California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Pearson, Marlene

Twenty yea rs afte r 
Marlen e Pearson 
the bal l  where she won the prince' s  heart, 
her feet sti l l  smal l  as a ch ina do l l's ,  
th ings were no longer a chi ldren' s tale 
with pu mpkin coach and miracu lous 
m ice transformed to wh ite mares. 
Twenty years after, she walked the shadowed ha l ls  
s ipping white wine 
wh i l e  the pri nce-that eternal romantic, that spo i led son, 
ran back to daddy's p lace at the palace 
carrying h i s  catalog ue, begg ing daddy 
to order h i m  another g lass s l i pper. 
Surely it wou ld bri ng h i m  a new love ly young lady, 
one without saggy breats, as Ci ndy had once been. 
B ut Ci ndere l la  had g rown up in ashes 
and knew love's burn, 
how d reams shatter l i ke dropped crystal. 
Even fairy godmother had d ied years ago. 
And thoug h  s he sweep and clean 
and s ing l i ke a swa l low, 
o ld pri nce charming wou ld  not be wise as myth. 
He was not content with her pure heart 
and mortal love. H e  was no wizard. 
He could not wipe the craw's feet from h i s  own eyes 
and h is  feet ached after a day at the courtyard. 
Yet he cl utched h is  dreams 
l ike the dr ink she poured h i m  when he came home, 
gu lping it down. 
He wou ld  have 3 or 4 more before he could face s leep. 
She knew he had no more power than a mouse. 
He was on ly a m idd le-aged man. 
36 


English

Twenty years after

Weston, Joi

Woman i n  Amer ica 
Being a woman in America means 
not being able to joke with 
the guy in the l iquor store 
}oi Weston 
when you're buying your tampons, or dr.  pepper, or cat food 
because he might follow you home. 
At best it's j ust the menacing beam of headlights behind your  car, 
turning when you turn 
pausing at your house 
and then the loud suggestion out the car window 
which you ignore as you plan the best route from car to house door. 
At worst he rapes you 
(or, I suppose, at worst he rapes you then murders you, 
but let's not even think of that) 
while you kick and scream and shout and struggle 
(because you're a wel l-read feminist who subscribes to Signs 
and you've read Pau line Bart -
but this time it doesn't work). 
And when he comes up for trial • 
(since, good victim that you are, you memorized 
his face, his car 
and left deep scratches on his back) 
he' l l  plead you wanted it. 
Because, 
after a l l ,  
you smiled when he laughed at  you r  joke .  
32 


