed more democratic communities, including a large alternative masjid here in New York City. There is even talk that the Indian government might seize his funds and properties and redistribute them to these new configurations. Fun fact about this photo: it circulated on WhatsApp and Facebook in 2018 and people say it was a catalyst for change.” Finger snaps popcorn through the auditorium as audience members show their support. 

I click on the next slide, a photo of me with my mom, her cousins, and my nani, all of us wearing identical orange-and-red tunics. There is a collective “Awww.” I feel a sudden light-headedness. I exhale. Time to get personal. 

“So, that’s me, at seven years old, in India with my family. I’d like to tell you a little about my personal connection to khatna. Like every other khatna story you’ll hear, it’s about secrets, lies, and shame.” This last sentence sounded better when I rehearsed in front of my full-length bedroom mirror. Now it seems cheesy. 

I click on a photo of Mom and Dad, smiling for the camera. Dad’s holding a placard that reads FGM IS GENDER VIOLENCE! 

“My parents were dead-set against the practice, and even attended a rally, the first of its kind in India, while we were there in 2016. Oh, I should give credit to my mom, who provided me with all these old photos.” My gaze slides to the left of the auditorium, where my parents and Nani sit. I told myself I wouldn’t look their way until the end of the speech. 

“One day, I was supposed to be babysat by an older cousin, but I ended up with my grand-aunt, for an hour or so. Now, Maasi was fully aware of my parents’ views about khatna.” The audience is quiet, as though holding its breath. 

“Maasi told me we were going to the market and then we’d go and get ice cream. I remember feeling excited about that.” I pause, take another sip of water, the reel playing in my mind: we were supposed to buy vegetables, but we didn’t. I remember thinking that the aborted errand was somehow my fault. 

“She seemed to be in a rush, and while we were walking, I tripped and skinned my knee.” She scolded me for being clumsy, and her unexpected harshness shocked me. Perhaps she saw it in my expression because she softened then. 

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, I know a nurse who lives close by, and I’ll phone her and she can take care of your knee.’ Soon after, we arrived at this so-called nurse’s place.” 

A century of dust coated the foyer. The lift was that old-timey kind, with a criss-crossing metal grate that protested with a creak and a sigh when Maasi pulled it closed. I liked watching the cement underside of each floor pass as we ascended. 

“An older woman answered the door, and Maasi whispered something to her in Gujarati that I couldn’t understand.” 

The air was stuffy with kerosene. I take a breath and continue. 

“I was told to lie down. Maasi said, ‘We’ll clean your knee and put on a bandage.’ Then she told me to pull off my shorts so she could check that there weren’t any other injuries. I resisted that, told her it was only my knee, but she shushed me. I didn’t stop her when she pulled down both my shorts and underwear. A part of me wondered if she knew better, and so I complied.” 

Later, I’d blame myself for letting her remove my clothing. Mom told me to never let anyone touch me down there. 

“Remember, this was a decade ago; I was only seven.” An old man in the front row nods earnestly at me. He resembles one of my great-uncles with his long white beard and topi. 

“She said the antiseptic might sting for a second, and told me to look out the window so that it would hurt less. I did, and so I didn’t see what actually happened.” 

The sky was smoggy grey. My knee sizzled. At the same time, I felt sharp fingers and a much stronger, searing pain. 

“I believe Maasi tended my knee while the other woman cut my clitoral hood, and while I felt pain in both places, I was confused about what was hurting where. And why.” My knee and vulva prickle for a second and I shift from one leg to the other. The old woman’s fingers were thick at the joints, her nails stained turmeric-yellow. 

“Maasi said, ‘Look, you are fine now, nothing happened.’ The nurse applied a cream and then they dressed me again. Maasi said, ‘You’ll feel better in a minute and forget all about this.’ I wanted to believe her, and so I did. At least for a while. 

“All the way to the ice cream shop, Maasi instructed me to never tell my parents about visiting the nurse, that it was our secret. I thought that I was in trouble for something I couldn’t name. 

“The pain subsided. When we returned to her place, I must have been in shock. I didn’t argue when she undressed me, washed my underwear, and then put them back on me, damp.” 

She told me, “Chee chee, you’ve dirtied your panties. But that’s good, the bleeding stopped.” I was supposed to read out this last line, but something about it feels too crude to say aloud to a roomful of strangers. 

“And so, in that child’s haze of confusion caused by the manipulation of a trusted elder, I kept the secret. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, when we were back in New York, and looking at our digital photo album, that I asked about the protest and what it was all about.” I turn to look up at the projected image of my parents at the rally. 

“And that was when I told them what happened. When I was a bit older, Mom and Nani shared their khatna stories with me and I’ve come to see this as a weird sort of bond we share. A trauma bond, but also now an activism bond.” I lock eyes with Mom, but then look down at my page. 

“My parents and nani didn’t have much to do with Maasi after I told them what happened. She died a few years ago. I don’t know how I feel about her, still.” 

Nani dabs her eyes with a tissue. 

“I’m not really sure what the full impact of khatna has been or will be on my life, but I’m glad I can speak to you about it today. I’ll end there, because my time is up, but I’m happy to speak more during the Q and A.” 

The room explodes into applause. Mom, Dad, and Nani rise to their feet.

This selection comes from Seven, available from The Dundrun Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Releasing in Canada and the US this September, Seven is Farzana Doctor’s fourth and most ambitious novel to date. The novel sensitively addresses women’s relationships, sexuality, infidelity, intergenerational violence, religion and healing sexual trauma within the context of the insular Dawoodi Bohra (sub-sect of Shia Islam) community. Seven is also the first novel of its kind to address female genital cutting in the Bohra community. 
Seven is “invaluable” (Booklist) and “an intimate, gutsy feminist novel” (Foreword Reviews) that bravely tackles a difficult issue, one that is too rarely considered but is close to Farzana’s heart as she actively campaigns against FGM in her own community. Twitter: @farzanadoctor

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Seven by Farzana Doctor

“C’mon. Let’s go!” Zainab yells into my ear. 

“What? Where?” I yell back. “Follow my lead.” She pulls my arm, and I accompany her around the side of the building, and in the side doors. She pauses to consult the directory; gynecology is on the fourth floor. 

