Obsession

By Kenneth M. Austin

I was surprised when Reverend Jones, a young African American minister phoned me about a Mrs. Carter he'd been seeing. Maybe it didn't bother him that I was Mexican because she was having thoughts of killing her twelve-year-old daughter. He feared she might hurt the girl and wanted me to treat her. Or maybe my race just didn't bother him.

Upon contact I found her appearance disheveled. Hair, black as pitch, uncombed, no make-up. "Can Reverend Jones come in too?"

"If you want."

With a deep voice he presented her complaints. She began to cry.

Why are you crying?" I asked softly.

"She-"

When he started to answer for her, I interrupted. "Reverend, please wait in the waiting room. I want to talk with Mrs. Carter alone. She'll be okay. You'll be right outside." I cast the biggest smile I could.

He seemed ambivalent. He stood, waited, maybe hoping she'd object. "That's fine, Reverend. I'm okay."

The door closed. "Mrs. Carter, I'm Dr. Alberto Gonzales, a psychologist. Please call me whatever you like. What should I call you?"

"Edith or Mrs. Carter is fine." "Good. You were crying because?"

"I'm ashamed of my thoughts. I really don't want to hurt my girl."

"What's occurring," I said, taking a deep breath to ease my tension, "is called an obsession. What stimulates these thoughts?"

"When I see something sharp, like a knife or scissors." She hung her head.

"When I first see someone, I do a mental status examination and take a brief history," I said. "Let me ask a few questions. I'll make some notes."

"I don't want any notes."

"But the law requires me to keep notes." She's hiding something.

But my gut told me she was not a danger to self or others. I asked anyway.

"Have you ever hit your daughter?"

"Never, I wouldn't do that. I'm not that kind of person."

The exam showed depression but nothing else of significance. "Tell me about growing up."

''I'm an only child, born and raised on a farm. Both my parents worked the farm."

"What about boys? When did you start dating?"

"I focused on chores and getting good grades, didn't date until I was working."

"Doing what?"

"Nursing. I was a surgical nurse ... until these thoughts started." Her eyes watered.

"Sorry, but I need to know these things," I said. Wiggling in my chair a moment, I doodled. It always helped me feel more comfortable when I doodled. "How old were you then and what did you do about it?"

"I was thirty-five, about to be married. I transferred from surgery to the children's ward."

"Did that help?"

"Yes, I loved the children. Six months later I married and quit nursing. I was able to deal with things until five years ago when the obsessions started again."

"Have you ever been in a mental institution or had psychotherapy?"

"No, neither. Do you think I'm crazy? Can you help me?"

"You're not crazy,” I had to ask. “I can help you help yourself. See you next Friday?”

She slipped into my office, looking different. Her hair, black as a raven, was neatly combed. She was wearing make-up and was more dressed-up than when first seen.

"Hello, doctor," she said in a near whisper, and sat slowly in the chair near my desk.

"Good afternoon," I said. "Are you feeling better today?"

"Oh, yes," she said, her voice barely audible.

"Good," I said. "Any incidents in the past two days?"

"Yes, I can picture myself stabbing my girl."

"You must hate her to want to stab her. What'd she do?"

Her voice went up an octave. "You're nuts! I love her. We've never argued." For fifteen minutes she bombarded me with all the good things about her daughter.

"You can love someone," I said, "but be angry at their behavior."

"I'm not angry at her." She said in an angry voice.

I wasn't getting anywhere with this approach. I decided to breach her defensiveness in another way. "I'll accept that, if you'll think about it. It's difficult to think that someone can repeatedly think of stabbing a person they love, if they're not angry with them. Remember, think about it is all I'm asking. See you next week."

When the door closed I straightened the pictures of my family, sighed and relaxed a moment before completing my notes.

She was on time. "I couldn't think of any reason to be angry at my child."

"But," I said, "You're having these images of stabbing her. This is an extremely hateful and aggressive thing, why?"

I got a new tirade. In a hostile voice she said, "She thinks she knows it all. When she can't have her way she runs to her grandparents, turns them further against me. I've forbidden her from going there, but she ignores me."

She railed about her daughter for fifteen minutes, as if to justify her anger.

Suddenly she seemed to realize what she'd been saying and began sobbing.

"Oh, God ... I didn't know I felt this way. I'm a terrible person."

"Is that why you have problems with your parents?"

"I don't want to talk about that. I'm leaving." She stood. "When do you want me back?"

"You're leaving early?"

"Of course. I'm mad. I don't have to stay."

"When do you want to meet?"

She fled as the words escaped her mouth. "Next Friday at two."

I reviewed her file. She was suffering a great deal from depression and obsessive thoughts. She needed relief soon. Then too, I believed she was extremely concerned with propriety and goodness. It would be difficult for her to reveal anything derogatory about herself. I had to get her to talk about her childhood. I rearranged the pictures and relaxed a moment before finishing my day.

At her next appointment she was about to sit when I said, "What was different about the past week?"

She let her body plop into her chair. She paled, her skin turning as white as snow on a sheet of tar. Finally, she said, "How'd you know?"

"Tell me about it," I said as though I knew what she was talking about. "A dream, over and over."

"Tell me the dream, please."

"My daughter ran away to my parents. But this time my husband went and picked her up. He took a belt to her. He told her to stop running away."

"When she runs away are you the one who goes after her?"

"Yes."

"And you don't use a belt on her?"

"Never. How could you think such a thing?" She glared at me. But I pushed on.

"Has your husband ever used a belt on her?"

"Absolutely not. I'd never let him."

"And your father," I asked, "has he used the belt on her?"

