Issue 13 - Spring 2022

creative nonfiction

Thick, Curly Hair

It’s a girl, she said to two people, who deep in their gut thought they would hear the opposite. Swallowing our shock, we looked to the screen as the technician showed us just how much hair you already had. We spied little squiggly lines waving around in the amniotic fluid.

Months later, with my mother by my right side and my husband and the attending nurse each supporting one of my legs, I pushed a baby into the hot, fluorescent lights of this world. Sure enough, you emerged with a full head of silky, fine black hair.

You know it will all fall out; she’ll probably be bald for a while, they said to two people, who were wondering if they could keep you alive long enough to lose a single strand. We smoothed down your wild mane, which seemed to be soaking up whatever radiance it could each day so that every day after your birth, your tresses were lighter than the day before.

Months later, (you never did lose that hair, never even had a bald spot), your hair texture changed, as I knew it must. A baby born to two very curly-haired parents could not have straight hair. It started with the ends curling ever so slightly and the back layer of your very thick locks spiraling from the roots. All the while, your hair continued to absorb all the brightness of the world and there was a nimbus making its way around your head.

She looks like a little doll with all those ringlets, they said to two people, who were so grateful to finally be pulled from the fog of surviving your first year. It was the ring of fireflies, the corona of sunshine, the bonnet of light around your face that pulled us out of our daze and burned the mist away. Your honey-dipped spirals acted as our lantern, brightening up our days.

Months later, when the coily corkscrews had worked their way around your entire head, the battles began, as I knew they would. A little girl with such a firelight inside of her would not allow her glorious crown to be flattened by the assault of wash day. Bribery and threats were employed in order to rinse away the grime that assailed the splendor of your diadem.

Tell your husband to get ready to fend off the boys, they say to me, but I believe we will raise you in such a way that a bodyguard will not be necessary. If our strategy proves successful, you’ll grow up fully aware of your inner torchlight and all the dazzling powers you possess. These “boys,” whoever they may be, will be struck by your aureole and their only response will be to marvel at the rays emanating from every part of who you are.

Years in the future, I pray we see them all, I know I’ll always be able to find you in class photos, at birthday parties, in any crowd anywhere in the world. The blaze of whorls around your face will act as your flare, signaling me to where you are. And every few days, at least while you’re little, I know you’ll eventually let me win as I pull my fingers full of conditioner through your thick, curly hair.

—Celesté Cosme

Dear Diary

As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a teenager.

During a bout of strep throat, I begged my dad to buy me Teen magazine along with my penicillin and 7-Up. I pored over the pages as though pursuing a master’s degree. I read the issue cover-to-cover, over and over again. From skincare routines to saying the L-word, what to expect on prom night and does-he-like-you quizzes, there was so much to know! An ambitious 10-year-old, I needed to start now; junior high a mere two years away.

Flipping through that first magazine blossomed into an insatiable desire to learn everything it meant to grow up. I’d create shopping lists, knowing that no teen girl could survive without a pot of Noxema, or Doc Martens. I’d wonder if I could ever be as pretty as the Barbizon girl advertised in the back of Seventeen magazine. YM’s “Say Anything” column, a collection of reader-submitted embarrassing moments, showed me just how traumatic the next few years would be. I prepared for my period leaking through my pants, or getting busted picking a wedgie by my crush. Wow, being a teen was sure going to be full of embarrassing moments!

Writing in a diary felt like a critical activity for any teenager. Imagine my excitement when my mother bought one for my 10th birthday.

Four-by-six inches with gold-trimmed pages, encapsulated by a shiny cardboard cover decked with pink hearts. And then, the coolest part: a lock and key. I’d hide it somewhere really secure, like my underwear drawer.

I started writing that very night.

July 1, 1992. Then, Dear Diary.

I bitched about my 5th grade teacher (coffee breath to the max!). I complained about warbled-voiced Cassie Nelson landing solos in every class musical. I wrote about my crushes. Andrew, the shy, adorable one; Mark, the bad boy whose shiny bowl cut cornered the market at Lily Lake Elementary. Joe was the funniest kid in our class. He used a lot of hair gel, and liked rap music with Parental Advisory warnings. Edgy!

Specifically, I recall lamenting how one of the boys I liked didn’t know I existed. I mean, of course he knew—there were only 25 kids in our class. But did he drift off to sleep to the sounds of Mariah Carey’s Music Box, thinking of me like I was thinking of him? Maybe, but I doubted it.