“What are we doing?” I ask, but she shushes me and pulls me into the elevator. Inside, there are two other ridawalas, and I realize that we look like them; patients on our way to appointments. On the fourth floor, Zainab pauses, as though considering our next move, then takes me by the elbow down a long hallway. 

“Zainab! What are you doing?” I ask, but she shakes her head. 

“Shhh.” 

“I’m leaving.” I turn to go. 

“No, please, I need you! Just pretend you’re here for an appointment,” she whispers, glancing around fearfully. Again, no one looks at us askance, the ridas our camouflage. She shoots me a look of desperation. “Please, just come with me.” 

She takes my hand, and worried for her, I follow, her lady-inwaiting in this unfamiliar game of make-believe. 

Ahead is a desk where a receptionist in an emerald rida types at a computer. Sitting beside her is our great-great-grandfather, who thumbs a rolodex. He looks up, nods in acknowledgment. I blink, and then he is gone, the index cards abandoned. 

“Name, please?” the receptionist asks. Zainab offers her first and her maiden name and says she has an appointment with Dr. Master. The receptionist squints at her computer display, searching for the missing information, and Zainab says, “Sorry, must go to the bathroom.” 

She grabs my hand and we flee down the hall, our ridas like wings flapping around us. I have no idea what we are doing, but I know I can’t stop Zainab. And I can’t leave her alone to do whatever unhinged thing she’s about to do. Can I? 

“You gave her your name?” I hiss-whisper. 

“I know, it was stupid. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think of that when I was planning this.” 

“Planning what?” 

She places her finger in front of her mouth to silence me and then gestures with her eyebrows to the door in front to us. Its nameplate reads RUBINA MASTER. 

“Zainab! No!” 

Zainab turns the knob and bursts in. A woman in a white coat, who is standing by a window, turns to look at us. 

“Can I help you?” 

“Don’t you remember me? We went to St. Mary’s together, Rubina. I’m Zainab. I was passing by with my cousin and I thought I’d come up and warn you about the protest downstairs.” 

“I can see it with my own two eyes.” Rubina gestures to the window. “These people are such liars.” 

“Yes, it is so bad the way that women these days are taking up this cause. They are bringing shame to our community.” My eyes bug out at Zainab. What is she saying?

“I know, it’s just a small thing, and they are making it into a mountain.” 

“And why are they targeting you? I mean you do khatna under sterile conditions, not like the traditional way, no?” 

“Yes, that’s right. I wish everyone would come to doctors for it. It becomes a safe, medical procedure. Like with boys.” 

“Yes, that was what I was telling my cousin here. She’s in town until next week with her seven-year-old daughter. Can you squeeze in an appointment for them?” 

“Yes, just ask my receptionist out there.” She scans the crowd outside. “The procedure is very quick. We can do it before you go.” 

My brain unscrambles and I ask, “Do you use an anaesthetic cream?” For some reason, I want to confirm Maasi’s account of the procedure. 

“You can get one if you want, but it’s not required,” she says distractedly. Perhaps Maasi’s report was based on hearsay. 

“Very modern, no? When we were kids, it was done in some aunty’s flat.” Zainab laughs, shakes her head. Despite her pretend positivity, her words bring back that apartment, the waiting, the fear. I inhale, shake it away. “

This selection comes from Seven, available from The Dundrun Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Releasing in Canada and the US this September, Seven is Farzana Doctor’s fourth and most ambitious novel to date. The novel sensitively addresses women’s relationships, sexuality, infidelity, intergenerational violence, religion and healing sexual trauma within the context of the insular Dawoodi Bohra (sub-sect of Shia Islam) community. Seven is also the first novel of its kind to address female genital cutting in the Bohra community. 
Seven is “invaluable” (Booklist) and “an intimate, gutsy feminist novel” (Foreword Reviews) that bravely tackles a difficult issue, one that is too rarely considered but is close to Farzana’s heart as she actively campaigns against FGM in her own community. Twitter: @farzanadoctor

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Seven by Farzana Doctor

Now hours later, I lie awake, listening to the even breathing across the room and beside me. I can’t tell whether my cousins are fast asleep or lost inside a similar maze of interior thoughts. I allow my hand to slide down my pelvis and rest over my underwear. A cut was made there thirty-three years ago, according to Fatema. It’s odd to not remember and to know in my heart that her words are true. This story both belongs to me and does not. 

My body, as though finally being given a missing puzzle piece, adjusts and repositions itself under my hand. But it is not an easy fit. My stomach, which loved our dinner, now roils. I have a terrible headache. I’ve popped three pills, and I wait in the darkness for the throbbing around my eyes to subside. 

I have always loved my community, my Dawoodi Bohra community. It’s the place I can return to, the place I belong, the one identity that is sure and strong. I’ve admired my family, and in particular, the women. But tonight I hate it. Hate them. I don’t want any part of it anymore. I want to go home, get out of this awful village. I want my mother. I want my dead father. I want the Edison three-bedroom that’s long been sold. I curl onto my side, press my temples. 

I’ve defended my community. Like so many others, I’ve shrugged about the corrupt men who rule over the flock. I’ve tolerated them, and like so many of us, I haven’t opposed them because they haven’t before interfered with my life directly. 

But now my community feels like nothing because, while the men might have made the rules, it is the women, women I’ve loved, who’ve enforced them. 

This is why I have never had an orgasm. This is why. 

In the dark I think, Did my mother know and not tell me? Did my father? How can I continue to love my maasi now? Can I ever forgive her? 

I spring out of bed, grab my phone, and head out to the hallway, my stomach lurching with the sudden movement. The screen’s blue light sends a shard of pain through my skull. I check the time — it’s just past 1:00 a.m. — and call Murtuza. 

“Honey?” His voice is groggy. Then there is alarm. “Are you okay?” 

“Yes, I’m fine. Is Zee with you?” I lean against the wall, and then crumple to the floor. 

“Sleeping. Why?” 

“Since I’ve been gone, have you let her out of your sight? Did you leave her with any relatives?” 

“No, we had lunch over at my aunt’s, then we saw the Gate of India. Then we came home. We’ve been mostly at home since. What’s this about?” 

“Please. Please don’t leave her with anyone while I am gone. Not Tasnim Maasi. Not any of your relatives, no one. Please, it’s very important. She’s seven. Murtuza. Seven!”