Her tears began to run. "I don't think so." And then I knew her secret.

"But he used the belt on you when you ran away."
A sob hit her like a bolt of lightning. She gulped for air. She hung her head. Finally, she said, "He did it whenever I was bad-whenever I ran away."

"I want you to talk more about your relationship with your father but our time is up for today. Are you hiding anything else?"

"I never told anyone about his hitting me. He's my father, a good father. I'd never do anything to hurt him." I could see her body relax. This was wonderful.

"I understand. I think you may start feeling better now. Let's try going two weeks. You can always call if you need to come in sooner."

After she left I adjusted the pictures on my desk once more and wrote my notes with new insight. I knew I'd dream a lot now.

Next session Edith was ten minutes early. With a strong voice she started with, "I'm so happy doctor. I've gone two weeks without any obsessions. I don't know how to thank you."

Immediately I said, "you could go back to nursing. A position in the children's ward."

Her hazel eyes widened in a startled look, much like a frightened deer. "But the obsessions .... "

Calmly I said, "I understand your worry, but that's unlikely. Besides, do you want to live life on a 'what if' basis? Talk to Reverend Jones, see what he thinks."

"I want to know what you'd do and why."

My eye's locked onto hers. "I'd put on my uniform. If it didn't fit, I'd buy a new one, and get back to what I enjoyed. It's okay to be happy and enjoy what one does. If it helps, I'll be here if you need me."

When Mrs. Carter left I knew the time had come for me to attend to my own dream. I shoved the pictures on my desk into a file cabinet along side the belt that was there. They'd stay there until I finished talking to Dr. Annette Dupre, my therapist. I hadn't seen her in a year. I'd stopped because she was French but now knew her race made no difference. She was a good therapist and that's what I needed.

Kenneth M. Austin, Ph.D. lives in San Bernardin, California.

Back Then

By Robert Cotton

This is a true story so help me ---! (Well, you know the routine).

I'm a white guy. Always been unconsciously conscious of that but don't know why it held so much importance although, as I found out later, the neighborhood I spent most of my very young days in was what was known as a '''closed'' neighborhood, not even available to all whites, depending on their religion or some such thing.

Stuff happened and I lost my family, ran off and was on the streets. Welfare finally put me in a boy's school in Chino Hills, CA., the Boy's Republic, where I lived until I graduated twelfth grade. I followed that with a stint in the service where I up-close observed segregation. Didn't know the word at the time. It was just a fact.

Anyway, back to the story:

After the military I kicked around for a while - different places, different jobs -and decided to go to New Orleans. Got off the Greyhound from Wichita, KS. and headed for the station rest room. Really had to go and it was a relief! Wasn't until I was done and zipped up that I noticed other guys in there were giving me a bad eye, as if I had crawled out of a hole or something so I skedaddled, went back to the waiting room - or almost did. Above the door was a big sign:

COLORED ONLY. I backed off then realized what was what. I'd heard about it somewhere before, sometime, but it was one of those details that don't take root until you bump into it. I mean, I'd been a street kid before the boy's school and wasn't exactly naive but this was totally different.

I was in the south! The Deep South! And I had even used the COLORED ONLY restroom! It was a weird feeling. Now I'd have to pay attention to everything I did, everywhere I went and I did not like it. But when in Rome -------

Didn't take long to blow what little money I had visiting the French Quarter, taking a short trip up Old Miss on a sternwheeler, basking on the beach at Lake Pontchartrain, so it was time to look for a job, as I had been doing since my discharge, going here, going there, looking for what I wasn't sure, but dreaming someday I'd find my place and things would be better, get better, somehow.

New Orleans was a big city and the classifieds listed quite a few openings that I knew I could handle. I'd washed dishes in Wichita, carried cement for a brick layer in Illinois, been an undertaker's helper/apprentice in Fresno, CA., fought forest fires in the Sierra Nevada mountains, loaded sacks of potatoes on a freight car with a hand truck once in Missouri, drove a tractor for a farmer, even helped put a carnival together one time so work didn't scare me. I just needed a job and some money to pay the hotel bill, put food in my belly while I looked around, took in the sights, decided what to do next.

I circled some ads, set out to find the places and see what I could come up with. I already had a street map. I'd ridden a lot of street cars in Los Angeles, was used to them and even enjoyed getting around using public transportation. I still remember the old "W" line that ended 011 York Boulevard in Highland Park, a community near Eagle Rock, not far from Pasadena, L.A .. My foster aunt and uncle lived there. Fares were seven cents back then and included a transfer, if necessary.

So I waited on the traffic island, hopped on the first streetcar that rolled up. Don't recall which line it was, maybe Charles Street or something like that. Dropped the coins in the metal box and looked down the aisle. The car was nearly empty so I ambled toward the back, (always rode on the back of the "w" line in L.A.), and sat down. I had seen the COLORED SECTION sign on the back of a seat but no one was back there so didn't think it made any difference.

"You have to move forward young man!" The conductor/operator was looking in his long rear view mirror at me and his voice was commanding, not friendly.
I'd been around, stood up for myself a time or two and didn't like his tone of voice nor being told where I could sit.

"I like it back here," I countered. "I always sit in the back." Well, in L.A. anyway.

"You can't sit back there. That's the colored sectionl" He was glaring at me in his mirror.

"So, no one is back here," I answered pointedly. It was true. I was the only one in the COLORED SECTION.

"Don't make no difference. You can't sit in the colored section."

What few people were on the streetcar had all turned to glare at me as well. I could actually feel their hostility like a cold wave washing over me.

