slice: issue 10

a room full of voices

www.slicemagazine.org

excerpts

SPRING/SUMMER 2012 ISSUE 10

GROWING UP

spring/summ

er 2012 issue 10grow

ing upSLIC

E

JOHN FICARRA 20

NINA SANKOVITCH 40

MARTÍN ESPADA 58

OSCAR HIJUELOS 88

CURTIS SITTENFELD 117

JULIA ALVAREZ 134

US $8.00

“His only vice was that he sang old boleros on the weekend in his apartment using a

thick Castilian tongue that made us question his origins. Although the sounds of our curses ran

easily from our mouths, it was hard to forget whom we were talking about. It was hard for any of

us to understand why he, above anyone else, would steal something as irreplaceable as time.”señor ignacio perú Joseph CáCeres

page 10

“I burst out of the bathroom and wagged the positive pregnancy test wand in front of his face.

Immaculate conception is out, I said. God and I aren’t on good enough terms.”YesterdaY’s whales Megan Mayhew BergMan

page 27

“I asked him if there was anything he could do to make my Slurpee taste better and he

poured a healthy dose of vodka in.”night at the reservoir on airline drive Kathy Fish

page 47

“He and Ashley build a castle of primary colors. Yellows and reds. A tower for a princess

and a turreted wall for the king. In the back, Cuth constructs a gallows. He does not tell

Ashley what it is.”after the intromit Douglas w. MilliKen

page 50

“To produce Jar, I’d been informed, Pascal had emptied out a jar of strawberry jam, wrapped it

in newspaper, and then filled it with two hundred milliliters of Ebola-infected chimpanzee blood,

which he’d purchased from a PhD student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

who was in debt to her skunk dealer. All his other recent work was of that same category.”sealed vessels neD BeauMan