Fatema opens the door to our suite, shushes me, draws me in. Zainab switches on the light and I shield my eyes against the white glare.

“I’ll explain it all later. But for now, you have to promise me. You have to protect her at all times. Do you understand?” 

“Of course I will. I’m her father. But tell me, what happened? What’s wrong?” 

“Oh my god. She had that sleepover with Nafeesa. On your birthday.” I shoot a look at Zainab. “Did anything happen to her?” 

Zainab shakes her head emphatically from across the room. 

“Shari! Talk to me! What’s going on?” Murtuza shouts through the phone. 

“They did it to me, Murti. They did it to me when I was seven.” I sob, and gasp, and my thoughts muddle. Fatema takes the phone from me, and, in a low voice, explains my distress to Murtuza. I rush to the bathroom and throw up into the toilet, just in time. Zainab comes in, turns on the light. 

“No, turn it off!” It goes dark again. The nausea has stopped, thankfully. I rinse my mouth at the sink and Zainab hands me a towel. She guides me back to bed and holds me close. I rest my head on her shoulder and smell the sharp tang of her sweat. She rocks me like one of her babies, smoothing my hair. 

“It’s over now, it happened a long time ago. It’s over,” Zainab coos. 

“It’s not. It’s not over. My life, my sex life has been ruined by this!” I wail. She tells me to breathe. Holds me tighter. I stop crying, and slowly detach from her. I notice that Fatema is sitting beside me, her hand on my back. 

“How are you?” She passes my phone to me. “I told him we’d look after you, but you should call him back. He’s worried.” 

I nod and she dials for me. I move to the opposite side of the room, sit on a wingback chair. My head is still sore, but not like before. 

“Shari? Are you all right? Should I come there?” Murtuza asks. 

“No, it’s better you stay there. I’m kind of a mess and don’t want Zee to see me like this. Also, we have things to do tomorrow.” 

“You sure you still want to? Maybe you need some time to sort all this out.” 

“I think so. I don’t know. I’ll probably feel better in the morning.” 

“Okay, I’m here, Shari.” 

“Yes, I know. Murti. Remember what I said about Zee, okay?” He assures me he will, and then we say good night. 

“How’s your headache?” Fatema asks. 

“Better. Sorry to wake you up like this.” I cover my face to hide my embarrassment. I fear I am being overly dramatic. 

“I wasn’t sleeping, anyway.” Fatema rubs her lower back. 

“Me, neither,” Zainab says. “You know, it’s odd. Maybe I’m imagining it … but … I think I remember pieces now. At least those colouring books, the smell of the crayons … my mother smiling at me and telling me how … proud she was of me to be so brave and good. She … she told me I was the best one out of the three of us, that I did the best, made the least fuss. Like it was a contest. I remember wearing a pad that was very big and my mother told me I’d hardly bled because I’d been good … I remember the ice cream after.” 

Her eyes are wide, wondering, the memories a revelation. 

“Because you’d been good.” Fatema get up, shakes her head. “That bitch.” 

I wait for her to come back, to sit beside us again. 

“Why can’t I remember?” 

“Some of the women in my activist group don’t remember, either, but have been told by a relative that it happened. It’s how the trauma works, apparently. It’s mysterious. Some of us remember each and every graphic detail. Others have pieces, like Zainab. Sometimes I think it is better not to remember. Every time I think about it, it’s here,” she says, touching her forehead, “right here.” 

I nod, although I can’t agree. At least she’s got something to anchor her, even if it is something awful. Me? I am floating in an ocean of uncertainty. 

“Shari, I am really sorry it came out this way. I wanted to tell you months ago, but when it seemed you didn’t remember I wasn’t sure …” 

“No. I’m glad you told me. It’s better to know.” I think that’s true. 

Exhausted, the three of us have run out of words. We turn off the lights but I stay awake for what feels like an eternity, listening to my cousins’ light snores.

This selection comes from Seven, available from The Dundrun Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Releasing in Canada and the US this September, Seven is Farzana Doctor’s fourth and most ambitious novel to date. The novel sensitively addresses women’s relationships, sexuality, infidelity, intergenerational violence, religion and healing sexual trauma within the context of the insular Dawoodi Bohra (sub-sect of Shia Islam) community. Seven is also the first novel of its kind to address female genital cutting in the Bohra community. 
Seven is “invaluable” (Booklist) and “an intimate, gutsy feminist novel” (Foreword Reviews) that bravely tackles a difficult issue, one that is too rarely considered but is close to Farzana’s heart as she actively campaigns against FGM in her own community. Twitter: @farzanadoctor

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Seven by Farzana Doctor

I have to rewind the film, because I’ve missed the last minute or so, focused on my thighs and trying to remember the lyrics to that Nancy Sinatra song. 

I start from the beginning again. A few women speak forcefully against khatna and I nod along. A couple of women say that it’s a harmless ritual. They make me think of Zainab, and I pity them. There is just one lady who is vehement that the practice is positive for girls’ sexuality. Her voice reminds me of Maasi’s but of course I know that this woman, whose face is obscured by a cinematic smudge, is not my aunt. It’s not Maasi’s way to appear on a video like this. 

I pause the film to get up to pee, and then again to make tea. I am sweating so I change into shorts, turn the air conditioning back on. 

The credits roll and my heart races. I check the time. It’s almost 2:00 p.m. I wish I could call Laura back. But it’s not her I need to talk to: it’s my mother. I need to finally ask her about all of this. Mom will already be in bed, fast asleep. But I call anyway. 

She picks up on the fourth ring, her voice groggy. 

“I’m so sorry for waking you. But …” I don’t have an appropriate justification for shaking her out of her sleep. What am I doing?

She asks a half-dozen alarmed questions about our safety and in a calm and authoritative voice, the kind she needs when stressed, I reassure her that we are fine. “Can you go to your computer and turn on Skype?” I need to see her face. I wait two minutes, watching the clock, feeling childish for this drama. Then my computer rings, and she appears, hair tousled. She’s brought her laptop to her bed. 

“Did you see that article I sent you a couple of days ago?” 

“Oh, yes, I read it today.” 

“I need to ask you about it.” 