"This car ain't moving until you do!" the conductor/operator informed me loudly and I could tell that's way it was going to be. So, glaring back at his mirror, I moved. I took one seat ahead of the COLORED SECTION, sat down, stared out the window, amazed at the ignorance, the shallovvness, the prejudice, I had just encountered.

I was suddenly aware I was white whether I liked it or not. I had never thought much about it before.

Three restaurants later I still hadn't landed a job although the ads were in the paper. No one said why. Just that the jobs weren't available. I made my way to an address of a construction company that needed ditch diggers for an underground pipeline and, once again, was denied. Well, it was a bit depressing but I still had a few bucks left to eat on and I was sure the hotel manager would wait a few more days for the rent.

Two days later I still hadn't found employment. Now I was getting desperate. I’d always been able to find work wherever I had gone. Now, if I did find a job, I'd have to wait for a paycheck and time was running short so I decided, against my better judgment, to go to one of those employment agencies that take their fee out of a guy's first and/or second paycheck. Well, I had to do something and quick. There was one that, again, listed various titles I could handle: dishwasher, laborer, hod carner and a couple others I don't remember. It was on the fourth floor of a business building dowtown, not far from the hotel where the manager wasn't being so friendly anymore. I was a week behind in the rent.

"Can I help you?" He was thin, almost emancipated, sitting behind a small mahogany desk, a fan on a table behind him blowing air. He was wearing a vertical striped dress shirt, tie that was pulled down, collar button unbuttoned and sported a thin moustache.

I had the newspaper ad in my hand. ''I'm looking for a job," I smiled.
"Have to fill out an application," he replied nodding his head at a small pile of papers on a table near the door.

I sat down, filled it out, listing jobs I had had, feeling confident, putting my home place as California, even though I had roamed. I handed it to him when I was done and he looked it over.

"Sure could use a job," I said being as cordial as I knew how.

He didn't smile back. He leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at me for a moment. "Don't have any," he said.

Couldn't believe my ears. Couldn't believe what he had just said.

"There's a list of jobs in the paper. Right here!" I held it up, pointed, frustrated.
"There's dishwashers wanted." How could there not be any jobs?

"Well, those jobs are for -------," he informed me using the "N" word. "White men" and he emphasized the words, "aren't allowed to wash dishes."

I looked at him, flabbergasted. "I need a job," I insisted. I mean, I was willing to pay for it, have the money taken from my paycheck.

"Well, we don't have any, you damn Yankee," he snickered through brown stained teeth.

"You mean I can't find work because I'm from California?" Maybe I was slow but it finally dawned on me.

"That's right." He picked up a paper on his desk, did-n't look at me again. I was dismissed! I wanted to reach across the mahogany and grab his tie, shake him out of his pin stripe. I backed out, heart pounding.

Now what? I asked myself. It was now quite clear that I was being as much discriminated against as the next COLORED person who had just stepped off the sidewalk as I approached. I smiled at him. We're buddies, I told him silently.
Back in my dingy hotel room I again scanned the paper and at the bottom of the classifieds was one I hadn't noticed before: "Transients wanted to push ice cream carts."

It was something.

"Report at 8 a.m." And it gave the location. Early enough so I could sneak past the hotel manager's office without being noticed, drummed again.

I was there early, in front of a warehouse, maybe third in line, the youngest and didn't reek like the others. Transients meant winos, or so I had learned along the way. But that's O.K. Most were friendly whether I was a damn Yankee or not.
My two wheel cart, with a built in ice box, had number "3" painted on it and I had to sign a paper vowing responsibility and stuff. It was full of ice cream bars, sandwiches, quart containers, cups of various flavors with small wooden spoons and dry ice to keep it all from melting. There was a bell on the handle to let people know the cart was coming.

Don't know why. Perhaps I felt a certain affinity from my experience in the Deep South but I pushed the cart towards what I had learned was the "Black Section." Still is, I guess, since Katrina has been in the news revealing the sad plight of so many American refugees.

Hell, I was flat broke so I had already formulated a plan. Whatever small profit would be my take from selling ice cream bars that day might be enough to purchase a bottle or two of Vino but definitely would not pay a week's hotel bill or buy a plate of ham and eggs with coffee.

Anyway, I pushed down the middle of the street until I reached my destination then, slowing down, began ringing the bell.

Faces appeared in windows, kids started spilling out of doorways.

"Hey, mister, ain't never had ice cream. Could I have one please?" Voice after voice echoed that request as kids swarmed around, walked down the street with me. Don't know how much truth was being thrown at me but I began handing out bars, ice cream sandwiches, cups with wooden spoons. Sometimes a coin or two went into my pocket, most times not.

"Thank you! Thank you, mister!" The smiles, the happiness on little faces was payment enough.

The next street was near empty except for an elderly woman, white haired, standing in a doorway leaning on a cane, cocking her head in my direction but not looking at me. I guessed she must have been blind. The floor of her one room shack was dirt, packed hard! I could only shake my head.

Then from a distance I heard a voice raised in song. A deep, strong voice lifting in the early morning quietness and I pushed in that direction until I was close, until I came upon a large, muscled man, singing at the top of his melodious voice as he hefted garbage cans into a garbage truck..

I stood still, watched, listened, enthralled. I was suddenly on the set of Porgy and Bess.

But the sun was lifting and I still had to sell ice cream so I meandered back to streets that appeared more residential and rang my bell. Once again I was soon surrounded by kids with their hands out, kids following my progress and I handed out more freebies. But I had to sell ice cream, make some money. It took until a bit after noon to reach my goal: Greyhound bus money. I'd sold enough.