page 112

Slice_Issue10_COVER_r2.indd 1 2/25/12 5:28 PM

SPOTLIGHTMAMA’S BOY 129Rachel Maizes

FICTIONSEÑOR IGNACIO PERÚ 10Joseph Cáceres

YESTERDAY’S WHALES 27Megan Mayhew Bergman

THIS IS HOW EVENTUALLY THE WORLD FALLS APART 46Kathy Fish

NIGHT AT THE RESERVOIR ON AIRLINE DRIVE 47Kathy Fish

AFTER THE INTROMIT 50Douglas W. Milliken

IN THIS ISSUE INTERVIEWS

WITH

CURTISSITTENFELD

JOHNFICARRA NINA

SANKOVITCH

MARTÍNESPADA

OSCARHIJUELOS

JULIAALVAREZ

Slice_Issue10_Dummy_Amy_r2.indd 4 2/25/12 6:05 PM

EL CHOLO 64Marytza K. Rubio

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCES 68Nina McConigley

TWO DUCKS 76Sarah Gerard

THUMP-THUMP 86Ariel Faulkner

EVERYTHING I KNOW 98Elizabeth O’Brien

ONLY ONCE, AND EVEN THEN 106John Trotta

SEALED VESSELS 112Ned Beauman

IN THE WAKE OF SILENCE 123Nicole Ducleroir

INTERVIEWSJOHN FICARRA 20Sonia Nayak

NINA SANKOVITCH 40Celia Blue Johnson and Maria Gagliano

MARTÍN ESPADA 58Greg Christie

OSCAR HIJUELOS 88Maria Gagliano and Celia Blue Johnson

CURTIS SITTENFELD 117Tom Hardej

JULIA ALVAREZ 134Elizabeth Blachman

NONFICTIONHOW TO BE A JUVENILE DELINQUENT 36Jaquira Díaz

LIKE MOURNERS’ BREAD 80Kelly Sundberg

THE JOURNEY 94Elizabeth Blachman

POETRYWHISPERS THE ASSASSIN 19Chris Haven

WHEN I CAME TO THE GARDEN, I HAD MUCH TO FEAR 38Bethany L. Carlson

THE KINGDOM OF DIRE HEARTS EVAPORATES 39Bethany L. Carlson

UPON A BIRTH 57J.D. Smith

PICTURES OF LISA 66Justin Bigos

DIAGNOSED 96Katelyn Delvaux

WE DO NOT SWIM 97Katelyn Delvaux

IN THE WRECKAGE 110Lucas Hunt

WHEN THE HOST IS AWAY 111Lucas Hunt


1010

SEÑOR IGNACIO

PERÚJOSEPH CÁCERES

On that distant Wednesday we were awakened

by a yell that sounded late in the evening. At first we

thought someone had died (clarity never comes with

disrupted sleep) and it was a murderous enough sound

for a few, that is, the most curious of us, to respond.

So like a strange monster (with heads protruding

from the windows of the edifice) we saw a man running

barefoot down the Grand Concourse. He had on a pair

of black pants that were held up by suspenders that

crossed over his big exposed belly, and he screamed

some foolishness into the night. The infamous palo

abandoned at the building entrance gave way to his

identification. It was Señor Ignacio Perú. By the way he

was moving we thought he was drunk (and confirmed it

after he rushed past some corner bum and knocked him

off the milk crate he sat on), but when he jumped into

the air, it seemed that he’d clicked his heels, and we real-

ized that alcohol alone could not bear the responsibility

for this hullabaloo. At this point we stopped trying to

make sense of Señor Ignacio and said that some miracle

must have kept that cripple (and those stitches) from

tragedy and shame since he had landed on his feet (and

his moon-shaped belly continued to jiggle without rip-

ping his pants).

Laughter. One of us said that maybe the muertos

were chasing him because he tapped that palo the

wrong way. Our eyes closed hard to fight off the tears,

lost in laughter. Then, one minute he was in front of the

vivero and, moments later, he seemed to have disap-

peared. That’s when one of us said that Señor Ignacio

must have heard us, took one look over his shoulder, saw

us cackling and flew.

Once we realized we were watching the dark we got

angry. We screamed at him and called him a mamão for

wasting our time. Yet we stayed at the windows for a

while longer, laughing at our own stupidity—really wait-

DRAWING BY KIRSTEN STOLLE


11

ing for the reason for his outburst—until the silent street

was the only answer we got. Still confused, we all went

back into our apartments.

During that time the others, that is, the ones who

had covered their ears with pillows and who didn’t find

humor in the situation, told us to shut up. Some even

got out of their beds and slammed their windows shut

in spite of the fact that it was the second night of what

became a three-day heat wave. They placed a great

importance on the fact that peace had been stolen from

them and announced that the things from outside made

all of our lives that much worse. Their complaints only

added to the noise that moments before had begun to

die, and—frustrated—we all closed the windows.


66

There’s this picture

of me in bed

with Cindy and

Lisa. We’re drinking

Bud with our shirts off.

My hands are on

their tits. Lisa

looks asleep

because she blinked.

This was all Scott’s

idea. He said

it would be cool

if Cindy blew me but

Lisa said don’t.

It was Scott’s last night

before jail. He’d taken

a tire iron to Carl

after Carl beat him

at arm-wrestling and

Lisa couldn’t stop

laughing. Carl’s short

but he’s got muscles

from his job. They flex

like he’s talking.

He and Lisa

almost had a baby

two times. She says

it’s over. She turns away

when I tell her

she’s pretty. There’s this

star she points to

when she’s high.

Pictures of Lisa

JUSTIN BIGOS


67

Some nights it moves.

She says it’s us

that’s spinning. She tastes

like honeysuckle

and blood. I don’t know

what she wants

from me. Maybe nothing

but a way to forget

Carl, or Scott,

her graveyard shifts

at the warehouse.

Sometimes we drive

to West Swanzey,

once all the way down

to Troy. We bring coolers

of beer and chips.

We lie in the shade.