She is quiet as I tell her everything I have learned about khatna. I give her details about the conversations I’ve had with Fatema and Zainab. I offer to send her the film link and she nods her assent. 

“Is it possible that it happened … to me, too?” I finally get the question out, this question that for the last few weeks has been in my periphery, but from which I’ve been turning away, turning away. 

“Oh, this is why you’re upset.” 

I nod, chide myself for making this a big deal. 

“Don’t worry. We opposed it.” She tells me that the family tried to put pressure on her when we visited India when I was seven. I relax into her assurances, but only for a moment. 

“Who? Who put pressure on you?” 

“Tasnim, your maasi. You know she has always been so much more old-fashioned than me. And she is only six years older!” 

“You are so different,” I agree, feeling a sliver of disloyalty to Maasi. I add, “But she’s also so spunky, you know? It’s hard to believe she believes in this stuff.” 

“Well, it’s religion.” Mom shrugs. 

“Still.” 

“People think it’s symbolic, not anything that would do any real harm.” 

“Yes, that’s what Zainab thinks.” 

“I barely remember it happening to me, but the idea of it has always left a bad taste in my mouth … so when it came time to make that decision for you, I said no. We’d been living in Edison for three years already and we’d been exposed to different things, people, culture. Not only the Bohra culture anymore, although that was there, too. Ratna Aunty became my best friend. At the time it was a big deal to have a best friend who was Hindu!” 

She’s fully awake now, back to her chatty self. 

“So you said no. Then what?” 

“Before we went to India, Tasnim called me saying she and my mother could make the arrangements for the three of you cousins. She thought it would be good if you did it together. I told Ratna, who was appalled, and her reaction got me thinking, really thinking about it. I remember her face when I explained it to her, saw how shocked she was, it was kind of like when you haven’t given something much thought and then you see it clearly through someone else’s eyes.” 

“So did you call Maasi back?” Impatience buzzes under my skin. I need to get to the end of the story. 

“No. I knew I had to explain in person. She wouldn’t understand, so I wanted to be delicate about it. You know, she was so bothered that I’d even cut my hair! I had that Dorothy Hamill cut back then and they didn’t like it. She’d ask me things like, ‘Are you doing your namaaz still,’ and I brushed her off, telling her it was impossible to have an office job and pray at work.” She rolls her eyes. 

“So you told her in person?” “Yes, I told her and my mother together.” She flicks her wrist, indicating the completeness of her actions. “I said that your father and I didn’t want it. She argued with me and said, ‘Do you want her to turn out like Shaheen?’ I couldn’t believe it.”

“What did she mean by that?” Shaheen, the older cousin I admired as a child, would have been eighteen at the time when Mom and Maasi had argued. She’s married now, with two kids, and owns a thriving office-supply store in Detroit. 

“She wore makeup and had a boyfriend. Somehow everyone in India heard the gossip! Her parents tried to rein her in, but she had a will of her own. Don’t tell anyone — it was a secret — but just before we came to India that year, she had to have an abortion. Tasnim doesn’t know that part of the story.” 

“Really?” Of course, no one would have shared this with me — I was a child — but it’s strange to not have this information. What else don’t I know about the family? It’s like I’m peeling a boiled egg, only to find its yellow yolk soft and runny on the inside. 

“Yes, it was the first time any of us had dealt with such a thing.” 

I nod, imagining Shaheen having to cope with her private drama while relatives spread rumours about her. 

“Tasnim tried to persuade me with her ideas about Western influences and the need to control girls and all sorts of things I knew were nonsense, but at the time, you know I felt intimi dated? She’s always been a bossy older sister and sometimes I wondered if we should have followed more traditions.” 

I tense, hearing her contradict her earlier words. I gaze into her eyes. She hesitates. I remain quiet. 

“I know it’s stupid, but later when you went through all those troubles in your twenties I wondered, Was she correct? But no. I never thought khatna was right.” 

“So, you stood up to your sister and your mother that summer, right?” I still feel fuzzy about the story. 

“When we left you to stay that summer, I made Tasnim promise to respect our wishes and she agreed to not allow our mom, your nani, to take you for it.” 

“And you believe she did that?”

“Absolutely. She told me it was the parents’ decision, that it was only her duty as an older sister to give me her perspective, but she wouldn’t interfere beyond that.” 

Her eyes shine brightly, lovingly, from across the ocean, and I sense her certainty. And I also know how much she loves her sister, loved her mother, how hard it must have been for her to disagree with them. 

I exhale deeply and it’s as though I’ve been holding my breath for hours. I apologize again for the late call, and she waves it off. “It’s okay, you were worried. And it’s not like I have to go to work in the morning. I’m a retiree, remember?” She screws up her face, attempting to be goofy. 

After we log off, I close Fatema’s message, send it to my deleted items mailbox. It’s all too much. The sadness of others is seeping into my skin. I’ve been perseverating on something that isn’t mine.

This selection comes from Seven, available from The Dundrun Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Releasing in Canada and the US this September, Seven is Farzana Doctor’s fourth and most ambitious novel to date. The novel sensitively addresses women’s relationships, sexuality, infidelity, intergenerational violence, religion and healing sexual trauma within the context of the insular Dawoodi Bohra (sub-sect of Shia Islam) community. Seven is also the first novel of its kind to address female genital cutting in the Bohra community. 
Seven is “invaluable” (Booklist) and “an intimate, gutsy feminist novel” (Foreword Reviews) that bravely tackles a difficult issue, one that is too rarely considered but is close to Farzana’s heart as she actively campaigns against FGM in her own community. Twitter: @farzanadoctor

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Seven by Farzana Doctor

After ten minutes of teeth-brushing, flossing, and changing into my least boring nightie — the black cotton knee-length with the lace neckline, definitely not bought at Forever 21 — we are in bed. 

“How are you?” he asks, his usual way of starting. 

“Fine.” I smile nervously, wondering if I am the least bit alluring. After nine years of marriage, I still don’t have any moves. What if I were to say, “I’m on fire for you!” or the opposite: “I have a headache”? 

He kisses me, the peppermint on his breath reminding me that our dentist appointments are next week. 