"Here you go," I told the young crowd pressing me. I shoved the cart into the middle of the street, lifted the lid and walked away. There was quite a bit left, enough for young eager hands to scurry for.

I quickly made my way back to the hotel, slowly passed the manager's window.
He wasn't looking. I packed my two suitcases, headed into the hall but this time I was spotted.

"Where you going? You can't leave! You owe me money."

It was true but nothing I could do about it. "1 don't have any," I lied. "I'm leaving."
"No, you're not!" he fumed. He reached for the one suitcase I had set down and tried to confiscate it It had several books in it and he wasn't able to lift it. He was an older guy, sedate.

"Yes, I am!" I countered, lifted the suitcase and walked. "'I'm calling the police!" he shouted after me.

I expected that and kept one eye over my shoulder as I walked the two or three blocks to the Greyhound bus station, bought a ticket going west. Luckily I didn't have to wait and was soon on my way. I was still hungry but greatly relieved. I still had enough ice cream money to buy a burger at the first stop west of Louisiana.
A crime? Yes, it was, technically, and I wasn't proud of that fact but, in a sense, felt I had made a payback to some of the stupidity, the narrow-mindedness, the inhumanness of society's code of discrimination and southern hospitality. I made it to California vowing never again to set foot in the Deep South. I never did.

Now it's more than a half century later and I'm close to being an octogenarian.
But I still recall the details of that short time I spent in the Big Easy and I smile at the picture of all those young hands reaching for ice cream, the rapture of a bass voice that echoed in the morning hours.

We've come a long way from back then but not far enough. Probably never will.
Probably never stop calling ourselves "African-Americans," "Hispanics," "Orientals," "Latinos," "Jews," "Indians," "slope heads," "honkies," "Japs," "Chinks," "Chalos," "Gringos," "Ragheads," "Kikes," "Niggers," and all the rest of it.

But there's hope - some. A dream that one day we'll learn to pull together on this little ball of mud we can home, all pull together for the benefit of our race - the human race.

Homo sapiens.
Robert Cotton lives in Eureka, California.

School Lesson

By L.K. Clark

I'll never forget that morning, no more than the earth will forget its way around the sun. Momma didn't even have to wake me. My three big sisters had already done that. By the time my bare feet hit the floor, they were tittering and swinging around in their new dresses and shiny shoes like they were miniature models ready for a fashion show.

This was the big day. It was in the fall of 1970, and my sisters and I were among the first black students who were being integrated into New York City schools. I had no worries about going to school. I had been waiting to go off to school with my sisters since the last of them left me home alone three years earlier. The biggest thing on my mind was being good enough.

"Now you remember, John," Momma told me ten or twenty or a million times, "you has to be good. Our reputation is on the line. I don't want to hear any talk about you being mean, you hear?"

"What's school like?" I asked my sisters in the days preceding the big event. "Don't you worry about what it's like, little brother. You just worry about being a good boy."

That had me worried, and a little scared. I thought somehow some little red devil would jump up on my shoulder and tell me to do bad things that I'd get in trouble for. Never mind that the only place I'd seen such devils was on cartoons; the threat still loomed. My stomach was so filled with wiggly polliwogs so that I could barely get any porridge into it that morning.

Papa seemed to sense my turmoil. "You're tormenting the poor boy, girls. Everything's going to be just fine, John. Fine as Momma's stitches."

I don't know how he managed to do it, but Papa got time off work to escort us to school. I'm sure we were quite a sight, Papa, Momma, three girls, and a little shrimp who nearly had to run to keep up. A black family in a sea of white.

It seemed the world was out to greet us. As we walked the sidewalk to the front door of the school, we were flanked by a mob of white faces. My daddy told us, "Now, just you look straight ahead. Don't you pay no never mind to anyone else around you." So that's what I did. Only, I couldn't help but catch, just out of the littlest comer of my eye, a glimpse of some nasty and mean-looking folks. Still, the rest of my family didn't seem ruffled. They were like soldiers walking straight and proud. I wanted to be like them, so I shoved my little shoulders back and nearly marched as we approached the door of the school.

Inside, things were quieter. We some how all made it to our classrooms.
Usually, I didn't like being far from my momma, but that day I barely noticed when she left. Everything in my classroom was bright and cheery, and the pretty lady teacher seemed so nice. It wasn't until after my parents left that I noticed that mine was the only brown face in the room.

The morning flew.

We had lunch at our desks. Although we hadn't been allowed to talk earlier, our teacher said we could speak with each other during lunch as long as we were quiet. I looked around the room as I took bites of my sandwich. I saw some kids whispering together, some laughing, some even trading things from their lunches with other boys and girls. Everyone seemed to be having fun. Except me, that is. It was then I discovered I was invisible. I tried to say something to a boy nearby, but he acted like he didn't even hear me. I was confused. I couldn't think of anything I had done wrong, so I tried again, this time with the girl to my right. She didn't talk to me, either. I started to get angry. I didn't understand why they were ignoring me. Still, I remembered I had to be good. I sat and ate quietly.

Soon it was time to head outside for recess. "Now children," my teacher's voice rang out, "1 want you to line up quietly and walk straight down the hall behind me. I'll lead you to the playground."

Partway there, we stopped to let another class out of their room. While we were waiting, the boy ahead of me turned, looked me directly in the eye, then tilted his head downward and spit on my shoes. My new shoes. The first new shoes I ever had. When I looked up at him, he was grinning.

''Okay, class, come along now," I heard my teacher say. But somehow, the line around me became a clump. Someone's foot kicked my ankle, and I fell to the floor.

