“He came into my bedroom and forced himself on me! I was bleeding and I didn’t know how to tell Alva but I had to tell someone! I was so scared and embarrassed but she quieted me down and told me it wasn’t my fault.” My mother shared this with me on my last visit home. It seems that while she and my father were dating they had spent one night at his uncle and aunt’s Ordin and Alva, place. My dad was sleeping on a cot in the hallway and my mother was in the guest bedroom. He had sneaked into her room and had his way with her.
My mother is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and had been having trouble sleeping. She told the nurse who comes by once a week to check on her that she was upset and the nurse told her to write it all down and share it with someone…from the family. I drew the lucky card. Even though mother knew she was telling me about my conception I don’t know that she fully understood how much it would hurt and affect me. To hear that I was conceived during a date rape which of course led to my parents being forced into marriage was very painful. I knew that my mother had been pregnant before they were married but I had never heard how and I would have preferred thinking it happened during uncontrollable passion or one mistake but not rape.
Mother continued to tell me, “I don’t know what he was trying to do but he would drive me over the plowed fields in the car so that I was being tossed about and his friend asked him, ‘are you trying to get rid of the baby?’”
Coming to grips with my father’s abuse took more years of my life than I care to mention and now this! Will it never end?!
When my mother had finished reading all the things she had written I asked her, “Do you know what we’re going to do with those papers?”
“Burn them?” she asked.
“Yes. Right now.” I took them over to the kitchen sink and lit a match. As we watched them burn, I held my mother and sang, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Thank you, Mom for not aborting me and giving me life. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen”
We held each other and sobbed for all the pain and sadness of my conception, birth and life that followed and tears of joy were shed that I was alive and had forgiven them both. Life is for living and forgiving. Praise be to God!

What do you have to lose?
“What do you have to lose?” my roommate asked me all those years ago. I had just transferred to the university and didn’t know anyone – except my roommate. Auditions were that very day for the spring musical.
“But I can’t sing.”
“Yes, you can. I’ve heard you sing every day around here.”
“But to try out in front of others…”
“What do you have to lose?” she asked.
And so I borrowed her grey pleated skirt and gold turtleneck sweater and forced myself to go to the audition.
“Next,” called out a gruff voice from the dark seating area of the auditorium.
“I’m going to sing “I’ve got Rhythm,” I managed to say, trying to sound confident.
“What key?” asked the woman sitting at the piano in the orchestra pit.
“Anything will be fine,” I mumbled having no idea what key. Suddenly the image of Ethel Merman popped in my mind and how she’d belt out a song. I decided to try the same. After all, what did I have to lose?
I relaxed as I sang the second stanza, and I even threw in a few dance steps.
There was deafening silence when I finished.
“We’ll let you know either way,” said the gruff voice. I took that to mean they’d let me know if I made it or not.
A week later a call came and I was told I had the part of Jenny and to pick up my script at the auditorium office.
I fingered through the pages, figuring my part had one or two lines of dialogue. Jenny was on the first page with ten lines, the second page with twenty lines. I counted the lines. I had more than any other part! I guess I could be considered to have the lead.
How did my performance go? Well, I remembered all my lines, and didn’t forget any dance steps.
Judy Saxon

