Assignment # 3

By
Reiss J. DuPlessis

There once was a city, a wondrous city, a grand dame that was decorated with beautiful mansions, streets lined and arched by magnificent trees of oak and where banquettes
and balconies were shaded by breathtaking magnolia trees, trees that wore enormous white flowers between their lush, green leaves.

There once was a city where women were famous for beauty and grace beyond
compare, whose flashing eyes were the inspiration for song, novels and operas.

There once was a city where a party was a citywide celebration to honor life and to
prepare for the solemnity of the season that followed.

There once was a city where food was a religious experience and God was honored
by its perfection.

There once was a city with a river that was the port of entry for bananas, coffee, spices
and people and, from which our nation’s products where sent to far away places.

There once was a city that gave birth, reared and nurtured musicians, writers and
artisans who were the pride of the land.

There once was a city whose breath, life and soul blended to create the American contribution to the world of music: Jazz.

There once was a city.

By Pat Garrison

Assignment Two
Seventeen
When I look in the mirror, I am always shocked to see my mother looking back at me, although her hair was jet black well into her seventies and bobbed short and my hair is half way down my back, and a grayish-brown color, it’s the same hairline, same cheekbones, and same upper lip. But I’m still seventeen in my mind!
What happened to that seventeen year-old girl with long brown curls and her twenty-two inch waist? What mistakes did she make that brought her to be who she is today?
The first mistake she made was believing that she could do anything she set her mind to, if she only tried hard enough, if only she cared enough. (But I really like that about her and I want to believe that she can still accomplish anything she puts her heart and soul into! Seventeen, right? See, I told you, I AM seventeen in my mind.)
So, within one week of her high school graduation, and two months shy of her eighteenth birthday, she boarded yet another Greyhound bus (What was it with this family and Greyhound buses? Oh yeah, no car) and headed to the State Hospital in Big Springs, Texas.
And did she ask to visit her mother? No…She asked to see her mother’s doctor. And what they talk about? What else? Releasing her mother from the hospital. Did the doctor discourage her? No…Did the doctor tell her what to expect? No…Did the doctor give her a diagnosis? No…Did the doctor ask her mother what she wanted to do? No…Did the doctor make her mother a referral for ongoing outpatient psychiatric care? No…
Did she think to ask her mother if she wanted to leave the hospital and go with her? No…Never mind that she hadn’t seen her mother in over four years, just before her daddy died. Never mind that she had only visited the hospital when her father had been able to afford the trips from El Paso, maybe once a year when she was between the ages of five and thirteen. Never mind that her mother never answered her letters. Never mind the last thirteen long years apart.
That idealistic seventeen-year-old girl wanted to make everything all better for her mother (and recreate her own childhood), so in the time it took to pack a suitcase, pick up a prescription, and hail a cab to the bus station two lives changed forever.
Forty-five years later would that seventeen-year-old girl in me make the same mistake? Well, my hair is not as curly, and the brown is almost gone, the waist is now a belly, but Yes. Even though I know better, that seventeen year-old girl inside my brain, she would probably make the same mistakes I made.

Dave Blodgett - Assignment #1

In the middle of the night I am dreaming. I have to pee. I get up, go to the bathroom, take out my tiny penis and pee. I wake up in a puddle of urine that soaks the sheets of my narrow bed.

I burst into tears. Mother comes running, switches on the light and cradles me in her arms. I feel the warmth and softness of her bosom.

“There, there. Don’t cry. You had an accident.”

She takes the urine soaked, stinky sheets off and tucks me into fresh, clean sheets.

My kid brother, alarmed and rudely awakened is angry. “Davy, did you wet your bed again?” All this ruckus rouses my three older sisters in the adjoining bedroom.

The only person who snores on is Dad. He eschews any responsibility for child rearing or housework of any kind. That’s women’s work.

Primary functional enuresis—bed wetting—is the single most powerful independent variable shaping my lifelong character and behavior, accounts for my extremely low self-esteem, introversion, shyness and self-denigration and cripples me with a multitude of phobias that make life almost unbearable.