Then someone's knee hit me directly in the face as I struggled to get up. Blood poured out of my nose. I felt someone's hand push me back down again and again before I finally managed to stand up.

Instead of playing outside with the rest of my class that day, I lay on a cot in the nurse's office. "There now." She spoke soothingly, like Momma. She had me hold some ice wrapped up in a towel on my nose until it felt like it would fall off from the cold.

After she wiped my face clean, the nurse stood me directly in front of her while she sat on a chair. She looked at me a long time before she said, "There are a lot of people who don't want you here, John." I didn't understand that. Momma and Papa hadn't warned me about this. Why wouldn't they want me there? I didn't ask.

"You're a sweet boy. I can see that. But sweetness is not the thing you need most right now. You need to be tough. Do you understand what I'm saying?" I didn't, but I nodded my head, anyway.

"Don't let the bullies win. You have just as much right to be here as anyone of them. The Supreme Court of the United States says so, and you can believe it. You find one or two nice boys in your class and you stick to them like paint on a wall. They'll help you. Not everyone is like the boys who hurt you today."

I followed that nurse's advice. I can't say I avoided being harassed or beaten up after that day, but I made it. The bigots didn't win.

Lisa Clark lives in Blagoevgrad 2700, Bulgaria.

Modeling a Modern Arab Society

By Lisa Natalie Anjozian

The dusty cabinet can't handle any more dolls. Each one strangely looks like my grandmother who I know mostly from photographs and my mother's stories-fuzzy brown hair, upswept "do", and the same expression. This is not so strange after the first look (though I have this reaction each time), since the dolls' maker was my grandmother's sister, a dressmaker, and the dolls are models, wearing fashions she could create for prospective clients. The outfits are beautifully out-of-date-elegant dresses from the 1950s: cocktail dresses, evening gowns-things most people don't wear nowadays unless they move in rarefied circles. The circle she catered to is as long-gone as the fashions-the cosmopolitan Euro-Arab society of a multicultural, multinational Beirut (like many other Arab cities), long before the wars and the bombs and the chaos.

I like the doll who is wearing a black brocade, draped dress. She has a long, fan-tailed train behind her that lies on her pedestal. I lift the hem and peek underneath the dress to see what she is wearing. Her legs are formed completely stuck together, and the dress is so tight around her hips and thighs that I can't see if she is wearing elegant lingerie or not. The fabric underneath is black and shiny. On the surface that has been exposed to the light and air for fifty years sits a layer of dust. I rub the fabric with my index finger, but that doesn't do much to restore the sheen of the reverse side. The fabric on top is faded. This dress could have been worn by Rita Hayworth, a multicultural, multinational icon who married the son of the Agha Khan, the imam of the world's Imaili Muslims.

This doll stands erect. She hasn't slouched from proper posture in over fifty years. You get a sense the doll's model, and her maker who gave her this bearing, knew how to comport herself with grace and dignity, with a savoir-faire for living in Beirut, whose segregated, but peaceful, neighborhoods included Muslims and Christians of many kinds, Arabs and non-Arab minorities of Kurds, Jews, and Armenians-of whom she represents one. It is probably nostalgia that causes my mother to offer these memories of that place, when she lived there as a young girl before she emigrated in 1956. Her memories don't include the civil war of the mid 1970s, the invasions, incursions and occupations by foreign
armies. Like the reverse side of the fabric on the doll's dress, her memories have been shielded from the progression of time; her stories of Beirut have a sheen, a shimmer that lights her face when she recalls riding the streetcar with her little sister, just the two of them, to the cinema. My mom loved Arab and Egyptian movies, she says, especially ones starring an actress who she can only remember as Yasmine. Head scarves were something my mom had never seen on Muslim women. Not on the streets. Not in the shops. Not in the souk (bazaar). After classes, where four languages were mandatory in her school for Armenians-French, Arabic, Armenian and English-she and her sister anticipated a snack of sizzling shawarma at a nearby shop. People pretty much kept to their groups to socialize, she recalls, but everyone was cordial and patronized businesses without prejudice.

Maybe young children don't notice tension, but a teenager would, and my mom was fourteen when she left Beirut to come to the United States.

Lebanon was never a country with a unified national identity, but a land of sectarian affiliations-Muslim sects: Sunni, Shia, Druze, Alawi, Ismaili; and non-Muslim sects: Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Armenian Orthodox (Gregorian), Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox (Jacobites), Syrian Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Nestorian Assyrians, Latins (Roman Catholics), Protestants, and Jews. Looking at the doll, I wonder if the model that forces diverse people to have a unified vision of national identity can really work throughout geographies that for thousands of years bore populations loyal to tribes and clans and families. Continuing bloodshed throughout the Middle East along ethnic and sectarian lines seems to demonstrate some divisions run very deep, and maybe more than one organizational pattern for living on this planet should be embraced.

Dolls have a once-upon-a-time quality-the era they were made, the era they represent, the era in our lives when we played with them. This doll wasn't made for playing. She is collectible because she is original, unique. She depicts the skills of the earnest dressmaker who could render a soignee outfit in an era where a Christian Armenian minority with French couture skills could thrive sewing for sheiks' wives, for European women, for glamour-loving ladies in one of the world's most cosmopolitan, tolerant, and peaceful Arab cities.

She is most collectible, to me, because she is a three-dimensional image of my grandmother, a woman who had fuzzy brown hair, proper posture, and a gracious demeanor.

Lisa-Natalie Anjoian lives in Vancouver, Washington.

The Mark of the Candy Man

By Thomas Lee

She started singing when I refused her. I hated her singing. She seemed even younger when she sang. Who can make the sunrise?