The out of town

plates ride slowly through

the streets. They’re here

to watch the leaves

turn red before

they’re burned. Soon kids

will be banging

on doors dressed

like monsters. Lisa’s

scared. She won’t say

she loves me. I would

name our child

Carl if she wanted.

Anything. I pray

for Scott to stay

in jail forever.

One time he ripped

out my earring

just because. He’s

the one person

I will kill

if he makes me.

I’m not so young

as everyone says.

He said one baby

was his. He showed me

a picture of Lisa

sitting up in bed,

hugging a sheet.

Her eyes were pink

from the flash. I stole

his camera when

they took him. I thought

I could fill it

with proof of who

makes Lisa cry

out to heaven

from every angle. But

the next day was so

quiet I wasted

all the pictures

on rocks and leaves.

The tree I carved

a star in. The clouds

moving high above

Lisa all afternoon

as she slept.


117

The women Curtis Sittenfeld writes about are all a little like her. They are

smart, funny, and complicated women—whether we’re talking about Lee

dealing with issues of class at a Massachusetts boarding school in Prep, or

Hannah, an insecure woman trying to navigate through her life in The Man

of My Dreams, or Alice Blackwell, the future First Lady of the United States

in American Wife. But Sittenfeld is also a good enough writer that each is

fully drawn and distinct from the others (and from her). We discussed how

she got into writing, her inspirations, and what she’s working on next.

AN INTERVIEW WITH

TOM HARDEJ

CURTIS SITTENFELD

PHOTOGRAPH © DARIO ACOSTA


118

SLICE ISSUE 10

What made you want to be a writer? What was your

process for getting where you are now as a novelist?

I was one of those people who always wrote

from a very young age. I learned to read and

write around kindergarten or first grade. I always wrote

stories, and then I never stopped. Obviously it’s a little

different to do it as a hobby and to do it professionally.

When I was in college, I worked for the student newspa-

per, and I interned at magazines. And the summer I

graduated from college, which was 1997, I was an intern

at the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. I was

working as a general assignment reporter, which I was

pretty bad at, but I learned a lot.

After that I got a job at the business magazine Fast

Company, which was then a new magazine, writing

about Silicon Valley and the new economy. I was a

reporter there, and I stayed there only for about a year

and a half, and then I went to graduate school at the

Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I continued to write nonfiction

and fiction, and to do articles, but before Prep came

out, I supported myself taking journalistic assignments;

but I’ve always done a little bit of both. Prep came out

in 2005.

And Prep was a part of your thesis at Iowa?

It was like I was writing sections of Prep, and

then some of it was my thesis. This is a tiny

difference, but I wouldn’t say I wrote it for my thesis. I

would say that I was writing it, and I used it for my

thesis. The first part of Prep that I ever wrote was in

January 2000, which was my second semester of my

first year at the workshop, and it was what became the

last chapter. It wasn’t like I started on page one and

really systematically worked my way forward. I kind of

dipped in and out. I might write what would become a

chapter of Prep, and then I would go and write a short

story about entirely different characters.

I graduated from Iowa in 2001, and that was when

I had almost backed my way into writing a novel, or I

had pretended to myself that I wasn’t writing a novel,

because it was intimidating to think that I was. At that

point I thought, I need to look at what I’ve written so far

and figure out what I need to do to finish it. To my sur-

prise, because I had written different chapters as these

entirely different sections, or almost like short stories, I

had over 300 pages. So then I thought, okay, I need to

fill in this hole; there’s a big hole in the character’s fall

of her sophomore year or spring of her junior year. And

I thought it would take me six months to finish, and I

think it took me like eighteen months. But eventually, to

my astonishment, I did finish.

Did you have a literary agent at this point? Or were

you working in hopes that some day it would be

publishable?