It was quite clear why he didn’t consider me his “Dream Lover” or “Hero” or the Mariah to his Tommy Mattola. I was hideous! I was fat, weird, and didn’t have a spiral perm, which is clearly what makes a 10-year-old boy’s heart palpitate. I slammed the door to my bedroom, plopped down at my desk, scribbling in blue erasable pen, “I’m going to get a perm, get skinny, and get him!”

I’m simultaneously embarrassed and heartbroken that pre-teen thought I needed to change everything about my body for boys to like me. Especially when the actual reason boys didn’t like me is because they were also 10 and only cared about playing Sega Genesis and whether or not their parents were going to get them a Starter jacket for Christmas.

A few weeks later, I hit up open skating at the local rink with my two best friends. Our moms sat in the bleachers, gossiping and drinking Diet Coke. I stepped off the ice to ask my mom for a snack from the concession stand. She and the other moms laughed, and I asked, What’s so funny?

Oh, we were just talking about which boy you like. Andrew, Mark or Joe!

Omg. Here it was. My YM “Say Anything” moment. And I wasn’t even an actual teen yet! How did she know? I couldn’t even bring myself to talk about my crushes to my friends.

That evening, I retreated to my room to work out my feelings. It was then I saw the gold button below the keyhole. All one needed to do to crack the code was slide the lock’s button down. My mom not only read it, but told everyone what I’d written.

Mortified didn’t scratch the surface.

At the time, I wanted to part the clothes in my closet and step into Narnia, praying the fart cloud of shame couldn’t follow me. I hated the moments my mom poked through the hard shell I’d built around my soft skin. For as long as I can remember, I never, ever cried in front of my mother, fearing it would expose the places that hurt me most. When I got my period at 12, I said nothing—instead, I used wadded-up toilet paper, then wrote letters to Tampax asking for free samples. I found their address in an issue of Teen magazine. With my secrets out in the open, she was locked and loaded with ammo to hurt me and wasted no time unleashing the bullets. 

Years later, my own father said my mom bragged about reading my diary, saying, you have to check this out! It’s hilarious! She’d started reading it immediately, as though it was the whole reason she bought it in the first place. I’ve read through my old notes, and they are, indeed, hysterical. However, in between the mortifying confessions, I’ve found ample proof of a troubled child, seeking love and validation. I cannot believe my mother read that I thought I was fat and ugly in my own handwriting and ignored it.

When faced with an opportunity to love me, she laughed at me.

There will come a time when my little girl loathes something about herself, and I can already feel hot tears streaming down my face. 

This is what it’s like to be raised by a Borderline mother. Instead of being uplifted, you’re shamed. Instead of being loved, you’re neglected. She’s not crushed by your low self-esteem. She loves it.

I never wrote in a diary again.

—Molly Katt

Crumbs

2003

Mom and I have a secret. A secret made of saccharine, starch, syrupy sweetness. A secret that lowers us from the weightiness of the world into a miniscule metropolis. One that pays homage to cavity-causing glucose bombs and fibrous whole grains alike. The secret involves no other than our white Cuisinart toaster.

Every few days, Mom lets me empty the crumb tray; a mundane, oft-neglected task. I pull out the contraption, wide-eyed and eager, as if I’m a miner descending upon specks of gold. My eyes scan the contents that lay within. Though for what, I’m unsure. Sprinkles from my Pop Tarts—white, red, yellow, orange—pop out, confetti-like. Then there are the brown granules from Mom’s morning toast. And a lone dollop of icing, if I’m lucky, from my brother’s weekend cinnamon buns.

What fugitives of breakfasts past will I find? The tray is a graveyard for all the particles that don’t make it. A final sendoff before they enter the realm of the landfill, spared from our salivating mouths and nutrient-hungry intestines.

Unlike the other chores Mom gives me, this doesn’t feel like busy work. It’s as if a subconscious impulse tucked away inside of her was trying to tell me something. How could I make sense of these fragments? What imparting words did they carry? Some answers aren’t ever answers, Mom teaches me, but gateways to more questions.

2013

“Shit, I’m already ten minutes late for class!” Anthony says, glancing down at his phone. “Can you just give it to me?”

He watches as I fumble through the cabinets, trying not to make noise yet failing miserably. A delicate rouge spreads across his plump cheeks. As his tousled blonde locks frame his boyish features, I can’t help but wonder if I’m staring at a porcelain figurine.   