Woman in America

Johnson, Jodi

Feed i ng The An i ma l s  
i .  
Every n ight Gene fi l l s  t h e  h u m m ingbird feeder 
with red sugar-water. 
During the day the b i rds  hover 
s ipping with long tongues l i ke straws. 
Jodi johnson 
Sun  flashes blue and green beads at the i r  th roats. 
When one flew through an open window, 
I trapped it  against the skyl ight; i t  barely fi l led my hand. 
Outside, i t  burst away on wi ngs sheer 
and th in as a dragonfly's. 
In  early spring, other birds, bright yellow, 
that I don't know by name, feed there too. 
They c l ing to the narrow glass tube, bend over 
and dr ink near thei r  feet. When they fly off 
the feeder swings crazi ly;  the h u m m i ngbi rds 
bob with i t  l i ke pendulums.  
The bigger b i rds scare them away; 
they poke in the spi nes of the bottle brush .  
Dur ing the wi nter the h u m m ingbirds al most d i sappear; 
they are gone so soon 
we th ink perhaps we i magined them. 
i i .  
M y  grandmother wou ld take m y  s isters and me 
to San J uan Capistrano, where we fed doves 
at the m ission. We bought seeds from a machine 
with n ickels she gave us and birds 
fell over u s  l i ke snow. They sat on shou lders and heads, 
ate from our h ands. My grandmother took pictures of us 
dressed in white doves. When we ran out of seeds, 
they fi l led the a ir  with clapping wi ngs. 
79 
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
Later, at her house on a bluff over San Clemente, 
we watched the tra i n  go by below. From where we stood 
the palm trees swayed on their stems 
l i ke dandel ions.  I f  I l eaned over the edge 
I m ight catch the wind i n  the sai l  of my ribs, 
float down towards the ocean where whitecaps 
tipped the water, a thousand doves. 
i i i .  
I was five the summer m y  father bu i lt the house. 
He took me along to gather scraps of wood 
for the fireplace next wi nter. He gave me an apple at noon; 
I sat in the street, j u i ce runn ing over my c h i n .  
T h e  first bee landed on t h e  apple, b u t  the next ones 
found my face: I cou ld feel them there, 
feathered legs, tongues u ncurl i ng on my sk in .  
When I opened my mouth,  they picked apple from my teeth .  
After we moved in ,  my father wanted to smoke the nest. 
He tucked h i s  overa l l s  i nto tal l boots, h i s  sleeves i nto gloves, 
wrapped a cloth over h i s  head. 
We c losed the windows and watched from i nside. 
Bees rose i n  a cloud when he pushed newspaper i n  the h ive. 
Th in  smoke was stri nging i nto the sky 
as my father began to dance, leaping and jerki ng; 
we waved to h i m  when he waved to us 
and we thought he was celebrating, 
in a halo of bees. 
iv .  
We woke often i n  the morn ing to the cat 
ki l l ing someth ing on the front porch .  
Sometimes we got there to  see her 
crack a sku l l  under her teeth, sometimes 
i t  was sti l l  a l ive. Once it was a young rabbit, 
one eye torn out, and we raised it in a wire cage, 
taught it to wal k  on a leash . Sti l l ,  to catch it, 
we had to sneak up on its b l ind s ide, 
I ift it by the back of the neck, 
its legs raking the air .  
80 
johnson/Feeding the Animals 
One summer we had a gopher named Lucky.  
He rol led i n  h i s  c lear plastic hampster bal l 
i n  the l iv i ngroom, bounced off table-legs, 
got stuck u nder the couch . He ate sunflower seeds 
from my finger. After he bit  Lisa's thumb, 
we q uarantined h i m  for rabies. 
My father let h i m  go and sti l l  put bait on the lawn. 
I avoided the cones of d i rt. 
He also paid us a penny apiece for snai ls;  
we h u nted them in the dust-sme l l i ng ivy.  
I watched as he poured salt in the bag 
and shook them l i ke popcorn . 
Later I m issed the si lver threads 
weaving the leaves together. 
v. 
On our way to june Lake, we stop at the hatchery 