“TIMOTHY GLASBY
Assignment 5/ Dialogue
Edit/rewrite
“Mr. Glasby, the principle would like to see you in his office.”
My worst nightmare, I would have to repeat my senior year and be forced to spend another god-forsaken year in this cornball hayseed burg. I had big plans of moving to California, fulfilling my dream of being a big time magician, actor, or anything but living in Birch Run, Michigan.
Standing outside Zelker’s office, I thought, “ If he says I have to spend another year here, I’ll have to beat him to death with one of the sports trophies that he had won when he was a student here. Then I’ll hop in my 1953 Buick Roadmaster and drive to California.”
I envisioned his office would look like a tomb. The curtains were always drawn and the door was always closed. Rumor was he was a vampire and kept it dark inside so sunlight wouldn’t melt him. He was never seen in the halls until after school when the sun had waned and you were stuck in detention.
He came to the door, small drops of blood (or was it ketchup?) dripped from his overly formed canines, and invited me in. Pointing to the chair across from his desk, he sat and smiled at me as if we were going to have a nice civil conversation. I’m sure he saw my eyes darting around the room. He didn’t realize that I was looking for the biggest trophy to use on him until he was nothing but a mass of smashed bone and sinewy flesh. My eyes quested for a sharp wooden object , as I knew that I would have to pierce his heart as just a beating would not slow this demon Nosferatu.
“Mr. Glasby, I have been speaking to all the bums that have no plans to go on to college to ask what they’re planning for their futures. You happen to be one of those bums.”
“I’m leaving Birch Run to move to California as soon as I have enough money,” I quickly replied.
I hated giving away my new location, vampires could travel fast at night and he could probably track me down, but California is a big state so he’d still have lots of looking to do.
“I see,” he started. “Any plans on going on with school once you resettled out there? There are a lot of great schools in California. You’ve heard of UCLA?”
“Yes, But Santa Barbara is where I’ll be moving as that’s where my brother lives,” I started, hating myself for pinpointing my exact location in California. “But, I don't think I'll be going to college there because they had a big riot and the National Guard killed a couple of students or maybe it was principal last year.”
“Well, Tim, you’ve done pretty well in the classes that you cared about. I see you had six English classes and six math classes and did well in all of them.”
“Don’t forget the speech class, “I got an A+ in that,” I said, hoping to save myself the pain of his fangs to my jugular vein.
“Yes, and you were active in theater also. Your records shows that you are a member of the National Thespian Society.”
“Yes, I did six plays. I played Piglet in House at Pooh Corner for the children’s show.” Still, the burning question persisted, “Am I going to graduate Mr. Zelkers?”
“Yes, Tim,” he stated. “We just wondered why you didn’t want to go onto college.”
“Because I’m moving to California,” I finished. “May I go back to class now?”
“Sure, but if you have any questions about college, Mr. Offenback, your counselor, can help you. Good day and good luck in California.”
“Bye,” I said, as I hurried back to class with the knowledge that I had not become one of Zelker’s minions of living dead and would be able to leave Birch Run.
Returning to class, my friend John, asked, “What happened?”
“I’m still going to California, and Zelkers said it was okay," I replied.

Trash and transformations
Dishes washed each day
So meals could be served
On clean turned messy

Hours into years fizz/wiz/bang
Bucket full of children out of the womb,
Whiz-bang, flung across the country
By the sea, in the valley, in the desert,
All of them blooming grandkids

And here friends suddenly wrinkled,
Fresh complexions gone,
The old lady looks and sees
Reality, a hard place

Listen! Consider the meadow
Have you looked where the green,
Forever lush, silky to the toes
Yielding under foot and cool

In the morning, where dew rises
Then vanishes to soft green?
Have you looked where dreamers come to rummage
Through images of hours, whipped into years
Where waterfalls pool mirrors luminous with images?

Here nightingales sing and humans listen

FROM OHIO TO CALIFORNIA

It was 1965. The Civil Rights movement was in its prime, but it didn’t touch me until the memorable journey I took from Columbus, Ohio to California.

After a year of my graduate school at Ohio State University, I wanted to go home for summer vacation. A teaching assistant’s salary wouldn’t allow me to fly, and I have decided to look for a ride. Soon after, I saw a note on the announcement board at the university saying that two graduated students were moving to California and would take a rider. I called and heard the male voice saying “hello.” I explained the reason of my call, but instead of the reply, there was a silence. After a long pause, I heard, “But I’m black.” I said, “So, what?” He then said, “Are you sure you want to go with us?” “But of course,” I replied. “All right, we’ll take you.”

George picked me up early in the morning, and we started out toward Kentucky to pick up his friend Mike. I sat next to George. After a while George said, “Look at them! Look how they are looking at us!” I was surprised to hear that and asked him who were looking at us. I told him that he was imagining things. However, I did notice that people in the passing cars were all turning their heads towards us.