I prematurely pop the bagels out of the toaster. They’re somewhere between soft and crispy. Warm enough to partially melt the cheese, though not enough to strip the turkey slices of their chill. I fashion sandwiches for the both of us, willing my hands to work as if an imaginary timer sits in my periphery, ticking down the seconds. My apartment hangs on to the glutenous aroma, captures the silence that lingers before the calamity of the day gives way.

“We’ll meet up after class, yeah?” I ask Anthony, allowing my eyelids to droop as I lean in for a kiss. His chapped lips meet mine. I’m momentarily whisked into the bubble of bliss that envelops every young and in love nineteen-year-old.

“Mhmm,” he says, grabbing his skateboard, which he props against the same chipped part of the wall each day. He turns back with a sheepish smile. Then, as the front door slams shut, sending a reverberation through the small space, I’m reacquainted with a searing loneliness. Like clockwork, it visits me at the same time each day. Yet I remain defensive, unwilling to acknowledge the asphyxiating grip it has over me.

Alyssa appears from the bedroom we share. It’s clear she’s been awake for some time, the sleep long having abandoned her almond-shaped eyes.

“Morning,” I say, in as chipper a voice as I can muster.

“Hey,” she says, her voice flat. Be roommates with your best friend, they said. It’ll be like an endless sleepover, they said. 

I move aside with my untouched bagel, making space for Alyssa to retrieve a bowl and spoon from the cupboard.

“You have your fem studies lecture today, right?” I ask, looking to now fill the silence I so recently savored.

“Yeah, not until two though,” she says.

“Nice,” I reply, rummaging my mind for additional points of conversation. Coming up empty, nervous tics begin to emerge. Tap, tap, tap. My fingernails drum a tune on the table, and I reach for my phone, hoping it’ll provide a useful distraction. No new notifications.

I sigh, nibble on my breakfast. My eyes dart around, looking for an anchor to occupy my attention as I take larger and larger bites. Alyssa’s lavender pajama bottoms. Stained doilies on our dining table. Twelve shot glasses lined up above the stove.

The silver toaster catches my awareness, sitting idly in its own corner. Then I remember. The crumb tray. I give the appliance a good shake, then lean against the cool countertop, tucking my fingers into the handle at the bottom. Like a child about to peek into her stocking on Christmas day, I brace myself. Then I open it. My eyes focus and refocus in the low lighting, attempting to make sense of what sits within. I’m enveloped in a cocktail of feelings, hit with an intoxication that pulls me down. Disappointed, distraught, dismayed. Save for a few stragglers here and there, the tray is empty. 

2018

Sandhya bustles through the kitchen. The fluorescent lights cast a sheen upon her caramel-streaked hair, which she’s pulled into a loose ponytail. Her wrist moves up and down, maneuvering the chef’s knife through a beefsteak tomato. The sound of the knife against the chopping board reverberates across the off-white kitchen walls. Thun, thun, thun.

To her, that beefsteak is Dad’s head, I think.

Dad, meanwhile, hasn’t budged from his semi-supine position on the leather couch in the living room. Every so often I hear a crunch, as he reaches into the bowl of salted peanuts, which sits atop his distended belly. It’s followed by a slurp. His habit of self-soothing with a glass of Johnny Walker began as an occasional indulgence. Then a weekly occurrence. Now it’s a daily routine, more predictable than his circadian rhythm.

I sit at the marble-top dining table, gazing down at my novel. The words appear foreign, as if I’m reading Khmer. Or Hebrew. After enough time seems to have passed, I turn the page, keeping up the charade of engrossment. Yet, my attention flits around the room, bouncing beyond my control like corn kernels popping in a steel pan. My reptilian brain is on high alert, expecting a surprise attack at any moment. Don’t let your guard down, it whispers, leaving a trail of icy breath across my neck.

I’m not myself here. It’s as if, by stepping through the black gates of the residence, I shed my identity and don a corset that buckles my lungs into place. Thoughtless. Speechless. Breathless.

“This is your home,” Foi, Dad’s older sister, reminds me. But my inner compass points away, navigating me to where, I’m uncertain. Though I know it’s anywhere but here.

Sandhya’s voice slices through the cloud of animosity that hangs over the space. “Dinner is ready.”