129129

As soon as Mrs. Cossgrove turned off the dormitory lights, and the slap of her oxfords against

the flagstone path receded, Lila hopped on Reese’s

cot. She kneaded Reese’s chest, her claws pricking his

pajamas, her long, gray fur tickling his wrists. Reese

closed his eyes and breathed in the cat’s smell—a mix

of cold, tree bark, leaves all but melted into the earth,

and also a raw scent, of mice perhaps. Petting her, his

breathing slowed like it did when he solved equations,

everything balancing out in large, white letters on the

chalkboard.

Around him, boys argued about who was the great-

est, Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb. The 1960 season had just

begun.

Reese massaged the top of Lila’s head.

Melbourne, a boy lying two cots over, said to Reese,

“What do you think, faggot? Huh, fairy? Ruth or Cobb?”

“He’ll say Ruth. He thinks you mean a girl,” Wendell

called across the room. He was a heavy boy, and his

words reverberated against the long, gray walls.

“He wishes he was a girl.” Melbourne threw back his

covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“Maybe he is. Maybe his name isn’t Reese. Maybe it’s

Rose.” Wendell slapped the ends of the other boys’ beds

as he closed in on Reese.

Reese rolled to the floor. He didn’t want the boys to

find Lila, and he was sure to end up there anyway. He

had recently grown, his body stretched out like a boat

paddle, his limbs now long and wide, making for an easy

target. The boys struck his arms and back, yanked off

his pajama bottoms.

“Looks like you’re a boy after all,” Wendell said. They

continued to hit him until Wendell was breathing hard,

sweat rolling off his brow and falling on Reese’s legs.

The large boy climbed off.

Melbourne seemed reluctant to quit, punching Reese

a few more times. “Ah, you’re hardly worth it,” he said,

finally standing and stretching his arms.

Reese found Lila where he had left her. Though his

arm ached, he petted her, counting one stroke for each

MAMA’S BOY

RACHEL MAIZES

ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER


130

SLICE ISSUE 10

week until he would board the train home, ten strokes in

all. He had no one but himself to blame for the way the

boys treated him.

In the morning, Lila woke Reese, stamping her nose

into the side of his arm. Soon Mrs. Cossgrove would wake

the other boys. “I’ll rip those cobwebs right out of your

heads if you don’t get up,” she would shout from the

door.

Reese stumbled to the bathroom. If he hurried, he

could wash without having his face pushed in the toilet.

He cringed at his image in the mirror. The morning of

his departure for school, his father had taken a razor to

his hair, which had been as curly as a pug’s tail and the

color of yams. It grew back in angry spikes no amount of

combing could soften.

Lila was gone when he returned to his bed. She hid

during the day. The groundskeeper, Mr. Collins, had his

own way of keeping down the population of cats. When

he caught one, he dragged it in a sack to the lake beyond

the hockey field. The wail of the unlucky animal split the

air, traveling to the far ends of the school property—from

the gravel parking lot where the boys were dropped at

the beginning of each semester to the barbed-wire fence

thrown up by a neighbor and marked private property.

In the heart of the New Hampshire winter, when the lake

froze, Collins wasn’t deterred. A single shot from his Colt

ended the animal’s life.

While the other boys rose and dressed, Reese sat

in the garden, Tennyson open on his knees. He recited

the poem “All Things Will Die,” which they were to have

memorized for the day:

Yet all things must die.

The stream will cease to flow;

The wind will cease to blow;

The clouds will cease to fleet;

The heart will cease to beat;

For all things must die.

Reese didn’t want his parents to die, or his older sis-

ter Sarah, or Lila, but at times he wanted to cut short his

own life at fourteen years.

His problems hadn’t begun at school. At home he

had often sneaked into Sarah’s room, going through her

dresser, caressing the fabrics, the panties and half slips,

trying them on before the mirror, his private parts tucked

between his legs. The touch of silk brought goose bumps

to his skin, and speeded up his heart, though he couldn’t

say why. One Sunday afternoon his father caught him.