to see the long wh ite sheds with trays of eggs, 
then trays of transparent new fish .  
We wal k  u p  the  rows and the  fish get bigger; 
they l i e  on the clean fiberglass and grow. 
Their fi ns wave in and out. 
When they are big enough, they go outside into a pond 
that is paved with the i r  dark backs. 
Twice a day, when the feed trucks come through 
blowing fish pel lets over the water, they rise, 
and the pool swel ls  with them, 
the water l i fts i n  ropes. 
We get up before dawn the next morn ing 
and walk to the mari na. The lake smel ls of  gaso l ine and moss 
where it cups the unders ide of the dock. 
We start the engine. My father lets me steer 
and we head for the south shore, near a spri ng, 
where we cut the motor, dropping our anchor 
fifty feet out and sl i ghtly down-wind of the dead pine.  
We don't everi bait  the hooks. They throw off gold sparks 
fal l i ng through the column of shadow u nder the boat. 
Then I pu l l  up a fish, twist the hook from its th roat, 
thread a l i ne through its mouth and g i l l s .  
81 
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
I drop the bare hook aga in .  In an hour 
we have twenty trout and go home. 
Back at the cabin,  before we clean them, 
my father wants a picture. I grasp both ends of the string 
in  my eight-year-old hands. Some of the fish 
are sti l l  flapping. Their tai ls sh ine in  the sun .  
They throw their scales l i ke coins at  my feet, l i ke eyes 
that wink in the grass, watch ing me. 
Smi le, my father says, so I do.  
vi .  
The dog al most d ied tonight, eati ng poison 
I put out for the rats. They had a nest 
under the washing mach ine; one ran over my shoe 
as I was folding c lothes. I wou ld lie awake 
waiting for the trap to go, sometimes twice a n ight 
with peanut butter and walnuts. 
The dog ki l led one in  the kitchen, another 
drowned in  the toilet. Then the cat arrived 
and slept all day on the coffee table and the rats 
stayed out. Now, at two in the morn ing, 
the dog is suddenly straight, her u ncut Doberman's tai l  
a stiff column o f  bone, her head 
arching backwards almost to her spine. 
Her eyes stay open.  She doesn't breathe. 
Al l  the way to the vet's, I knead her sides, 
pushing the air i n .  For the first t ime 
I hear the ticking of my heart, feel my blood 
eat the oxygen out of my l ungs. 
v i i .  
Friday evening I drive across the canyon 
to feed the horses. Their chewi ng pu lses in  the dusk.  
The Arab looks ready to foa l .  Once, a mare surprised me, 
dropping a fi l ly two weeks early in  the rai n .  
I came over i n  the morn ing t o  find i t  
in  the gelding's corral; i t  had s l ipped through the fence. 
The fi l ly  wou ldn't nurse, so I m i l ked the mare 
and fed it  through a turkey baster. When it  sucked my fi ngers 
I gu ided it under its mother. Sti l l ,  I sometimes saw it  
nuzz l ing the flanks of other horses in  the field 
wh i le the mare grazed stead i ly  in a far corner. 
82 
Johnson/Feeding the Animals 
I come home smel l ing  of alfalfa and oats. 
The cat threads through my legs. The dog 
puts its front feet on the wi ndow and looks i n .  
Gene i s  asleep when I g o  t o  bed . 
I fit into the rhythm of h is breath ing. Outside 
the dog barks at coyotes as they drift by. 
In  the morn ing I wi l l  see their d roppings on the driveway, 
fu l l  of manzanita seeds and grass. 
Gene brushes h is hand sleepi ly over my arm. 
The blood i s  puddled and warm i n  his f ingers 
and I th ink  at any moment it could leak through h i s  skin,  
in  the gaps between molecules. 
I wonder what it is that holds our cel l s  together, 
so we don't d issolve 
or absorb thi ngs that we touch, each other; 
I feel my own body porous, d i ffuse, 
atoms orbiting out of me to feed the air .  
83 