I jump to attention, shutting my book and standing to shuffle the grey chairs into place. The dining table is scattered with random acquisitions of the week: a gas station receipt, breath mints, hot sauce packets from Taco Bell. I push them to the periphery. My eyes scan the surrounding space for something to occupy myself with. As if reading my mind, Sandhya nudges a loaf of bread toward me. Tucking it under my arm, I face the dozens of drawers and compartments that inhabit in the kitchen, a product of Dad’s recent renovations. Another aspect of his new life that feels extraneous.

I look for the toaster. I expect to see it in its usual spot, next to the empty yogurt containers. But it’s not there. My head becomes heavy as I sift through the remainder of the grey cabinets. Cockroach carcasses, mold-infested marmalade, a chipped piece of fine china. And what the hell is that stain? I pinch my nose in disgust. What was once orderly has succumbed to disarray. A sudden bout of melancholy cloaks me, wetting my eyes so that all becomes a blur.

“Wh-where’s the toaster?” I ask Sandhya, diverting my gaze to the wooden floor.

“Oh,” she pauses for a second, startled, as if I’ve pulled her from a trance. “It’s in the other pantry down the hall.” Sandhya slides into her seat at the dinner table, furthest from mine.

My breath slows as I approach the hallway. Dad gives me a buzzed smile as we cross paths. He reaches to pat my head. But I shift my body away and return his affection with a scowl, unable to muster the energy to mask my enmity.

I flip the switch on the left side of the pantry. The single bulb on the ceiling flutters for a few seconds, then casts out a dim light that bathes me in its warm glow. I scan the belongings that are stacked to the ceiling, that cover every square inch of the brown floor. The scents of my childhood waft over me, and I pause. Clove, ginger, turmeric. A smile begins to form at the corner of my mouth, then recedes. I overhear Dad and Sandhya in the kitchen, their shrill voices piercing my newfound bubble of peace.   

My concentration returns to the task at hand. Perched in its own forgotten crevice is the toaster. It’s the only unfamiliar item taking residence in the cramped space, the black exterior and shiny metallic knobs uncharacteristically contemporary in this closest of spices traded during the Silk Road era.

I grab hold of the toaster, allowing its weight to press into my arms. The gates of my past burst, and I succumb to the nostalgia for a brief second. What might it hold? Where might it take me? My shoulders relax as I’m filled with curiosity, with anticipation. Using the tips of my fingers, I pull the tray open. Clusters of chaos take up every square centimeter—nay, millimeter—of the 4x6 crumb collector. There are black burn spots, caked on granules that show no sign of surrendering their precious real estate. My eyes scan for a sign of recognition, for a familiar scent to communicate that all is well. Finding none, I slam the tray back into its place. And accept that it’s another thing in this world that’s damaged beyond salvation.

2021

The midmorning sun floods through the glass doors. My neighbor’s lawnmower gives off a low hum in the distance, helping to downplay the incessant chatter within my mind. I’m in the midst of a Zoom meeting. Except instead of being urged to sit in front of our screens, we are instructed to take a short walk. And to notice. To notice something that yearns to be seen; to be explained. 

I pace the kitchen of my townhouse, running my hands along the magnets that hold baby pictures and physical therapy exercises to the refrigerator. “Lake Tahoe, Vancouver, Seattle Aquarium,” I read aloud in a whisper.

The digital clock shows 10:33. Only four more minutes. A sigh escapes my lips as I feel the pressure rising in the distance like a tidal wave.

This is a mindfulness exercise, I remind myself with a chuckle. 

Three years in this home, and its contents begin to feel familiar. Familiarity, ironically a sensation with which I’m most unfamiliar. Yet I find myself reeled in by its presence, by its promise. A promise of peace, stability, and planting strong roots.      

I hear Mom’s footsteps upstairs. Watch as she saunters down the steps, humming to herself, which I know signals she is seeking momentary refuge in one of the taped off sections of her mind. Inaccessible, indescribable, integral.

Ready to resign myself to the magnets, I happen upon the ceramic plate she’s left in the sink earlier. My eyes follow it back to the toaster. The toaster. The toaster. The toaster.

I shuffle to its abode, where it’s plugged in beside the overpriced Costco blender I thought I’d use every day, but seldom do. My neck cranes forward, peering down into the twin toasting compartments. I allow my attention to linger there, taking in the tiny pieces that lay scattered throughout, savoring the bready scent that opens a cornucopia of possibility. 