“Depravity!” his father shouted, his face turning as

gray as the switch he ripped from the maple and beat

Reese with.

A few days later his father announced he was send-

ing Reese to Havermaster Academy. “He needs the com-

pany of boys. You girls,” he said, sweeping his arm in an

arc that took in Reese’s sister and his mother, “coddle

him. He’s surrounded by needlepoint and sweet rolls. He

should be playing baseball or hockey, but you keep him

hidden in your skirts. No wonder he thinks he’s a girl!”

Reese ached for the home from which he’d been

banished. He longed for hand-sewn quilts as he tossed

beneath military blankets. He ate with his eyes closed,

pretending the gray mashed potatoes and dull meat-

loaf were a soufflé. He yearned for his mother’s en-

dearments, whispered them to himself in the shower,

plugged his ears against the housemother’s rough

orders. His homesickness put the other boys off, and he

made no friends.

Reese ached for the home from

which he’d been banished. He

longed for hand-sewn quilts as he

tossed beneath military blankets.

He ate with his eyes closed,

pretending the gray mashed

potatoes and dull meatloaf were

a soufflé. He yearned for his

mother’s endearments, whispered

them to himself in the shower,

plugged his ears against the

housemother’s rough orders.


134

ELIZABETH BLACHMAN

Julia Alvarez’s first novel, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, is a classic

coming-of-age novel—but Alvarez structures the tale chronologically back-

wards, so the four García girls begin as adults and grow younger throughout

the work. When time works in reverse, the moments of childhood, its small

sins and strange discoveries, feel like the climax of who we will become.

Other of her novels make similar trips—the tale of a woman in her sixties

who joins Castro’s revolution is woven with the past of her mother; a woman

looks back on the coming of age of her three sisters and the series of events

that led to their deaths as martyrs of a brutal dictatorship. Even a nonfiction

piece about quinceañeras—one of many books Alvarez has written for young

adults—becomes in part a journey into the past as she remembers what it

was like to grow up as a Latina in the ’60s. As Alvarez’s characters trace

their way back through the episodes that crafted their identities, it becomes

clear that children are creatures of the moment. Growing up is for adults. It is

the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

We asked the novelist and poet about growing up under a dictatorship

in the Dominican Republic, about her work with the sustainable farm and

literacy center that she and her husband started there, and about how

memories become the stuff of stories.

AN INTERVIEW WITH

JULIA ALVAREZ


135

The theme of this issue of Slice magazine is Growing

Up. We thought of you right away because I devoured

your novels when I was a teenager, and also because

so much of your work sheds light on what it means

to come of age. I was wondering why you decided to

organize How the García Girls Lost Their Accents in

reverse chronological order so that the four sisters

grow younger throughout the novel.

It’s easy to tell you in retrospect why I

structured the narrative in García Girls that

way. But it’s never as easy or clear a process when you

are inside a mess and trying to make it a novel! Years

later, after many interviews and Q&As, you come up with

brilliant answers, as if these choices came full-blown like

Athena from Zeus’s head. So my honest reply: I wasn’t

satisfied with the traditional chronological bildungsro-

man model of starting with early childhood and ending

when the writer/artist/protagonist comes of age. This

wasn’t the traditional, canonical artist-as-a-young-man

story, so I was fooling around with how to structure the

whole. And I thought, well, structure should recreate the

way that I want the reader to experience the story. And

that’s when I thought, I want my reader to be thinking

“like an immigrant,” always “going back to where we

came from”; instead of progress toward a climax, a

return to a homeland.

The structure also mirrored this quirky habit of mind

I had: whenever I was going through some big mile-

stone in my life in the United States—shipped off to

boarding school, kissed by a guy for first time—I’d think,

you were once a little tiguerita from another world

and language! Look at you now! It’s like I had to pinch

myself to believe that this moment was happening to

the little know-nothing kid I still carry inside me. Again,

always going back. Maybe we all do this? And I fool

myself that this is the immigrant experience?

