Penduline Press

I called them my “damage walks.” I’d put on headphones, blast music, and hike the steepest roads until the burning in my calves grew stronger than all the problems I felt tangled up in. Those walks were on my mind when I chose Botany 100 as an elective to fill out my courseload. I liked the idea of knowing the names of all those green shapes that surrounded me in the hills above our town.

The police are saying as little as possible. They say, “We’ll be the ones to ask the questions, thank you.” They say this sternly, searching the faces of Dario’s few friends for clues.

The police have his suicide note he left on the windshield of the metallic green Impala that was last driven so long ago, weeds have grown around the tires on all sides.

I checked into the nunnery for 48 hours but it seemed like much longer. I walked there from my house, towing my wheely suitcase. My mother and children walked me there. I didn’t bring any books. I got a sticker to stick on myself that said “In Silence” and a room with a comfortingly ugly bedspread. It was November so it was raining. Didn’t matter since I hardly went outside.

i am a waitress by day. at a vegan restaurant. les vivres. the lives. kitchen so clean you can eat off the floor. and that is what we are doing. night shift is over. and we are all bended over bowls of rice and beans and sweet curry sauce made from blueberries that grow in the greenhouse out back. its me, in my white cotton slip that the hare krishnas gave me when i left their compound. and a black tshirt with a silver spider web on it that some rainbow boy gave me cause his mama didnt like it.

Creature comforts of the mind…those things that keep you from just walking out the door, locking it, and throwing the key into the gutter where you know you’ll never find it. Where you know some child who is watching you from behind the trash heap will scramble down and retrieve it. Where you know he will wait, consult with his pack, and then in the silencing heat of early afternoon, when the housewives of this quiet street are cooling in their sweatdamp beds, or steaming cool water off their arms hanging laundry in the back courtyards, he will bring his streetmates and enter….

My secret power was that I could become invisible.

Mum taught me how. She didn’t mean to. But after Nicola-get-out-of-the-fuckin-way and Nicola-will-you-ever-let-your-father-into-the-loo-so-he-can-do-his-business had sunk into my toddler brain and pissing on the floor hadn’t helped, I copped it – just disappear, so she can’t see you.

In what ways is your writing conformist, and in what ways is it revolutionary?

I write stories about conformists because that’s the culture I was raised in. It’s revolutionary because I write from outside that culture now, but I keep in mind (and hopefully in the reader’s mind) the fact that this particular culture still exists and it’s still dangerous to women and girls and everyone else—except white males. There, I said it.

What artists or events influenced you early on in your experience?

When I was eight years old I saw a Piet Mondrian painting on the cover of a magazine. It struck a chord, the use of black lines, blocks of colour, and white spaces.

Later that year at my school, a painting competition was held. There had been themed competitions before during the year, but in that particular week, the contest had a “leave it up to you” theme. So I used my imagination and came up with something abstract. My teacher truly appreciated how different my entry was. No one at school knew it, but making abstract art was what I did at home, up in my room. I did all sorts of geometric colouring books. I measured out all these squares on paper and then would sit quietly staring at them.

Winning that contest was like, wow! It was one of those instances in your life that goes deep down.