The crumb tray slides out easily, yet I have a sudden impulse to close my eyes. To allow the moment to pass, to shift my observations elsewhere. But the secret—our secret—it beckons. And its pull is too strong for me to resist. Without further hesitation, I take it in, holding my breath like a pearl diver preparing to enter the deepest part of the ocean.

A meticulous medley of brown bits. Oddly uniform in their color, their consistency, their placement. My extremities tingle. I’m wrapped in a giddiness that feels out of proportion to the situation at hand.

Returning to my seat, I will the tray to retain its composition forever. To hold it all together. But I exhale, succumbing to the fact that it spins in a state of persistent flux. Never the same, an infinite combination of odds. Some painful, others rife with pleasure.

—Brina Patel

Mothers Perfume 

My mother wore vanilla fields perfume.

Her room always smelled of a field of flowers as my brother and I snuck into her bed under the cover of moonlight. The house felt too big, her scent ending in the middle of the staircase, never blooming in our upstairs rooms. It felt like her protection ended when we couldn’t smell her.

My blankets smell like vanilla, as moonlight steals in through the windows, I feel the covers shift as my son sneaks into my bed, crawling up into my arms as I pretend to be asleep.

The overstuffed blue couch, the coatrack on the kitchen wall…totems of her ever-vigilant love, watching over us as we crashed down the stairs on a carpet tube, slid on socked feet across the hardwood floor of the dining room, and even watched every song we jammed to on Guitar Hero. Her perfume would linger on our clothes while we were in school, a quick inhale to root us in safety.

Vanilla settles around my apartment, tickling the nose of those who walk by the coatrack in the hallway, and drapes the shoulders of anyone who sits on the couch. Gently nodding along to my son, as he plays Rock Band drums.

For a while, on Fridays, I could smell the faint linger of fried fish trying to overpower the vanilla, as the weight of work settled heavily onto my mothers’ shoulders.

Sometimes the vanilla doesn’t cover the scent of work, my heart heavy and limbs sore. I wonder if my son can smell it as he greets me at the door, a smile pushing its way out regardless of my fatigue, my tired arms reaching for him.

We didn’t know, my brother and I…as children often don’t, but when she changed her perfume, she threw a way a piece of her past. A piece she helped me remember as joyful, but for her, the memories are more complicated. I think, maybe now, I understand.

—Amber Pierson

The West Virginia Brown Dog

Rescue dogs in West Virginia come in all shapes, sizes, and breed configurations, but there’s one thing you’ll notice when you survey your choices: most of them are brown. More specifically, their hues trot along the color wheel, from ecru to tan to the color of wet dirt, but basically, what you’ve got is a mess of brown dogs to choose from.

I have one of these brown dogs. She’s dog number three. Does anybody really need three dogs? Probably not. Two is manageable, and we had two. Then, I got that assignment.

Admittedly, it was my idea to write about a local rescue called The Road Home Animal Project for a northern West Virginia publication. I asked the rescue president to bring a foster dog to our interview for a photo. She brought Minnie. Minnie wore a green tartan puffer coat. Her ears stuck out from the sides of her head like Yoda’s, and her deep, dark eyes sat large on her face. She trotted along with us at the park as we talked, sniffing the ground and winding her leash around our legs. She’d been in foster care for several months, and her siblings had been adopted. The rescue couldn’t understand why nobody wanted her.

By the end of our interview, someone did.

Minnie’s arrival unleashed chaos. Within weeks, our house was trashed, our carpets stained. My wooden spoons were splintered, and the remote control looked like it had been gnawed by an angry beaver. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings was out of the question, as was sleeping alone. (I’d assumed Minnie would sleep in her crate, but when I went back and read the “Where Puppy Will Sleep” clause in my puppy contract, it clearly said, “Puppy will sleep on human’s pillow, without exception.”)

What have I done, I asked myself. Life was so simple. Everybody was house-trained and nobody chased the cats and all the kids’ stuffed animals had heads. I yearned for my old, easy life as I shivered in the snow at 2am while she sniffed the ground, too distracted to pee. I mourned as I fired up the carpet steamer—again—and chased her through the supermarket parking lot when she leapt out of the car. I wondered why I thought I needed a puppy. Not that she kept her puppy body long—within months she’d gone from twiggy to barrel-shaped, and her head began to catch up with her ears, growing into a dense cube she used to whack our knees and butt the cats away from their bowls. She was adorable in that funny-looking way, but it was hard to figure out what Minnie was. On the inside.