I’ve always loved how García Girls ends with this one

sin from Yolanda’s childhood, where she steals a tiny

kitten from its mother and the act haunts her. Those

small moments from childhood feel so significant.

Would you share a memory or moment from your own

childhood that stays with you?

PHOTOGRAPH © BILL EICHNER


136

SLICE ISSUE 10

I remember reading Wordsworth in college,

“Intimations of Immortality from Recollections

of Early Childhood,” and the Prelude, where he writes

about “those spots of time,” moments of “renovating

virtue” he keeps returning to for sustenance. Those

moments give him “intimations of immortality.” For me

they are not just moments of renovating virtue. They can

also be terrifying moments that continue to haunt me.

Moments that have this luminous quality: time sort of

opens up.

I write about one of those moments in a poem in

my collection The Woman I Kept to Myself. I call it

“Intimations of Mortality from a Recollection in Early

Childhood.” It was a moment when I was four or five

or six—those years merge with each other . . . I looked

down at my arm, and it’s as if by doing so, I had pulled a

plug, and suddenly I was yanked down into my physical

body. I was flesh and bone (little hairs, little pores, little

beads of sweat), transfixed, and trapped! I had become

incarnate. And, alas, mortal. I don’t know why it took me

four, five, six years to realize I would travel through life

in a body, but there you go.

Do you ever use those moments in your stories?

Absolutely, I use those moments in stories,

and especially in poems. It might be that lyric

poems are all about those moments—not just relating

them, but creating them in language for the reader. Yes,

that happens when you are writing, the very process of

writing creates those moments. I have luminous memo-

ries that I’m not sure I actually lived or lived them in my

reading or in my writing. Does it matter?

What books or authors were most important to you

when you were growing up?

I can’t pass myself off as an early reader.

Growing up in the Dominican Republic, I hated

books, especially because they delivered stories via the

solitary act of reading, of separating yourself from

others. Ours was an oral culture; stories came through

living, breathing people. It was also a “we” culture,

where pleasure came in the collective. I should add that

it was also a dictatorship, where the act of reading was

subversive, branded you an intellectual, a troublemaker.

Reading was not something that I recall being encour-

aged in my family or in the culture around me. Kids get a

big kick when I tell them that I was a terrible student and

flunked every grade through fifth. That said, I always

clarify that I loved stories, and in an oral culture, I had

plenty of storytellers all around me. So actually it was

books, as in censored, bland, lifeless texts, that I hated.

But I do recall one wonderful picture book my aunt

(the only reader in the family) brought me as a gift, The

Arabian Nights. The cover showed an olive-skinned girl

with dark hair and eyes who could have been Domini-

can. She was Scheherazade, captive in the sultan’s

court, telling stories to keep herself alive, and in the

process changing the sultan’s bloodthirsty ways, and

ending up marrying him. (This was the kid’s version, re-

member.) Wow, this little piece of luminous information

slipped into my head: that stories have power, that they

can transform others, that they can save your life.

In your adult novels you often write from the

perspective of your characters as children, and of

course in your novels for younger readers you are also

writing from a child’s perspective. What, if anything, is

different when you are writing for adults versus when

you are writing for young people?

That is a good question. When people ask me

about my kids’ books, I say, “I write for

children of all ages.” I don’t have those separations in my

head when I am writing: this is for kids, this is for adults,

this is for poetry lovers, this is for Latino/as. I think those

categories often have more to do with marketing and

sales strategies than with something integral to the

books themselves. Would The Adventures of Huckle-

berry Finn now be published by the children’s division of

a publishing house? How about Great Expectations? I

think three of my “children’s books” especially (Return

to Sender, Finding Miracles, and Before We Were Free)

take on serious, adult issues through the point of view of

young protagonists.

Perhaps with my Tía Lola books, it did make a dif-

ference that I was thinking of my readers as young


slice: issue 10

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