I don’t dare speak in public (glossophobia), am terrified when I have to put something in writing (graphophobia), know that I am going to fail however hard I try (atychiphoia), am scared to death of Frankenstein’s Monster (bogyphobia), fear going to bed because of recurring nightmares (clinophobia), am really afraid of my desktop computer (cyberphobia), can’t express my opinions on controversial subjects (doxophobia), am tongue-tied and unable to express myself (laliophobia), fear death (necrophobia) and poverty (peniaphobia) and most of all fear all my phobias (phobophobia).

In the 1920s all kinds of myths were associated with bed-wetting. Guilt feelings prevailed. Bed-wetting was seen as punishment for misbehavior. Today we know better. Post nocturnal enuresis (PNE) is caused by physical and physiologic factors, not stress, poor self-esteem or emotional immaturity.

Today, some medications help overcome PNE—Imipramine and Desmpressin acetate may help. More effective are retention control training where the child is asked to control urination by postponing it to increase bladder capacity and strengthen the muscle that holds the urine back. Night-lifting is effective. Waking the child periodically throughout the night and walking him to the bathroom many times. Moisture alarms can cure PNE. When the child begins to pee, an alarm is set off, wakes the child, sends him to the bathroom and then back to sleep. Finally, hypnosis is being used to re-program the brain so the child will respond to a full bladder while asleep the same as when awake.

Unfortunately, none of these cures were available in the 1920s for poor little me. PNE shattered my dream of becoming a well-integrated, creative person comfortable with himself and phobia free. PNE is a choking albatross I shall carry to my grave.

Diane Marcus

I slowly walked to the front door annoyed by the banging and knocking of some anxious child, not necessarily mine, needing a drink of water or the bathroom, or mothering or most likely wanting to tell me that my son Randy did something. Few of the neighborhood children spoke English but my children were undeterred and understood Italian as though it was their second language. I on the other hand, well what can I say? When I called the gendarme, the policeman a washing machine he was kind enough not to arrest me but instead corrected my language skills, quite often as it turned out.
"Una momento piacere. One minute please. You’re going to break the damn door." I was serious. I wasn’t joking because two months after we moved into this brand new luxury building off the Via Cassia in Rome, Italy, across the Tiber River from the Vatican I leaned on the bathroom sink which disconnected from the wall, breaking pipes and flooding the apartment. Had it happened three weeks earlier it would have made no difference, but our furniture arrived from the states only two weeks before and there were still some cardboard wardrobe closets and boxes as yet unpacked in all the rooms.
Today my frustration mounted because the children were out playing in a very safe area, with several parents standing about talking while their eyes never left the sight of the kids. Ah yes, at last I was going to take advantage of the time to read. Just as I was about to find out something profound and important to the meaning of the words on the pages the tumult began. It’s impossible to have even fifteen minutes of alone time. Is that too much to ask for? My father, an A type personality, would say if you want peace go to a cemetery. Nobody will bother you there.
Looking down, expecting to find someone whose head reached about to my waist I saw a pair of worn out dirty hiking boots. I raised my eyes slowly and cautiously subdued, not sure what to do and decided to follow his legs upward. Clean dungarees, with new darker colored blue patches at the knees his hands in his pockets [I began to feel safer.] He was wearing an alpaca lined jacket that matched the jeans and a blue, yellow and maroon cherkered shirt.
But it was his face that made me put my hand over my mouth and make a soft yelping scream. The smile that I recognized but was out of place here made me think it can’t be him. Even his turquoise eyes that glimmered like prisms when he was happy belonged to him. Then the mouth moved.
“Hey sis, you gonna let me in?"

Timothy J. Glasby
Assignment #2

For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute…

Mame/We Need a Little Christmas.