Technically, Minnie’s a mixed breed, but here in the Mountain State, she’s what’s known as a West Virginia Brown Dog. The West Virginia Brown Dog may not be recognized by the American Kennel Club, but it’s a real thing. So real, in fact, that the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association declared June 20, 2013 “West Virginia Brown Dog Day,” in honor of our state’s 150th birthday. Shelter visitors could adopt a West Virginia Brown Dog for $20. The ads didn’t include a formal description of the discounted canines, but they didn’t need to. West Virginians know one when we see it.

The West Virginia Brown Dog is smallish but sometimes biggish. It’s sturdy but possibly delicate or, conversely, a brutish lug. It’s not petite—unless it is—and it’s usually somewhere between Labrador- and chihuahua-sized. It probably has hound in its DNA, which you’ll see in the way it follows its nose, and pit bull, which you’ll see in the shape of its skull. The West Virginia Brown Dog is adaptable, loyal, ornery. It’s a well-tempered, squirrel-chasing counter-surfer. It rides in trucks and Subarus and canoes. It hikes, goes to the office, and sleeps on your furniture. You can dress it in a sweater, sports jersey, or puffer jacket; West Virginia Brown Dogs go with everything.

The rescue advertised Minnie as a miniature pinscher mix, and as she grew into weird proportions, we imagined what other breeds might lurk in her DNA. I saw beagle; my husband stuck with min pin. We both saw American pit bull terrier in her stoutness and clownish behavior. But the West Virginia Brown Dog recipe can have many ingredients, and puppies often come from a long line of other West Virginia Brown Dogs, so it can be difficult to identify which pure-bred ancestor claims responsibility for a block head or curly tail. Overcome by curiosity, we ordered a doggy DNA test, swabbed her cheek, and waited.

I think we’re fond of these brown dogs because we see ourselves in them. Not only in their scrappy, adaptable nature, but also because the ancestry of a West Virginia Brown Dog reads a lot like that of a multi-generation West Virginian. Swab our cheeks and you’ll find a heavy dose of Scots-Irish heritage, a good bit of German and English, and a smattering of Welsh, Swiss, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and African American. You’ll also hear a variety of accents. In my hometown of Wheeling, many speak as Pittsburghers do: my grandfather, a Harvard-educated, fourth-generation Wheeling native, worshed his clothes and trimmed the booshes. In the central and southern parts of the state, you’ll hear the speech of Appalachia, traditionally referred to as Appalachian English. Some scholars have claimed it’s an archaic, Elizabethan throwback. In 1978, Dr. Cratis Williams of Appalachian State University wrote, “the dialect of the Appalachian people is the oldest living English dialect, older than the speech of Shakespeare, closer to the speech of Chaucer.” That’s debatable. More likely, the dialect evolved from the speech of those Scots-Irish ancestors, and variations exist within the different regions of Appalachia. North Carolinians sound noticeably different from West Virginians because, like West Virginia Brown Dogs, little about Appalachian English is uniform, not even the way Appalachians pronounce the word “Appalachia.”

Most Appalachians say Appa-latch-uh, and many feel that if you say it with a short a, you’re a true Appalachian; if you say it with a long a—as in, Appa-lay-shuh—you’re an outsider. Sharyn McCrumb, an Appalachian author from North Carolina, went as far as to say, “Appa-lay-shuh is the pronunciation of condescension, the pronunciation of the imperialists, the people who do not want to be associated with the place, and the pronunciation Appa-latch-uh means that you are on the side that we trust.” Not everyone agrees.

Appalachia North author Matthew Ferrence grew up in western Pennsylvania. One might not immediately think of Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and southern New York, as Appalachia, but, per the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), they are. In Ferrence’s memoir, he recalls grad school at West Virginia University, where he learned from other Appalachians that he’d been pronouncing the word incorrectly. The realization reframed what he thought he knew about himself and his fellow Pennsylvanians.

“…I grew up among Appalachians who pronounced ourselves as App-uh-lay-shuns. What does it mean when you grew up as a boy saying the word wrong? What does it mean when you’re from a place where everyone did?” Ferrence considers the notion that he and his fellow northern Appalachians were, therefore, “bad Appalachians, deniers of our heritage, willful self-exiles.” But Appalachian scholars, he writes, agree that there’s no correct pronunciation, despite what the McCrumb crowd crows in loud numbers.