His hands rove over my back and then under my nightdress. I copy his movements, feeling for the waistband of his boxers and the fine hairs on his slim buttocks. He rolls on top of me, sucks each of my breasts, always the left, next the right. I like it when he does that, and I breathe deeply, getting caught up in the moment. His mouth travels over my belly and lingers a few moments lower down. I think about the bottle of lube I recently bought and that I haven’t yet overcome my shyness to tell Murtuza about. 

“Ready?” he asks, cupping my right breast. 

“Okay,” I reply. 

I try to relax. My friend Anita showed me her copy of a selfhelp book called Mating in Captivity, and I imagine that Murtuza and I are a pair of orangutans at the zoo. Then I feel weird for getting aroused by imagining we are orangutans at the zoo. 

After a few minutes, Murtuza grunts and rolls off me, panting. 

“Want to try the toy?” He purchased the vibrator years ago. He’d read an article about how, after having a baby, it was good to spice things up in the bedroom. We’ve tried it a few times, and while the sensation is pleasant, it is uncomfortable to have Murtuza apply the device to my vulva and wait expectantly for me to climax. 

“No, I’m satisfied. That was good, Murti.” I peck him on the cheek and get up to use the bathroom. When I return to bed, he lifts the covers and wraps his arms around me. 

Early on, when Murtuza sporadically asked about my lack of orgasms, I reassured him that it was because we were still new. Then I said it was because I was pregnant, and then because I was a sleep-deprived new parent. And then he went out and brought home the vibrator and I finally admitted that I’d never had an orgasm, ever, not with anyone. This revelation soothed him somewhat, the problem clearly not about him but me. He’s never said so, but I suspect that he’s had much wilder sex with all the women he was with before me. 

In my twenties, I read books about it. Attempted various positions. Insisted on oral sex. Spent a hundred dollars on toys. Now, I find it easier to accept things as they are, rather than perseverating on an unfixable problem. I can enjoy sex for what it is instead of looking for what’s missing. 

After my confession, he encouraged me to try again. “You’re in your thirties now. Maybe it’ll be different.” Over the next couple of years I went along with his experiments: new books, new positions, new toys. I held a thin, golden thread of hope that maybe he was right and things could change. 

Each effort was embarrassing, and the more we tried, the less I enjoyed myself, my bits the subject of his prodding and probing. “Look, I like it best when we do the regular stuff,” I insisted. 

And so here we are, post-coitus, sleepy. The sex was fine, and he is always considerate to check if I want more, and I always say no, happy enough to curl up with him afterward. I sniff his sweat, a mix of his deodorant and something else warm and musky, and fall asleep.

This selection comes from Seven, available from The Dundrun Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Releasing in Canada and the US this September, Seven is Farzana Doctor’s fourth and most ambitious novel to date. The novel sensitively addresses women’s relationships, sexuality, infidelity, intergenerational violence, religion and healing sexual trauma within the context of the insular Dawoodi Bohra (sub-sect of Shia Islam) community. Seven is also the first novel of its kind to address female genital cutting in the Bohra community. 
Seven is “invaluable” (Booklist) and “an intimate, gutsy feminist novel” (Foreword Reviews) that bravely tackles a difficult issue, one that is too rarely considered but is close to Farzana’s heart as she actively campaigns against FGM in her own community. Twitter: @farzanadoctor

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Wanting Radiance by Karen Salyer McElmurray

Russell Wallen, I will be nothing but a ghost come tomorrow, but once   I knew things. Knew that cancer in my mother’s breast was a sign of heaven. Knew my daddy was a man of songs who somehow forgot the name for love until it was too late. 

I knew you, Russell, right away. Knew what you had to give and what you did not. You believed love was glory and owning. And I knew this, too. A heart gone to nothing, one gone sad and sour and empty, is worse than owning nothing at all. And still I went there. 

Ruby Loving, if you’re a fortune teller, you once said. Tell your own life for awhile instead of mine. You said that to me, Russell Wallen, and I say this. 

Once I believed in cards and crystals. Believed in lifelines and morning’s red skies. I believed in prophecy straight from the spirit. But I gave my life away a long time ago. I’ve given myself away, again and again, some of that self to you. How I have waited for you, Russell Wallen. Waited and waited to be loved, like loving will be a final thing to reach, a holy truth between you and me rather than between me and any God at all. 

Every night, like I still believe in it, I open the windows and turn the fan down low. I circle my eyes with kohl and pour a second glass of red wine. I drape scarves over the lamps and set the record playing again. Love me in the morning, love me at night. Love me, Radiance, honey, till long past midnight. And Miracelle says, When will they come? She means the men with their hungry faces. She means the women come to have their palms read. Here, I tell them as I put a tiny bottle in their hands. Put two drops on the center of your tongue, I say. Wait. 

Today, I tell myself, will be different. It is you I will cast out, oh lover of mine. It is you I will discover, my own dark heart, the same song. Love me, love me. My heart is not my own. It is small as a bird’s. Hard as a pebble in the mouth of the dead. 

This is the thing, Russell Wallen. 

I have loved you and that love has eaten me alive. 

Today all day, Russell Wallen, I’ve written it down. Our futures, yours and mine. 

I’ve known all along how I’ll be sitting here in the kitchen shuffling my cards and hoping it’s you when some truck slides to a stop in the gravel out by the highway. I’ve drawn a card, one to hand you right when you walk in the door. The Lovers, or the Fool. Miracelle’s radio music ripples the window screen, rock ’n’ roll drowning out that song I’ve played all the livelong day. Love me, Radiance, honey. 

I know how boots will thud up our back steps and the trailer door creak open. Tonight there will be thunder and shots from a sweet little gun, one and two and three. I will lie in my daughter’s arms as I die. This I know. 

Like this, Russell Wallen, I have sat all afternoon writing my own death down. 

But that won’t be the end of it. The end of the story is out there, ahead of us both. 

All afternoon Ruby Loving, Fortune Teller, has been writing down her own future, and here is yours, too. You with snow dancing outside your truck windows. By then I will have been dead for years and you will be thinking of wind in the skeletons of trees. 

You will be thinking of houses and rooms and the women you have loved. 

Women like me who smelled of wine and sweetness. Ones who knew what holding means and when to let you be. One, oh, she had hair the color of corn silk. Another who tasted moist as rain. How you drank and the world got less pretty, when you liked to think beauty was true as it got. You, drinking and hearing my voice drifting over the ice-cold world. 