Feeding the Animals

Williams, Kathleen

kathleen williams 
Scattered on an urgent wind 
A host of seeds 
Falls randomly 
Outside the cherished rows. 
Some find sweet sanctuary 
In the earth 
And with Demeter's breath become 
Striving progeny 
So tiny 
A thousand 
Cling to the heavy hoe 
That gouges them from the soil. 
1 2  
Wild Oats 


Wild Oats

Coleman, Bobbie R.

Bobbie R. Coleman 
Now Playing At Your Local Theatre 
Back off, man, here's 
a different set of jaws 
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water 
he's back! 
This tim e - he wins! 
Women cry for it; men die for it 
In  space, no one can hear you scream. 
No guy ever had so much fun 
coming to Earth 
The Eighth Wonder of the World! 
King of the Monsters! 
based on the best-sell ing novel 
from the King of Suspense 
there's a little bit of him in al l  of us. 
No one will be seated after the first 20 minutes 
It'll go straight to your heart 
what actually happens! 
They're back 
together again at last! 
she mates and she kills. 
They'll get you in the end. 
Love means never having to say you're sorry. 
37 


Now Playing At Your Local Theatre

Williams, Deborah

Deborah Williams 
The Pink Book 
" Fuel< you, who needs you," 
your 1 6  year old daughter has just said, 
stomping out the door, 
her arm curled over the bent elbow 
of her new best friend and confidante. 
When nobody's home, silence, 
you tip-toe into your room 
push aside the other half of the closet door, 
the half that rarely gets opened1 
and stretch your arms as far as they can reach 
fingering a pink cellophane-wrapped scrapbook. 
Your fingertips work to grasp a corner, 
you pull the crackling dusty plastic towards you, 
the brown dust leaves a mark on your white tee-shirt 
just over your right bosom. 
You cradle the book 
while you sit at the foot of your bed 
gently opening the pink crackling cover 
and press your right cheek 
against the cool cellophane adhesive 
that seals your 1 6  year old's baby pictures 
to the sticky paper 
and you hug the pink book 
until your arms hurt. 
72 


The Pink Book

Jones, Jordan

Jordan Jones 
Autopsy, or  Th e Wages of  Sin 
1 : Failed Love 
With its swift wi n gs, its ve n o m o u s  ta lons  
ecstasy is  can n i bal  and f igme nt. 
As you atte n d  the viewi n g, 
s ign the guestbook, d o  you won d e r  when 
th i s  body' s s low descent bega n ?  
2 :  Vocation 
Are we b io logists? Are we coron e rs?  
Do we i n s pect the bowe l s  for  causes? 
Are we o rac les?  Are we carrion - b i rd s ?  
3 :  Coroners 
S l i ce the l eathe ry s ki n :  
a n  evi l gas escapes. 
Th i s  te rrai n ,  h i d  
ben eath t h e  e p i de rmal  s h eath 
was not m eant to be reveal e d :  
t h e  p l u m bi n g  is  v i l e  a n d  d istan t, 
I do n ot know these contou rs. 
4: Carrion-birds 
A b u zzard's grey feathers 
turn b rown with caked b l ood. 
H i s  dark, n atu ral  v is ion m akes u s  i l l :  
a l l  n ight l o n g  m ac h i n e ry wh i rs 
i n  the factory. H e  has patie n ce. 
He has faith in what we m ost fear. 
H e  does n ot care for causes, o n l y  
fe e l s  the s low th ri l l  i n  h i s  vei n s  
wh e n  t h e re' s reason t o  sto p the c i rc l i n g. 
What i s  h i story to h i m ?  
9 3  
N o rthr i dge R eview 
5 :  Film noir 
What d o  I search for 
i n  the fo rest of a corpse? 
Do I s u s pe ct a res u rrectio n ?  
I at l east expect c l ues 
to the m u rd e re r  of love. 
I have posted the reward : 
I myse lf  raise the kn ife. 
94 