The debate isn’t likely to be resolved, even in West Virginia. Like its signature brown dog, the state may be more easily defined by what it isn’t than what it is. And it’s not just the state’s inhabitants and their linguistics that are a mixed breed—it’s West Virginia itself. Because nobody is quite sure where we fit in this country, geographically speaking. Not even us.

West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within Appalachia (as defined by the ARC). On an extremely long day trip, you could travel through South Central Appalachia, Central Appalachia, North Central Appalachia, and arrive in my neck of the woods in Northern Appalachia, having never left the state. Four of the five ARC-defined regions cover West Virginia territory, making us an Appalachian Brown Dog, too.

In terms of region, the U.S. Census Bureau lists West Virginia as a Southern Atlantic state. However, the “west” in West Virginia came about because we chose to leave the south. Still, southern West Virginians tend to identify with the south anyway, while northern West Virginians feel like northerners. True northerners would probably disagree; culturally, West Virginia couldn’t be more different from New York or New England. So, when asked, we offer a vague quip about being the northernmost of the southern states and the southernmost of the northern states and leave it at that.

In terms of latitude, we’re too mountainous, our land too crinkled by plate tectonics and erosion, to be considered central, like our immediate neighbors in Ohio. Some—like the Bureau of Labor Statistics—call us a mid-Atlantic state, but the foreboding Allegheny Front shields us from the busyness and density of the other mid-Atlantic states, and we remain a quiet vacation spot for D.C. residents. The Federal Trade Commission labels us “east central,” with Ohio and Michigan. The US Office of Management and Budget lumps eastern West Virginia counties in with cities like Cumberland, Maryland; Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. itself, for statistical purposes. How could we possibly know where we belong? The only thing we truly know is that none of these out-of-state places feel much like West Virginia.

Something changes when we leave West Virginia. Regional differences within the state cease to divide us. Our home is the common thread in our mixed-breed DNA, the reason why, when ex-pats and college kids return, they inevitably take a photo of the “Wild & Wonderful” sign at the state line and post it with a hashtag like #countryroadstakemehome. Beyond our borders, we’re all just West Virginians, defined by our inability to fit anywhere else.

West Virginia is the mutt. The proud brown dog that declared independence in 1863 and continues to do so. Don’t call us western Virginia. We aren’t Pittsburgh or D.C. We’re West-by-God Virginia, locked in by rivers and mountains, curving and windy and infuriatingly impassible without a map and Dramamine. We like our hot dogs with mustard and slaw and our actual dogs vague and mud colored. Like Minnie.

The results of Minnie’s DNA test surprised us. I was wrong—she isn’t beagle. She is miniature pinscher and pit bull. The other ingredients included Golden retriever, chihuahua, American Eskimo dog, boxer, pug, and something the lab calls a supermutt, which may be American bulldog and/or Cesky terrier. There’s a lot of room for uncertainty, and we never know which breed is causing the behaviors we laugh at. Certainly, Minnie wouldn’t be what she is without those breeds, but even if we could define her, each West Virginia Brown Dog is more than the sum of its twisting chromosomes.

When I started including #WVBrownDog in social media postings, I discovered other West Virginia Brown Dog owners whose loving companions look like mine. They’re out there. And while some states have chosen an official breed, as North Carolina did with the Plott hound, the West Virginia senate adopted a resolution in 2020 to designate an official state canine: the humble shelter dog. They are brown. They are motley—mutts born to mutts born to mutts. The breed standard, if one existed, would list but one essential characteristic: a loyal heart bred in West Virginia.

—Laura Jackson Roberts

Impossible Math

On a fine spring day in 2017, my brother-in-law pulled off a busy thoroughfare and came to a stop under a non-descript bridge. I’ve been to the spot, since then. The road feels like it’s about to break free of the city and the vehicles whip by at highway speed. He found a refuge just a few feet away from the traffic. It’s an ugly spot, but one of those places you’d be thankful for if you had a flat tire or needed cover in a storm.

It was a Friday and Bruce had a ten o’clock tee time. It had rained lightly in the night, but the day was bright. By late afternoon, he and my sister would be on their way to visit my husband and me, at our acreage. But he didn’t even make it to golf. The details are hard to piece together.