Someday, you will light the last cigarette you’ll ever have and pitch the lit match out the window into the snow. How you will wish it were easy to say who you have always been, you and your preacher daddy. You with a mother who loved you once or twice and then not at all. You will want nothing at all the last night of your life and you will want everything. 

You will be alone in your truck thinking how what you want this last time is aces. Thinking you want a penknife with a little diamond on the handle. Thinking maybe you want a prayer or another bottle of whiskey, but all you have is the memory of a song. Hold me, Radiance, honey. Hold me all night long. You will be sitting alone in the dead cold of winter, remembering the night I died and how you wanted never to think of me again. 

The truth is you hated me and you loved me. You left me and you came back to me. You have said it, over and over. You want me, woman? This is what you get. This is what love is in the end and nothing, nothing more. 

The truth is my own future and yours have been inside me all along like my own mama once carried a cancer in her breast. 

The last night of your own life, Russell Wallen, the only truth that will count is a heater running to keep you warm. A snow-white world and the ghost arms of memory reaching out for a man who could never love. You. A blank slate. 

Hurt will be fire and it will burn up inside you. Loneliness, dry as kindling. Dry as paper where are written words you will try to read one more time. These pages, these words, written ahead of time. 

You will think of all you could have had. Della. Me. And her. Your daughter. 

By then you will have known her for weeks and weeks. You’ll have driven her down back roads, shown her a fine old time, shown her little parts of yourself, but never the part, never the one part she wants the most. You. Who you really are. 

The truth is this, Russell Wallen. You’ll lie down in the cold and dark, lie down alone, lie down thinking it’s never too late to tell her the truth. Here I am, Miracelle Loving. For better or worse, I’ve been your daddy all along. We’ll be father and daughter, happy as clams. 

But it will be too late. 

Right over there, the lights of the Black Cat are shining lavender, your last known radiance. The heater hums a song to lull you. The night tastes like soot, sounds like the last hush of snow. 

Are women always ghosts? Our bodies empty after we send our hearts out again and again, hearts made of waiting for love. I’ve held on to love, water draining between my fingers. Wanted you to fill me up like light from fireflies in a jar. Ruby Loving, Fortune Teller, dreaming how she wants you beyond death, us meeting each other’s eyes, hungry to see each other, seeing each other like it is for the last time. 

Ice will cover a windshield. Snow will fall and fall.

This selection comes from Wanting Radiance, available from The University Press of Kentucky. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Karen Salyer McElmurray won an AWP Award for creative nonfiction for her
book Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey and the Orison Award for
creative nonfiction for her essay “Blue Glass.” She has had other essays recognized
as “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays, while her essay “Speaking Freely”
was nominated for a Pushcart Award. She currently teaches at Gettysburg
College and at West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA.

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Wanting Radiance by Karen Salyer McElmurray

We slowed down at a field and bumped along over its ruts amid all the cars. “Where are we going, Russell?” I asked about a dozen times as we got out of the truck and stumbled across the frozen earth, but he didn’t answer all the way until we were at the steps of a wooden building with a cross lit up by a moon that had begun to shine. In a big room people were kneeling, about a million of them. Heads bowed and praying, all of them at once and all of them aloud, a mighty but soft collision of voices whispering and waving of hands and fingers pointing toward heaven. I wished for Sunday-go-to meeting shoes at least as we took a pew in the back. Good pine, like the walls and the far-up-there pulpit with a piano and seats for a choir and red silk roses in abundance. 

I mouthed a question at Russell. “What place is this?” 

Beads of sweat clung to his upper lip. “Something about belief, I reckon.” 

Bare bulbs hung from the ceiling and candles were lit on every window ledge below the faces of Jesus and Mary. And the whispered words—“deliver . . . forgive . . . grievous sin”—were like tiny white doves, hundreds of words circling and tickling one another, vying for space in the dim church light. All over the place hands waved, and then there was shouting. “Jesus! Jesus!” 

At the keyboard was a young man with a Nehru jacket and pomaded hair who was doing a light riff. A spotlight shone down on a dozen other young people, their choir robes a motley mix of blue and green and purple. Moses parting a human sea was a preacher like no one I’d ever seen except on the backs of romance novels. She had bleach-blond hair teased into a beehive, and she held her hands out as mouths moved in song. “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r.” She spun, hands guiding this song from its makers, left, right, higher in the back, please. A highheeled foot turned and she held her arms out to us. “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r in the precious blood of the Lamb.” 

Her sparkly skirt and sequined jacket set the pulpit afire. Whispered words circled into the hymn. “Pow’r. Pow’r.” 

Russell was staring at the pulpit, his eyes wide. “

We want to be here?” I said, but the main event was starting and a woman in front of me turned and made a shushing gesture. 

“Blessed children, I bring you joy.” The preacher’s hand waved at us, a kind of parade wave from the back of a float. “Blessed ones, all of you.” 

Need floated over the crowd, deciding where it would land. It snuggled up at my side like a little cat. “Listen,” the preacher-woman said. The sermon commenced. 

“Ruth was a traveler. Naomi said, ‘Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me?’ And Orpah, she turned back on the road and left them there, children. Left Naomi and Ruth, but Ruth was the one who wasn’t a bit afraid. She planted her feet in the dust and went out into a strange land to find her truth. And she, my children, she was only one of those who were not afraid.” 

The preacher did a little rat-a-tat-tat with her silver pumps. She paced. 

“And I’ll tell you, Ruth wasn’t the only one who was a traveler. Not the only woman who went forth. There were women who took to the streets,” she said. “Women who traveled to foreign countries. Women who had no families but made them. Women who stood up or sat down, who planted their feet, made themselves heard. Esther, taken to the king’s palace and made part of a harem but become queen over Vashti and become the king’s savior. 

“Oh, my sweet ones,” she said, and she pranced and turned and raised her ringed hands to us. “Even them, the women of no names. Even them, the women who are lost and countryless. Even them. 

“Abishag, who kept King David warm in the night and became the voice of songs. Hagar, who fled into the desert but gave an old man a firstborn son named Ishmael. Zipporah, who followed Moses on the road back to Egypt and said unto him, ‘You are a husband of blood.’” 