TOO CLOSE TO OPEN

“T. J., if you don’t get away from that tree and those Christmas presents you’re gonna get a lickin’ that you’ll tell your grand kids about,” shouted Ma.
The large box setting beneath the tree was wrapped so securely that it looked as if a bomb wouldn’t open it. I had tried to pull it out so I could feel how heavy it was and to give it a good shaking but each time, Ma caught me in the act.
“Timmy, that’s none of your business,” yelled Ma. “All the presents come out on Christmas Eve, you know that.”
“But Ma, I just want to see who it’s for,” I answered.
“Well don’t worry, because maybe it’s not for you.”
My hopes had been dashed like waves on a beach. The box was the biggest and must have had the best present, and now I found out it wasn’t even mine. “Whose is it, then?” I asked.
“Santa Clause,” she replied.
That was her answer for any question. “Who you talking to on the phone? Who’s gonna be at the party? Who’s gonna be at Grandma’s house?”
Any question elicited the same answer from Ma, “Santa Clause. It’s only a week before Christmas, just calm down.”
I gave up, knowing that Ma had eyes in the back of her head and I would be caught before I could say lickety-split. I put on my ten-year-old thinking cap to decide what the best time to get at the big box would be.
Ma worked everyday from 3:00 until midnight. Dad got home shortly after three and we kids were home about 3:30. Dad kept busy with the twin because, at six, they took a lot of looking out for. I knew if the twins saw me by the tree, they’d run to Dad because tattling was what they were best at.
Helen, my older sister, was usually in her bedroom listening to her record player or practicing her coronet. If she caught me around the tree it would mean a pinch or a punch plus she’d squeal.
With all of these dilemmas, it meant that I’d have to be sneakier than a mouse in a room full of cats to get to that present. I remembered that Dad always went back to work on Friday to pick up his check. He brought the twins with him so I’d just had to get rid of Helen to get to the box.
I waited patiently until Friday, and when Dad and the twins left I knocked on Helen’s door. I knew I was taking my life in my hands but I had to know what was in that big box.
Yelling at her door, I asked, “Helen, can I come in and ask you a question?”
She pulled the door open so fast I thought I was gonna die and yelled, “What do you want, Knucklehead Smith?”
I assumed she had confused me with Paul Winchell’s puppet because we both had butch haircuts. But Knucklehead Smith was really stupid and that, I figured, was what she meant. “I just wanted to know what you asked Santa to give you for Christmas.”
“In the first place, you little gorp, Santa ain’t bringing me nothing, Ma and Dad are, and in the second place what are you up to?”
Helen was a tough nut to crack. She was suspicious of anything I did or said to her. I always had an answer ready because I knew she’d never take anything at face value. “I’m not up to nothing. I just wanted to know if there was something I could get for you this Christmas is all.”
“Yeah, get me that Palomino horse that I’ve always wanted,” she answered.
“Ma and Dad said you can’t have a horse. How about a new record? Johnny Crawford has a new 45 out. I think Caroline has it. You could find out the name of it and I’ll buy it next time we go to Sears.”
“I know you’re up to something but Caroline wanted me to come over. You’re not gonna tell Dad I left you alone, right?”
“Nope,” I answered.
Caroline was her best friend and lived across the street. Helen grabbed her coat, “Stay outta stuff cause I’ll be right back,” she said walking out the back door.
As soon as I heard the door slam I headed for the living room and put the lights out and turned the tree lights on. I pulled the big box out and, shaking it, I couldn’t hear anything inside. I looked at the end and saw it was Scotch taped closed. I carefully began pulling the tape off and, in an instant, realized I had screwed up as the thin Christmas paper tore across the whole box. It was the Mark Wilson Magic Set that I had been begging for the last six months. “Oh, God. Please help me.” I begged, wasting a miracle on this one little dilemma. “Oh please, God, if you help me I’ll never be nosy over anything again.”
God was busy with more important things that day then my inquisitive skullduggery and wouldn’t lend a hand in helping me with this problem. I ran to the kitchen junk drawer looking for the tape and it wasn’t there. I figured Ma had put it with all the wrapping stuff in her bedroom closet.