We came to a small town that was Mike’s home. George told me to wait and disappeared into one of the small houses. I could have sworn that no white person had ever stepped in that place. It was a scene from old American movies. I stood by the car looking at a little house with a porch in front of me. An old black woman was rocking on a porch swing. She looked at me without saying anything. I can imagine now that my face must have had an expression of surprise and fascination at the same time.

In a short while, an old man came from behind and started telling me something. My spoken English was not very good at that time, and I could not understand the dialect of the man. Finally, I caught a word “hut.” It was similar to Russian “hahta,” a peasant house, and I understood that the man invited me to his house. He was Mike’s father. The front door was open and the linoleum at the entrance was old and torn in places. There were three or four beautiful puppies playing by the threshold. I stepped over them and followed the father directly to a big kitchen with a huge long table in the middle. I was introduced to Mike’s mother, a stout southern black woman who seemed to come right out of some old Hollywood movie. She was frying “Kentucky fried” chicken for our journey. She greeted me with a big smile. I thought what a pleasant and hospitable people they were.

Now there were the three of us: two tall slender black Americans and a Russian immigrant who was born in China and came to the U.S. via Brazil. I had already experienced American prejudice, and now I was witnessing a different kind of discrimination whose origin was slavery rather than geopolitical ignorance.


We drove to some city in Kentucky to visit Mike’s sister before his moving to California. It was a hot and humid evening. His sister lived in a small apartment. I only remember a small fan and his sister with a baby on her lap. We were not staying in any hotels; the guys were driving continuously replacing each other. I could not drive at that time. We were also pulling a small U-Hall cart. The next morning it was raining, and suddenly our car went out of control and spun a couple of times stopping in the middle of the freeway facing the on-coming traffic. Fortunately, there were no cars on the road. George screamed, “Get out of the car.” We jumped out and stood on the slope by the road getting soaking wet. My new sandals got wet and muddy. Mike managed to straighten the car, and we continued our journey south. The accident, however, resulted in some damage to the rear bumper, and we began to look for a gas station. After a while, we pulled into a gas station by the freeway in the outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee, but a white mechanic refused to repair our car. The guys realized that we had to go to the black section of town. On our way there, we stopped at a hamburger place. We walked in and sat at the counter. I was sitting between Mike and George. I had a light blue zirconium square-shaped like an engagement ring on my left hand’s fourth finger. This, probably, made the situation worse. The people most likely thought that I was engaged to one of these man, and maybe that we were the activists of the civil rights movement. Of course, I was not aware of that, but did notice that everybody was looking at us, and the man at the counter looked and acted rather hostile towards us. We finished our meals and walked out quietly.

We found the black section of the town with a black mechanic who started working on our car. We struck a conversation, and he told me that he came from Los Angeles because he lost his wife in a car accident there. He also told me that our car was too light for the load it was pulling and advised me to take a bus to California.

While I was standing on a sidewalk waiting for the car to be fixed, I saw a black man across the street. As I looked at him, he started crossing the street going towards me. All of a sudden, George ran up to me. I asked him what happened, and he said, “Don’t you see the guy is coming up to you?” I realized that I had two wonderful bodyguards. Unfortunately, I had to tell them that I had decided to follow the mechanic’s advice to continue my trip home by bus. The bus was leaving late in the evening.

Before taking me to the bus station, we stopped at a gas station. It was already dark. Suddenly, a car full of noisy white young men pulled in. They were agitated as if looking for trouble. George whispered to me, “Lie down on the floor.” He didn’t have to say it twice; I was down almost flat on the floor in the back of the car. The car was a convertible, and the back window was old yellow plastic. The side windows were down because it was hot. By that time, I finally understood that we were in danger. However, God saved us, and we had no confrontation.

George and Mike drove me to the bus station and saw me off. As I looked at them for the last time, I knew that I would never see them again, but I often thought of them. The bus was full of white Americans from Alabama. They were joking with me, but I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I just smiled and nodded in reply wishing they leave me alone.


Tatiana Erohina
09/16/07