The names of women who had traveled wound their way down my throat, settled in my gut. She was looking at me, this preacher-woman, her sparkles, her rings and her mascaraed eyes. 

“I call upon you,” she said. “Jesus himself calls upon you, my dear hearts.” 

She’d picked me out of all of them in these pews. She pointed no finger, said no name that was mine, but she knew me. My belly felt it and my bones did. I tucked my head, stared at my lap. 

“Come forward and receive the gift of healing, all ye who hear the words of Christ Jesus. Come.” 

The whispers crescendoed and hymn words joined in. The crowd was a tight fist of excitement and fear and wondering. My feet itched, urging me up, but I held on tight to the edge of the pew. 

“Look.” Russell laid his hand on my arm. 

A girl. Longish hair of no color in the beam of light and the candles. Head held down to her chest, a baggy dress long enough to reach her ankles. 

“Welcome, dear heart.” The preacher touched the girl’s shoulder. “Welcome.” 

The girl was one of those Willy’s Wonderama faces. Eyes and mouth like a tangle in a jar of formaldehyde, a face wanting out. A melted face. A face like wax dripping down lit candles. A wrinkled flow-down of a face. Face made of waves and rivulets of skin that flowed down, a river of face. 

“Pray, brothers,” the preacher-woman said, her voice rising. “Pray,” she said, and her words touched us all like a sweet balm that stung and woke us too. 

“Love?” she asked, and we answered her, like we knew, “Amen!” 

“Love?” she said. “You think you know the question and the answer, children? You think you know the why and the wherefore. You think love is easy as a brand-new car. Easy as a check, first of the month. You think love is a person, a place. You think love is a fifteen-ninety-nine jacket you dress up. You think love is that sweetheart on your arm of a Saturday night. You think love comes to you for free, and I’m here to tell you the truth of it, the truth and the light.” 

“Amen!” we said. 

Prayers and words rose as we looked at the girl’s face with the light shining down on it, a face naked and so true it hurt to look at her. Wax and hurt flesh and behind it a brightness she’d swallowed, the light of her own suffering, the roads she’d been down. Roads past houses with their shut doors and their secrets. Back-of-a-hand roads. Kick-you-out-and-don’tcome-back roads, roads away from here and toward there. Houses that would never be her own, arms that had not held her at night. 

“I’m here to tell you the truth, children,” the preacher said. “To tell you about love.” 

“Amen!” we said. 

“Love is a ghost that settles inside us. A ghost made of blue fire. The light of apple wood burning. A holy spirit made of our own selves. Call it in, brothers!” she said. “Call it to you, sisters! Oh,” she said, “bathe yourselves in it. Drink it deep, children. The spirit of love.” 

“Amen!” 

“Oh, the sweetness of it. Love, oh, it blossoms in the heart of winter. Breath as warm as your own heart’s blood. Oh, and the sweetness of summer. Love like cool waters of everything. Love will comfort you, fill you, bless you, make you tremble. Love, oh my sweet lambs. Love is a ghost of all things we have feared and left behind. All things we have cast aside and could not bear.” 

“Amen!” 

“Raise it up inside you, sisters! Raise it up inside you, brothers! Love is what we most want and what we most cast out. Oh, love. Listen! Sisters, pray. Pray for the grace of precious Jesus to fall upon us. Upon this one who needs you most.” 

Around me people stood, shouted. 

“Yes, brothers! Yes, sisters!”

The hurt-faced girl in her big, baggy dress was dancing. I could feel her feet like they were my own, her pointy-toed boots scuffing rhythms on the platform where the shiny preacher took her hand. I could see her eyes now. Oh, her eyes. They were the wanting in that face melted down to its own pain. Oh, love me, her eyes said, and I wanted to cry as I looked at her, but instead I looked at my own hands, my own lap. 

“Sing praises, brothers and sisters,” the preacher said. Full-throated and off-key, she raised her hands, leading all our voices on. 

Russell shifted his leg against mine, like we could keep each other safe from this thing called healing. 

And then the girl sang, a sweetness you could taste. Her voice tugged at our coats, begged us to listen. 

The preacher lifted her hands, her nails a shiny red. “Heal her, heal her,” the preacher said. “Listen.” 

More dove-whispers from those kneeling prayers. Words farther down, inside me, underneath us. Far down in the church floor, beneath stone and solid ground, down in the earth’s pure heart, a place neither hot nor cold, in which I saw my own self, begging for mercy. 

What power lies in hands folded in prayer? Russell’s hands gripping a spoon and stirring soup. Cody’s hands, stroking the long stretch of my arm and down. And Della too. Oil-black nails and strong. Her too. Ruby. Her nails painted red. And another hand, one I didn’t know. That girl’s up there? Not hers, but a vision-hand in my mind and a palm I studied behind my closed eyes. What future had I made? A lie-future, a made-up road ahead.

This selection comes from Wanting Radiance, available from The University Press of Kentucky. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Karen Salyer McElmurray won an AWP Award for creative nonfiction for her
book Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey and the Orison Award for
creative nonfiction for her essay “Blue Glass.” She has had other essays recognized
as “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays, while her essay “Speaking Freely”
was nominated for a Pushcart Award. She currently teaches at Gettysburg
College and at West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA.

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Wanting Radiance by Karen Salyer McElmurray

He told me stories of his daughter. When she was a girl she’d sit with him while he fiddled tunes, and she’d make him stop to listen to the call of owls. 

“Ruby loved this one hymn more’n anything.” He hummed a line of a song about traveling and a world of sorrow. 

All the evening before, we’d danced around her name. He’d not looked at me when I tried to tell him about things she’d loved. The sound of wind chimes. Music off a radio she’d dance with me to, around and around. I meant to tell him about how we’d been happy enough, but neither of us seemed to know which words to pick for telling about before. 

We were sitting now at a table piled with tools and plates and bottles, and I went to the window again, pulled the blanket back. The outside was brighter, a shape of sun from behind the rainy sky. 

“I need to tell you about that night,” I said. 

“What night?” He was a few steps behind me. 

How I held her as she died, I thought. 

“What night,” he said again. He laid his hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged him off like it hurt. 

“She was shot,” I said at last, and I told him what I knew. The sound of boots on the back steps. The way I’d run inside to her. 