Her voice was, as always, syrupy, self-indulgent, and off-key.

Sprinkle it with dew.

Her body, which lay beside me naked in my concave twin-size bed, was like a ballerina's, lithe and lyrical, with only mannequin-like tinges of womanhood.

Cover it in chocolate ...

I took her to the Chocolate Show that day and bought her the fIrst gourmet chocolates she had ever had. She scarfed dozens of multi-centered dark chocolates as we perused the various tasting stations.
And a miracle or two.

After the chocolate, she wanted real candy, the kind that only I gave her. Little pills with stars in the middle. I said no, and this song was her way of trying to make me give in.

The Candy Man can.

I wondered how she knew all the lyrics to a children's song by heart.

The Candy Man can.

But then I remembered that childhood wasn't so long ago for her.

The Candy Man can ...

And I'm the Candy Man to her, a girl of only 16. Sixteen and I'm 27. Criminal but not so absurd, not in my mind anyway, because in about a month it would not be crime.

Cause he mixes it with love.

I was in law school in New York at the time. That's an excuse, and not the best of many excuses I can concoct. Spring 1999. Any money I had was borrowed and, hence, meaningful, conventional dating was infrequent. Me and a few motley classmates from the Asian-American law students' organization (I was its treasurer) tried to relive a bit of under grad debauchery by frequenting the 18-and-over rave clubs that dominated New York nightlife on whatever nights not studying seemed safe to all of us. We all did ecstasy, but only in amounts that would not be especially damaging to our grades, once a month on a Friday night so we could be tolerably ready for case law by Monday.

Hookups, random and anonymous, were fairly easy, even for future-lawyer posers like us, in those cavernous, purely sensual rave clubs filled with ecstasy-driven girls still looking forward to their proms. I learned a little trick one night when I stumbled over a dehydrated teen while trying to pry my hit for the night out of my jeans' pocket. Drop ecstasy, I mean literally drop a bag of it on the ground, and by the time you pick the bag back up, at least half-a-dozen slender girls in tank tops, who likely eschew everything about you in the absence of drugs, all of a sudden were staring at you, conjuring every "come here, young man" allure that they've learned from the titillating how-to sections of raffish girl magazines. So that's what I did every time we went out. "Oops. My mistake. Would you look at all these pills. What could I possibly do with all these pills?"

One November night, I performed my little act and noticed immediately afterward a yearning, beatific smile like one you might see on a hopeful orphan awaiting adoption. A lone, pale Chinese-American waif in a pastel tank top with straight, black, Japanese-style hair that went down to the small of her back sitting on the edge of a dance floor platform. I found her aquiline features alluring, though, because of a hint of awkwardness in her demeanor, I figured she likely fell short of the popular circles in whatever school she attended. "Lisa," she told me her name was when I sat down next to her. She didn't look old enough to have taken the SATs yet, but because she was in the club I could at least pretend I thought she was legal. She put her hand on my knee and assertively grabbed the pill I pulled from my bag out of my grip before I even had a chance to offer properly.

We spent the first 20 minutes after her first pill just nodding our heads to barely audible words. When the ecstasy started to hit in full force, she wanted to dance, so we jumped up and down in the middle of an energetic throng of teenagers for a while. The mammoth dance floors of those clubs were, like every other public gathering place in Manhattan-racially-segregated mosaics-and we were hopping on the outer fringes of Chinatown. As we danced, I noticed she was tall for an Asian girl, standing just about at my eye level in her sandals and towering over the other girls near her.

Eventually, she started to sweat so much that we decided to take a break. She said, "Let's talk for a while," and led me to the chill room, a broad, black-wallpapered space where a few dirty sofas sat under blue light. "Talk for a while," when you're on E involves unloading more baggage than you see on the carousels of JFK Airport during peak hours. The private scars (sex with teenage boys that turned out to be meaningless, friendships with various girls that turned sour because of competitiveness, Asian parents who can't comprehend her expressiveness), as I expected, became part of an elegiac monologue told with so much passion that she was wondering why the heavens weren't starting to weep in sympathy for her. I just nodded and said, "You'll be fine. You're smart and pretty and have absolutely nothing to worry about."

"Tell me. What do you dream of being when you're older?" I inquired, expecting this would create another wave that would relieve me of any obligation to hold up my end of the conversation. A writer, a playwright, "something creative, not like some yuppie lawyer, no offense."

''None taken," I said, though I did take a little.

"I really wanna leave my mark, you know?" she said. As an ecstasy veteran, I knew from her idyllic expression that she felt like she was downloading the core elements of her being directly into my soul, making me the lone scion of her importunate pathos. No one had ever quite had her dreams, to live in unreined pursuit of some wistful, unformed artistry, and no one could express those dreams in quite the special words she was speaking to me.

"You're such a good listener. Thank you." She kissed me on the cheek, and I knew how delicious my body warmth, in fact any human warmth, must have felt upon her lips. She giggled, but not quite so much like a drugged-out club chick, but like an empathetic child embarrassed at having been so forthright. A tugging, sanctimonious Greek chorus started to berate me for what I wanted to do, but when her slender physique cuddled closer to me, the chorus dissipated.
"How come you're here with a bunch of guys?" she asked.

"My harem has the night off," I said and evoked a chuckle. "Who are you here with?"

"No one. Just me. Loser, right?"

"No. Pretty brave, I think." Brave. Likely only 15 or 16, alone in a club, taking drugs from strangers. Brave. Other more truculent words came to mind too, but "brave" was what I said, and that word put a momentary, slightly vindicated smile on her face that melted as she looked downward shyly. The smarter part of me thought that I should wait until some other day or, better yet, some other year, after she had come down, after she had a chance to think, when she didn't look so covetous of any human countenance, but that's not the part of me that controlled the night.