Autopsy, or The Wages of Sin

Pronk, Ron

Turtle Parable

McHaddad, Kristina

Kristina McHaddad 
Family 
One night my Aunt Rita set fire to her house. She got out and 
her oldest daughter got out, but her two babies did not. 
The family gathered around, but no one stopped drinking. 
As well as Rita could remember, she had been heating milk in 
a small saucepan on the stove, and she had dropped off to sleep at 
the kitchen table. It was late at night. 
She does not remember having anything to drink that night. 
My mother calls it an unfortunate accident. 
My mother blames Rita's husband Jack for leaving six months 
before the fire. He said that it had become too painful for him to 
watch Rita drink herself to death. So he left. 
That is the closest to love that I have seen between two people. 
My mother looks like Rita. And she drinks the same way; but 
she never did get caught, at least not in the same way as Rita got 
caught. That is the difference between them, that Rita got caught 
and my mother did not. 
My mother would tell me stories of the time when she and Rita 
were little girls, and of Rita's fondness for saying that you can get 
away with anything you can get away with. 
Rita always said that her favorite thing was rain. The answers 
to similar questions would vary if she were asked about her favorite 
FAMILY 87 
color, favorite food, favorite animal. She would often combine the 
answers for that day into a scene and tell us stories of purple and 
yellow fish eating pale vanilla ice cream with bright red berries 
spooned through it, or pomegranates. It was the first game we 
would play whenever we saw her. 
Rita said that rain was the very best thing because you could not 
hold it, and because it happened only when it happened; and 
because of this, she said, you always had to be prepared for it. 
Sometimes I would come across her standing and staring out of the 
kitchen window of her house, watching the gray clouds of the 
winter sky barely moving, waiting. She found something disturb­
ing about artificial heat and air conditioning, and even in the 
wintertime she would leave the windows open to let in the outside 
and the weather. During rainstorms, she still would not close the 
windows; instead, she would move quickly about the house, 
moving things out of the way of the rain pushed by strong winds 
into the building. 
My mother would mumble under her breath about Rita's 
craziness. 
I could not see in Rita the same craziness that my mother saw. 
I saw the difference between them though. I saw Rita living her life 
the way she wanted to live it for that very day. I saw my mother 
holding herself in, keeping everything at a distance, securing her 
own measure of safety; I do not know what frightened her. 
Sometimes, later, when I learned what things couid hurt my 
mother and what things could not, I would cry out in anger that I 
hated her and that I really loved Rita, and that I wished that Rita was 
my mother and not her. 
I was eleven, the same age as Rita's daughter Sarah, the year I 
wanted a fish. My mother said that I could not have a fish, that it 
would die too quickly. The fish was the one thing that I wanted right 
then, like Rita wanted the rain when she knew that it was coming 
and she would say that she could taste it in the air. 
"A fish is not like any other thing," Rita told me. "A fish does 
not come to you; you have to catch it." 
88 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
Rita understood about the fish the same way she understood 
about everything else. And she understood my mother, too. 
Late one night, after the rest of the house was asleep, Rita woke 
both me and Sarah, and hushed us to be quiet, saying that she had 
a surprise for us and for us not to make a sound. 
We dressed quickly and silently, and Rita crept with us out of 
the house and into the black night that was just beginning to chill 
that September. We coasted down the block in Rita's old station 
wagon until the sound of the engine starting could not wake anyone 
into worrying about us. 
Rita drove us through town and toward the industrial areas 
where we did not go often, and certainly where no good mother 
would bring her children at night. 
Rita stopped the car around the comer from an ice packing 
plant. The wall of the building facing the street was high and wide, 
and the blue-green color of the ocean at mid-morning. Rita began 
pulling cans of paint and brushes from beneath a blanket in the back 
of the car. 
We had hardly spoken on the ride across town, both Sarah and 
me being content just to be with Rita, to be on this adventure, and 
being too tired to say much. Rita stopped unloading the painting 
equipment long enough to notice our questioning, sleepy faces. 
"Why, your fish, Maggie. We're going to make your fish right 
here." She picked up a brush and dipped it into bright orange paint. 
"Come on, girls. Help me." 
Together we painted the wall until our comer of it was covered 
with fish and seaweed and air bubbles, wide arcs of bright color: 
orange and green and blue, and all of it defying the blank stare of 
the buildings on the street where it sat. The three of us laughed like 
the children we were in between Rita's threats that we had better 
stay quiet if we didn't want the police to come and arrest us. We 
were splashed with different colors of paint and big smiles. 