“And she passed like that?” His voice was so old-man sad I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know how, and I suddenly felt as angry with him as I was with my own self. We stood at the window watching dusk settle, with the clutter of everything behind us. The shape of boxes. A dime-store picture of Jesus on a wall. 

He scuffed his boot toe in the dirt and told me it wasn’t safe to be out here by myself of a night. Who knew what might come out the woods, he said, but I told him I wanted to be here on my own, with the ghosts of what was. He’d be back for me by good daylight, he said at last. And there was another kerosene lamp he found for me, and the two flashlights he handed me before he drove away. 

I stood looking at gashes and ruts, rocks and spots where boulders lodged. And in between those places, if I narrowed my eyes, I saw lines of earth like lines on a palm. My heart reached out for that earth-hand like I could study the past. Swirls and twists of roots, and fissures where nothing had grown back. Desolation, but the earth told lives. Faces took shape in the shadows dirt made. That face might have been the grandmother I’d never known. And over there. That flat stretch of stones. The tree or two left standing. The land looked like faces if I squinted my eyes just right. Leroy Loving’s. My mother’s face. Ruby. Her name lodged in my throat. 

I had no idea what I’d find, but I looked for it. I opened kitchen drawers, pried a warm beer loose from a plastic-ringed six pack on the fridge’s top shelf, sipped. I poked into cabinets and shelves, then nooks and crannies, finally the hideaway spaces beneath a bed, behind a broke-spring couch. I found papers galore, old warranties on radios and hair dryers, postcards with scrawled signatures. Having a good old time here, sugar pie! Whooeee!! There were ripped-out pages from magazines. Carole Lombard. Elizabeth Taylor and one of her million lover boys. Fifties movie stars with open-toed shoes and nets drawn across their smooth-bunned hair. Way back on top of the stove, folded into the shape of a sailor’s hat, were pages from a magazine. A ripped-out page was part of a story that I read as I sat on the floor with a flashlight. We wandered through streets and streets, past houses that smelled crisply of ginger. We turned and turned, through so many alleyways I could never have found my way home. And at last she led me through a doorway made of amber-colored beads. 

I opened cardboard boxes. Rooted through piles of this and that. I even bowed open the jackets of record albums I found leaning against one wall. Frank Sinatra and Some Enchanted Evening. Guy Lombardo and Sounds of the Big Bands. What I wanted but couldn’t find were pictures of her. Ones back in the day, before I was born. 

I dug through a tool kit from underneath the kitchen sink. Found baby-food jars full of rusty screws and nails. Coffee tins full of snips of wire. A small metal box full of bullets, three of which I pocketed, just in case. I found an old fiddle case full of empty motel-room-size whiskey bottles underneath a wild-animal-smelling mattress and bed frame in the back room. In that same room was a closet, its sliding door off its track so that I had to finagle until the door tilted out and I could yank it aside. The closet was near empty but for a mouse trap baited with a dried-up slice of cheese. I climbed up on a milk crate to have a look on the closet shelf. 

The box was cumbersome, but I lugged it down and sat on the edge of the bed beside it. On top in a scrawl I figured was Leroy Loving’s, two words. Her Things. Her things were tossed in without rhyme or reason. A bunch of beaded bracelets held together with twine. A toy harmonica. A sheet from a diner with the daily specials. Ham and red-eye gravy with green beans. Underneath it all a red velvet box covered in cobwebs. I shook it, hearing what I imagined were dime-store earrings and lipsticks, Ruby-things I knew the way I knew my very own hands. As I eased the lid open, what I saw first were rose petals. Beneath them, a box of tarot cards, a woman in a robe with foxes and gryphons on the front. Beneath the deck, a pair of glossy black-and-white photos. 

A tiny child stood by a tree in some yard. I turned the photo over and back, craving more. I suddenly remembered a mulberry tree. There was the one by the trailer where we’d lived when she was shot, but this one was farther back in my memory than that. Its long, seedy fruits were blackish purple and sweet. Don’t you eat them things, some voice said inside me as I looked at the picture. Mulberries are food for the birds. The voice was older than Ruby’s, my grandmother’s maybe. I remembered hands folding the dough for biscuits, hands holding a just-washed glass up to the clear sunlight from a window. 

The other photograph made my heart do a lurch. It was Ruby, but a Ruby I’d never seen. Instead of my fortune-telling mother, this was nothing but a girl, her black hair combed and a flip of bangs across a forehead.

Underneath the photos, a paper tablet with a cover made of thin planes of wood decorated with glitter, the shapes of moons and stars and planets, and the cut-out faces of movie stars. Ava Gardner. Marilyn Monroe. A half sheet was glued to the front of the tablet and on it was big, clumsy handwriting. A girl’s script, the near-hearts of o’s and the tails of y’s. Underlines beneath words she’d meant the most. Ruby Loving. Her Property. I remembered what my mother looked like, her jotting down spells and potions in her notebook, but this was a girl’s diary, her dreams. It was full of drawings of cats made of circles and lines, drawings of big, fat moons and in between, her loopy handwriting, telling about her days. 

Near the bottom of the box, beat-up pages from an old atlas. I spread them across my lap and looked at the interstate lines going west, which is where all the map pages led. The empty spaces of New Mexico. The single town leading to single town, and there in the flat nothing of it, my mother’s handwriting. A circle and a heart drawn around the name of that town. Willette. And last of all, a couple of letters tied up with a red ribbon. I sat with the letters and the velvet box in my lap a long while, then unfolded one more thing, a single sheet of notebook paper. Four lines only. Come back to me, she said. My heart has gone out and is wandering the earth in search of you. Were you ever here, Russell Wallen? Were you some ghost-man I wanted to be real? My fingertip circled the loops and lines of the name, the shadowy red lipstick kiss. His name.

This selection comes from Wanting Radiance, available from The University Press of Kentucky. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Gokul Prabhu.

Karen Salyer McElmurray won an AWP Award for creative nonfiction for her
book Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey and the Orison Award for
creative nonfiction for her essay “Blue Glass.” She has had other essays recognized
as “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays, while her essay “Speaking Freely”
was nominated for a Pushcart Award. She currently teaches at Gettysburg
College and at West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA.

Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a Postgraduate Diploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.