Running to her room I opened the closet door, praying that the tape would be there. When I opened the door I got the surprise of a lifetime, as the closet was full of unwrapped gifts. There were toys and games and clothes and enough stuff to put under ten Christmas trees. I was awestruck by all the goodies. Had Santa come early and dropped off all the stuff. I knew that the Operation game was for me as I had asked Santa for it. I saw that the pajamas and slippers were my size. The new cowboy boots that Helen had been pestering Ma about were boxed in the back and a Craftsman toolbox that Dad wanted was there too. It was like Christmas before Christmas.
I remembered why I was there and started my search for the tape. I saw the tall rolls of paper standing in the corner and just below them was a box with ribbons and bows. Rummaging through this box, I found the tape, grabbed it, and ran for the living room. I re-taped the big box, turned it over, and pushed it back under the tree. As I stood to return the tape I heard the back door open and knew, by the way the screen door slammed, that it was Helen as Ma and Dad always nurtured it closed so it wouldn’t bang.
I ran for Ma’s bedroom and threw the tape into the box, closed the closet door, and ran out just as Helen was walking down the hall.
“What are you doing in Ma’s room?” questioned Helen.
“I thought I heard something in here so I was just checking.” I lied.
“You are so full of it. What were you doing, snooping in Ma’s closet looking for the Christmas stuff?”
“How do you know there’s stuff in her closet?” I asked, thinking I may have had the upper hand for the first time.
“I always knew. So what were you doing?”
“Nothing,” I replied, attempting to slide past her and her barrage of questions.
“Did Ma get me my cowboy boots?” she asked.
“I didn’t see any,” I lied.
Skirting past her, I grabbed my coat and hat and went out to my hiding place in the garage. I had set an old rug behind the furnace and could spend hours there thinking and waiting for the furnace to kick on and heat up the little enclosed corner that was my secret space. I heard the car drive up and Dad and the twins head for the house. I hid out until dinner, not worried about the gift under the tree, as it would be Ma that noticed the tampering.
The next morning, with only a couple days before the big holiday, I watched the big box to make sure that no one had pulled it out and saw my misdeed. With only one day before Christmas Eve, I was hoping I would get away with my criminal activity. Worse than that, the song SANTA CLAUSE IS COMING TO TOWN, kept running through my head, especially the part ‘He know when you’ve been bad or good, so be good, for goodness sakes.’ What if the jolly old man had seen me snooping at the present under the tree and in Ma’s closet?
The day passed and no one had noticed anything awry and Helen didn’t tattle on me either. Only one more day and I’d find out if Santa had his X-ray Specs on. I stayed out of the way, spending a lot of time in my secret place and hoping that, for just one more day, that my crime would go unnoticed.
At bedtime I said a special prayer, “Dear Lord, I’ve been good all year long. I got good marks in school and only beat up on the twins when they really deserved it. I know it was a sin to look at the present and go into Ma and Dad’s room, but I promise to never do it again. Thank you God. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” I finished, crossing myself.
When I woke, it was Christmas Eve day, and I knew that there would be enough confusion in the house to, “Please, God, Please”, get me through until that night when we opened presents.
When I went into the living room I saw that Santa, had come early. There were dozens of presents under the tree. They were all wrapped and looked so nice. I ran over to see which ones were mine but stopped in the middle of my run as I noticed that the big box was missing. I rummaged through them to see how many were mine. I could tell that the Operation game and the pajamas had both been wrapped and tagged with my name. I looked behind the tree to see if the big box with my prized magic set had just got pushed behind but it was gone, totally gone.
I ran into the kitchen and Ma was standing over the stove making breakfast. I asked, “Did you see Santa bring the gifts last night, Ma?”
“Yes,” said Ma. “He said he was so busy this year that he had to start early. But that doesn’t mean you get to start early. You still have to wait for tonight to open your gifts.”
“Hey Ma,” I asked coyly. “What happened to that big box that was under the tree all week?”
“Oh boy, Santa was really mad about that box. Someone had tried to open it and had taped it closed. You didn’t see Helen or the twins fussing with that, did you?”