When we left that night, Rita's fish, the biggest fish and the one 
around which S arah's and my fish hovered, smiled back at us, 
purple and yellow. 
It was years before I found my way back to that building, years 
before I realized how important that night had been to me. By then 
FAMILY 89 
it had been repainted a terracotta color, and I imagined to myself 
that the fish had stayed for years and that only recently had the 
owners decided to recolor the wall. I still picture it. 
Rita collect¥d colors like other people collected coins or match 
books, and she spread them out around her. 
One Christmas, Rita gave only purple gifts : earrings of silver 
and amethyst crystal, bright purple and black scarves, books with 
purple dust jackets; that year almost all of the food on our table was 
touched by blueberries, tingeing every dish with a bluish purple 
color. 
Most people did not know Rita--thatis to say, they did not know 
what she liked to receive as gifts. Rita did not fault anyone for this. 
How could someone package purple, or rain, or the mountains, she 
rationalized. 
I think it sometimes saddened her that she appeared so differ­
ently outside to other people than she really was, but she never once 
said this. 
She would save those gifts for months after the holidays or a 
birthday, and then she would give them to Sarah and me and sit for 
hours watching us play happily with whatever it might be. 
One winter when I was still quite young, my mother became 
very ill, and Rita spent a lot of time at our house, helping with me 
and with all of the things my mother was not able to do then. One 
day, shopping at the market, following a list prepared by my mother 
which designated not only the items, but also which brands and the 
approximate prices which we should expect to pay for them, my 
aunt was stopped by an older woman carrying a clipboard holding 
many pieces of bright white paper. The woman asked Rita if she 
would take a moment to fill out a questionnaire, for which she 
would receive a free gift. My aunt winked secretly at me as she 
smiled at the woman, as though she and I shared some private 
thought, and said that of course she would. I watched all of the 
bright color and the fast movement of the market as she filled out 
the form. I wished that I had time to run to the car and take Rita's 
camera and catch all of the rushing sound; but we were done 
90 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
shopping and leaving soon. I felt Rita nudge me. She lowered the 
paper to my eyes and pointed to the place where the question was 
typed "occupation" and she had written her response of "violinist 
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra."  She held my hand 
firmly to help me keep from laughing aloud. The woman thanked 
her and gave her a sample package of laundry detergent without 
reading her responses. 
We brought home everything my mother had asked for, but we 
did not say anything about the woman in the store. 
Rita would take pictures of everything. She said that it was 
because she had such a poor memory, that she needed photographs 
to remind her of where she had been and what she had done. 
Rita found it hard to discard anything. She kept drawers of 
string because she liked the lines the string made, some straight, 
some wrinkled from being pulled from the top of a bag-package of 
sugar or cat food. 
At the same time, Rita told me that the only way to avoid loss 
was to regularly discard things. 
For years, she took photographs of things before she gave them 
away. She said that this way she still had the things, but she could 
keep more things this way, and they were easier to store in flat boxes 
underneath her bed. 
Rita rarely sat, as though she was always on the verge of going 
somewhere other than where she was, which was usually the case. 
Afternoons after school, she would feed us different things, bread 
she had made from scratch, heavy and dark, colored with bits of red 
or black berries, orange strings of carrot or green zucchini, seedy 
with dark figs. We would drink nonfat milk from heavy, strangely 
shaped coffee mugs decorated with flowers I could not name in 
dark oranges and purples and blues, made by a woman friend of 
hers, the milk always looking like blue water to me even after I 
learned to like the extra cold thinness of it. 
She would eat standing up against the kitchen counter, asking 
me about my day at school, asking Sarah about a project that was 
due and could we work on it together. I would always feel a little 
FAMILY 91 
strange sitting at the table with my food in front of me, even when 
I held it on my lap rather than setting it on the table, and even though 
Sarah sat at the table with me. I felt awkward and very small. I felt 
like Rita could leave the room or the house too quickly and I would 
not be able to catch her, and this discomforted me. 
One day, my mother caught me standing at the refrigerator, 
eating purple-red grapes from a bowl, one at a time. I was thinking, 
about something. 
"Maggie," she began, "why are you standing there with the 
door open, letting all the cold air out? Why don't you take the bowl 
to the table or take some out of the bowl for yourself? Don't you sit 
down to eat anymore?" 
I was old enough by then to know not to share with her what I 