She was better than I expected, way better than I would've been at 16.

Responsive, enthusiastic, experimental, and exceptionally considerate. Excuses came to my mind right afterward while I was lying in my bed next to her. In Japan, 30-year-olds buy meretricious gifts for inappropriately-young girls all the time, and everyone shrugs and says that's an intractable part of that culture. Shameful, but understood as something that men just did and there's nothing to be done about it. "Great Balls of Fire," that guy, whatever his name was, married his 13-year-old cousin. There must be other examples worse than me. A billion others. Literally a billion, at least, if you consider the Third World and how conceptions of maturity in those places begin at puberty. The whole idea that a teenage girl is taboo for a man in his late 20s is really a very recent, very Western European idea. Hegemony. Cultural imperialism. So many ways to justify. And, oh, I thought she was 18, or that she might be 18. At the very least, the thought that she might be 18 wasn't completely implausible. And no blood, at least, thank God.

"Where do you live?" I asked Lisa, after we had congealing 10 mein and soggy eggrolls on my computer desk, which sat just two feet from my bed in my sparse, dusty apartment. I lived in a fifth-floor Upper West Side walk-up studio in a mildewed, decrepit brownstone.

"Oh, still at home. Well, two homes, I guess, ever since my folks split." "They let you stay out all night?"

"No. But they can't stop me. When I get back home, my mom's gonna ground me, threaten to put me away, call my dad, all that crap. But they haven't done anything but yell so far. They said they'd lock me up in some Jesus-freak death camp, but they don't have the guts."

"Where are you going to go today?"

"You mean I can't move in with you yet?" I didn't answer.

She chuckled puckishly, "I'm going to my mom's. You have to give me money so I can get back to Jersey."

I pulled a $20 out of my wallet and gave it to her without hesitation.

"Can I get a little more? I wanna get my nails done in the city before I go." Her long, French-manicured nails already looked like they should be showcasing jewelry on some television shopping network. Though I felt that the passing of money was a little too close in time to sex, I acquiesced and pulled another $20 out of my wallet.

"Can I call you sometime?" she asked as she pulled out her cell phone. I pulled out mine and we each plugged the other's number in.

"Call me when you're ready to talk again," she said as I kissed her on the lips and opened the door for her.

A week later, I called Lisa and told her I had some good stuff that we could drop at a place called Womb in the Meatpacking District. Just the two of us met up that night, and we spent most of the time in the waiting area of the club on a plush couch, talking with a few warped stragglers who radiated empathy though our conversations were barely coherent.

When we were alone, she said, "I wanna go on a date." "Isn't this a date?" I responded.

"No, like a real one where we hold hands and stuff and we're not high."

"Yeah? Where?"

"I was reading Time Out and saw this thing about the Chocolate Show. I wanna see chocolate dresses, maybe try one on," she giggled.

"Ok. Chocolate Show it is."

"You promise?"

I promised. When we left the club around 4 a.m., our ringing ears and cooked bodies were soothed by a cool, cleansing drizzle. After jogging up two unseemly blocks while using storefront awnings for shelter, we found an open cab stopped at a traffic light on a puddle-ridden street comer. We rode back to my place in the Upper West Side with our heads pressed against each other for mutual support.

"How old are you?" I asked her, breaking a silence that lasted 30 blocks. "You promise not to jump out of the cab?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Sixteen. But I'm gonna be seventeen next month."

"I should jump out, I guess," I said smirking and grasping her hand. "We'll be OK. You look young for an old guy."

When we got back to my place, we immediately fell into a sticky, tense embrace as we dropped into my bed. "You're so huggable. You're like a giant stress ball," she giggled.

"Are you stressed about something?"

I made an enormous mistake with that question because she started bombarding me with several unkempt layers of adolescent drama. I just pretended to listen, all the while thinking how incredibly cozy I felt under my covers next to her furnace-like body after having trudged in the rain. I, of course, fell dead asleep. I woke up some unknown hour in the future as she was still talking without regard to who was listening. I dozed again and when I next woke the sky was clear and bright through the sole, opaque window that faced an alley. one p.m. according to my bedside alarm clock.

My body begged for more sleep.

She was awake and playing Tetris on my computer.

"Can I get some food?" she asked when she saw me rustle.

"Money's in the wallet on the desk. Plenty of stuff on Broadway," I said. "Keys?" she asked.

"Check my pants."

I dozed again sometime before she returned home, and when I next awoke she was asleep next to me, with empty canisters of takeout Greek food littering my bedroom floor. That day, we had sex, she napped a bit, and then she left for her father's place in Queens. I crumpled into bed after she left, finding lying still and thinking about nothing in particular to be a perfectly acceptable state of being until my next class.

My next weekend involved no drugs, by my design. I studied in the law library for all of Friday night and had dinner on Saturday with my best non-raving friend in the city, Jim, a brainy, genial college friend who went to work at an investment bank right after school. He wanted me to meet his new girlfriend, a gregarious med student at Cornell that he met through a work acquaintance. At the mid-level Asian fusion restaurant we went to, I felt like a gauche parolee in the company of such a well-adjusted duo, and I wondered in might have lost the ability to socialize in prim settings. As I went home, the thought of my life without E, and, hence, without Lisa, made me uneasy. In the near future, the new couple would say to each other after they've wrapped the pasta salad into Tupperware and were eating some Pepperidge Farm cookies cuddled together on the sofa, "Why doesn't David Kim have a girl right now? He deserves a nice one ... ," and a series of ill-conceived set ups would begin.