“No, Ma,” I answered. “But what happened to it?”
“He took it back with him. He wouldn’t even tell me who it was for.”
“But he can’t do that,” I answered, tears welling up in my eyes. “It was left here before he even came last night.”
“He’s Santa Clause, and he can do whatever he wants to do,” Ma replied as if it was a written rule.
“That’s not fair,” I answered, tears sliding down my cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it, T.J., he can always bring it next year.”
“But Ma,” I started as the twins came roaring in screaming, fighting, and demanding food.
I walked out of the kitchen, heartbroken. My revered magic set was gone. Even if I got it for my birthday, I’d still have to wait until the end of September. I slunk out to my secret place and thought about my stupid nosiness.
“If I’d only been more careful taking the tape off. If I’d only been faster and not nosed through all the presents in the closet, Helen wouldn’t have caught me. I thought to myself. What never crossed my ten year old mind was, “If only I would have left the box alone for a couple days, I wouldn’t be in this pickle.”
Minutes later I heard the garage door open and Ma came right over to my top secret hiding place and told me to come in and eat before breakfast got cold. “Come on T.J. No sense of sitting out her moping, its Christmas Eve and you’ll get to open your presents tonight.
The twins and I spent the day pestering Ma, “What time do we open the presents? Is it time yet? How long do we have to wait?”
When Dad got home from work she instructed him, “Give them each one present from under the tree.”
The twins got sets of Lincoln Logs but they could have been a bag of rocks, as they ended up being projectile missiles instead of building toys. I was handed the package that I knew was the Operation game. I acted surprised and said how much I liked it, but would have to wait to play it as Santa didn’t understand that it took batteries and we didn’t stock them like parents do now.
At 6:00 the sun had set and that was Christmas Eve for Ma and Dad. They had been bothered by us kids long enough and it was officially time to open presents. Ma told us to all get into the living room so the presents could be passed out. Even Helen showed up thinking that the Palomino horse she wanted was staked out somewhere for her to jump on and ride off.
Besides the usual clothes; socks, underwear, pajamas, and jeans, we got most of the toys we asked for. I was still broken-hearted about the magic set but realized that it was my own fault. I went to Ma as she was throwing away all the used wrapping paper. “Ma, I opened and taped that box closed. I’m sorry but it was just driving me crazy not knowing who it was for and what was in it.”
“I knew it was you T.J.,” she started. “Would it have hurt you to wait that extra time?”
“No Ma, but when I tried to open the end and it tore and I knew I would get in trouble so…”
“And you’ll never do it again, right?” finished Ma.
“Never, Ma. I promise,” I replied with all the ten-year-old remorse I could muster.
“Go into my bedroom and check in the closet. There’s something Santa left in there.”
I ran to her bedroom and opened the closet door. On the floor, shining like a spotlight, was the box with the torn paper. My Mark Wilson Magic Set.
I grabbed it and ran to the living room, screaming and thanking God, Jesus, Santa, the Lord, and Ma all at once. I opened the box and there it was. Mark Wilson, Nani Darnell, and Rebo the Clown smiling back at me from a picture on the set. I put it aside and kissed Ma, “I’m sorry, Ma.”
“Just remember that because next year you might not get so lucky,” She answered, hugging and kissing me back.
I went to my room and checked out all the tricks that were included. I fell asleep with the set beside me, as it was the first thing I wanted to play with in the morning.
On Christmas morning, we all went to Mass. As I walked into the church, I crossed myself with holy water. Ma ushered us into the pew and Dad, who only came to mass on Holidays, sat down between the twins to try and control them.
I pulled the kneeler down, got on my knees, and prayed, “Dear God, thanks for all the wonderful presents and thanks for letting me understand that Ma and Dad are
really Santa Clause and most of all thanks for listening and answering my prayers. Amen. Oh, and God, I won’t be nosy no more cause I understand how mad it makes you. Amen, again.” I made the sign of the cross, set back in the pew, and, with a huge smile on my face and a burden lifted from my heart, smiled through the rest of the service.