was beginning to see, that I was taking on more of Rita's way of 
being than my mother would ever want to see. 
I shut the door and left the room, and left her standing there. 
Rita was always making something out of things that no one 
else ever saw anything in. The day the wind knocked a print from 
where it was leaning against a wall in the hallway, Rita picked up 
the broken glass from the floor and piled it on a small table and 
made it seem beautiful to me in its clean clear bright light. 
Rita said that our family was cursed with seeing the possibility 
in everything. 
Well, at least Rita and I were so blessed. 
My mother thought that Rita was crazy for deciding to have a 
baby when she was thirty-seven. That was the year that Sarah and 
I had turned fifteen years. That was the year my mother really 
began to worry about me. 
That was the year I began to worry about myself. I was losing 
touch with my voice; I could not remember whether I had said 
something or whether I had only been thinking it very strongly and 
thought I had said it out loud. 
I was beginning to look more and more like Rita, even more 
than Sarah did. My hair was becoming darker and fuller and longer, 
and even my eyes were darkening. People sometimes mismatched 
92 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
us when the four of us were together, giving Sarah to m y mother and 
pairing me with Rita. Even then, I sometimes still pretended that 
Sarah and I had been misplaced one for the other at our births. 
That was probably the year when I first began to worry about 
Rita, too. All my life I had been told stories about her craziness, but 
I had only seen what I had seen, and I could not see beyond this. 
Now I was noticing her sudden disappearances, the times when 
Sarah would stay at our house for days, sleeping in the twin bed in 
my room, and she would tell me that she did not know where her 
mother was. 
Everything I saw in Rita made me feel less lonely and less 
alone. When I did not see her, I missed her more than the sun. 
My mother thought that Jack was crazy for letting Rita have a 
baby. She said that he could have stopped her. I knew that he could 
not have stopped her. 
The year of the fire, 1 was helping Rita take care of her twin 
boys. �arah was at band practice and the house was empty with just 
us in it. 
Rita reached out for my hand as I was in mid-motion from the 
counter to the kitchen table, preparing dinner for their family. Her 
eyes were steel-gray and dark, and the light from the overhead light 
caught in the lines of her face and made each of the lines deeper and 
older. She was very still. 
"Maggie," she said quietly, "I can't tell any longer whether it's 
all falling into place or if it's crumbling apart. There's such a small 
space between the two." 
I looked back at her with an expression that said that I 
understood what she was saying, and that I understood that there 
was no answer to her words. 
That was the only time between us when I felt that she imagined 
that I was only trying to make her think I was listening to her, that 
I only wanted her to think that I really understood, that somewhere 
along the line I had learned to do that with her. 
I knew there would be no convincing her. I hoped it was just 
FAMILY 93 
that day, the weather, the time of day, that crept between us right 
then. 
That was the first time in my life when I consciously realized 
that I had been younger earlier. 
After the fire, my mother kept me away from Rita, and with 
what she felt was good reason. Sarah was placed by the courts into 
the care of my parents until she was to reach majority. 
There was a period of time when I was able to keep in touch 
with Rita through letters, but she moved more often than I could 
keep up with her, often taking Sarah with her once Sarah was 
released back into her custody. 
The last time I heard from her, she and Sarah were living in 
Texas in a house with many windows and an aquarium. She said 
that she was sure that I would like it there. 
For years, my eyes were drawn toward Texas license plates on 
the cars on the highways. I would speed up alongside the car and 
search for Rita's face through the glass. So many cars from Texas. 
When I was seven, Rita took the glasses from her face and held 
them under the faucet at the kitchen sink. The water ran over the 
lenses and collected in small drops across the glass. 
She put the glasses up to my eyes and had me look through 
them. Rain. 


Family

In “Snippets of Difference,” Melissa Giddings explores identity, class, and belonging as a first-generation university student. Through personal vignettes, she examines how social class and education create “the bubble,” an invisible boundary separating her from peers with greater cultural and economic capital. Each snapshot—from facing application fees to confronting classist attitudes—captures moments of isolation, awareness, and quiet resistance. Giddings challenges the view that higher education equalizes opportunity, exposing how privilege determines comfort within the system. Ultimately, “Snippets of Difference” turns reflection into critique, prompting readers to see how class shapes academic life and self-perception, and underscoring the importance of empathy and recognition in bridging social divides within academic environments

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