When I entered my apartment still feeling a bit of self-pity that night, I found Lisa on my bed, lying naked on top of the covers and sweating like she had just finished a marathon.

I shook her awake and all she said was, "I needed a place to crash tonight. Sorry to scare you."

"How'd you get in?" I demanded.

She pointed nonchalantly to three keys linked by a flimsy chain next to my cheap clock radio on my night-stand. I realized she had made copies when she went out for food the prior weekend.

I let her sleep that night, but I knew then that this was over. I vowed to spend every foreseeable weekend thereafter in the law library. No drugs. No girls. At least I might get good grades and work for a law firm with some tony last names that would impress my more competitive classmates.

Strict liability. A basic law school concept that I learned the very first week. For some crimes, the mere performance of the act is enough to make you guilty, no matter what the assiduously-crafted defense. Statutory rape is a strict-liability crime. In New York, if her 17th birthday is May 10 (like Lisa's), you're a damnable felony sex offender rapist whose name appears on police Web sites if you have sex with her on May 9, and, on May 10, just another horny guy with an enviable, though inapposite, girlfriend. That's the law. Arbitrary but without any doubt. We must draw the line somewhere or the whole world will be Bangkok.
As Lisa slept on my bed as an uninvited guest, I realized I was obligated to take her on one last date: the Chocolate Show, which was being held in the Puck Building all week. After she awoke at noon, she was so excited by the thought that not even the enervating effects of an ecstasy hangover could ebb her enthusiasm. I enjoyed the Chocolate Show way more than I thought I would as we sampled every conceivable spice mixed with cocoa. I probably should not have had sex with her afterward, but she seduced me, stripping naked lasciviously next to my bed after we got back. That didn't matter. The end was fait accompli as soon as I saw my keys.

After sex, she wanted candy and gave me her little "Candy Man" tribute when I said no.

She picked up her jeans and pink tank top off the floor after her song and continued with some futile, cutesy pleas as she put her clothes back on.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to need my keys back," I said when she was upright and fully dressed.

"What?" she stammered, her enticing smile collapsing into disbelief.

"Please give me my keys," I responded looking away from her toward the floor.

"No," she said shaking her head vigorously.

I gave her a peace offering. I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a pen and a Post-It.

"This is my dealer's info," I said. "You don't need me anymore if you got this, right?"

"No deal," she said.

"Give me my keys," I said more forcefully and approached.

"You want it?" she dared as she pulled the keys from her front pocket. "Here."She held the keys before my face.

I grabbed at them, but she pulled back with a teasing, immature smirk.
Angry, I took her by her right wrist and held her to me. "Give me my keys. I'm serious now."

"Let me go, you fucker!" she wailed as she winced and twisted away. Her twiggy arms were surprisingly strong.

With a bit of hesitation, I started to undo her tensed grip with my right hand. She opened her fist and let the keys drop to my floor before I had a chance to apply any real force.

She started to cry as she doubled over like I had just punched her in the stomach. "I'll tell! I'll tell everyone and you'll go to jail, you sick child-molesting fucking asshole!" she screamed as she glowered at me.

"I don't care. Tell whoever you want. You'll have nothing more from me. Take that number if you want, but that's it." I tried to look as reticent as possible given the situation.

"You cut me off, I'll cut your fucking balls off, I swear to fucking God!"

"Go. If you come back, I'll call the police myself and I'll get in trouble, but so will you. Your parents will send you to rehab and you'll come out talking about Jesus and never get high again." I was lying. I would never call the police, not with my humble little piece of the future at stake.

She was sullen and disturbingly quiet at that moment as she stared intently at my decoration-less bedroom wall.

"How's that gonna look to mommy and daddy? Huh? You're fucking some old guy in the city? I bet that'd be the last straw. You'll be in Jesus-camp for good," I said, hoping my words carried a hint of authority.

Instantly erupting into an apoplectic fury, she lashed at me, her right hand in the form of a claw launching toward the ceiling and then slicing downward on my right cheek before I could react. Long, freshly manicured nails fueled by adrenaline tore deep through my skin. I felt several droplets of blood roll warmly down my cheek and was stunned by the puddle of red I wiped up with a single brush of my hand.

When I still remained expressionless, she appeared disconsolate. "Get out," I said. "That number is all you'll need. I'll even vouch for you to him. I'll tell him you're an undergrad. Get out, and we'll forget about everything."

She sobbed a little and then whimpered, "I don't have any money. My parents won't give me any."

I reached into my wallet yet again and gave her every bill in it, ashamed of my hubris for thinking she might've actually felt anything resembling affection for me.
"Is he scary?" she asked, picking up the Post-It.

''No, he's just another fucking law student, just like me."

She took the number and ran out the door.

The scars were pretty unmistakable, three parallel claw marks that ran down the right side of my face at roughly the same angle as my cheekbone. They did not require stitches, but lasted enough days that I had to go to lectures while they remained as magnetic to dispraising eyes as a neon obscenity. Everyone could tell such distinct lines could only have come from a vengeful girl or some feral beast not native to the city. The lingering, speculative stares were enough to make me want to transfer to some sylvan campus where I could realistically blame some rabid raccoon.

At times, I wondered what perfidious sins my classmates bore beneath the haughty facades that law school cultivated in us all. For a few days, I carried mine directly on my face. At least Lisa had fulfilled one of her life goals, if only until my face had time to properly heal. She had really left her mark, a pithy, visceral mark that evinced to all around the worst of my nighttime transgressions.

Thomas Lee resides in New York, New York.