His phone lay on the passenger seat, unused; he’d missed his exit to the golf course. All we really know is what the dash cam on the semi-truck tells us: he stepped out of his grey Toyota and ran straight into traffic. Footage from the news that night zooms in on his Birkenstock, a classic news technique—to drive home the loss—one I might have considered using myself back in my journalism days.

The police report said he died from blunt force trauma. But, eight months later, the chief medical examiner made the final ruling, what we already knew to be true—adult male, age 49, suicide. Suicide—just one little word, a word that I’ve now pulled apart and teased to bits.

Webster-Merriam’s dictionary states suicide is the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally. Bruce was one of 4157 people in Canada whose death fit this definition in 2017. Accepting that a loved one is never to be seen again is hard enough. But I was about to learn that looking for signs of a voluntary or intentional death was a special kind of torture.

A police officer arrived at my sister’s front step by late morning. My niece hadn’t left for work yet. Over a hundred miles away, I got the call at my desk. The officer had the right inflection in his voice, his words as kind as the horrific scene could allow. Despite that, his training didn’t stand up to the wailing in the background. Eventually, I snapped at him. “Pass the phone to my sister.”

Her voice seemed to hit the ground, and all she managed was a small, “Oh Mish.”

From the beginning, the therapists discouraged re-enacting the days leading up to Bruce’s death. “The trauma’s going to make you want to keep revisiting what happened,” they said, “but you’ll never know why, and it won’t bring Bruce back.” They were right, of course, but it didn’t stop me. I thought persistence could reveal Bruce’s intention, make the definition of suicide fit.

As early as elementary school, I ordered my world with stories. With one leg dangling over the metal bar that attached desk to seat, I secretly gave numbers character traits: in my imaginings the number three had been the villain, two and four, smart identical twins, while six was the hero—and eight, no one liked eight. Eight had been the bully. With my number people, I’d weaved adventures and circumnavigated the dry mechanics of math. I was terrible at math and continued to be terrible at math. But until Bruce died, I’d thought words were more reliable, that I could organize them into something resembling perfection.

One of the first calls we made was to Bruce’s therapist to cancel his upcoming appointment. He’d been seeing her regularly and a medication review with a psychiatrist had still been a month away. Secretly, I’d hoped she’d say, “yes, it’s terribly sad but I can explain it to you.” But she didn’t say anything like that. Instead, she’d disintegrated into apologies, genuinely shocked. Bruce had slipped through her net of experience. The emergency room hadn’t caught it either, when Bruce had tried to get his medications looked at sooner. Collectively, the professionals had swung and missed: it’s easy enough to do when depression is estimated to be a risk factor for 90-95% of suicides, but only 20% of people with depression ever consider ending their life, and even fewer attempt it.

The experts couldn’t point to Bruce’s intention to die, so like a fool, I went looking for it. 

I started at the beginning.

My sister and I had known Bruce since elementary days. We grew up with a slew of kids, a homogenous and unruly gang of professors', doctors’, and artists’ children who, in between piano lessons, hockey or swim practices, ran wild through our university neighbourhood. We rode BMX bikes and stole Dutch potato chips from Sunlight Foodland. We travelled in packs to the forbidden tobogganing hill, the one with the deadly wooden fence at the bottom. Later, the spot doubled as a good place to try smoking and putting our hands down each other’s pants. If any of us had childhood scars, our middle-class privilege had encased them well.

After I’d scoured the past, I dissected the months leading up to Bruce’s death. Could I piece together if Bruce had been one of the 48% who spend less than ten minutes between the time they think of acting and attempting a suicide? But I came up empty. There was no smoking gun. No note. No trail of crumbs to disaster. Almost a year in, I was more lost than ever.

Three days after the anniversary of Bruce’s suicide, on what would have been Bruce’s 50th birthday, Kate Spade hanged herself. Three days later, Anthony Bourdain missed dinner and then breakfast at his hotel in France. The coroner ruled his hanging “an impulsive act.” How did the coroner know this? No one had given us the gift of certainty.

I was glued to the analysis as media tried to reconcile the immense appetites, curiosities, talents and privilege of these celebrities with their intention to die. They didn’t ask, but the question was never far away. How could the bad have outweighed the good?

This is the refrain of suicide, even for regular folks. “But they had such….” Fill in the blanks. Try to do the math. But the math never adds up. For those left behind, the bad never outweighs the good. Suicide forces us into this impossible math, this balance sheet in the sky, because the definition tells us that someone made a choice to leave us, and that even if that choice was fleeting, it was a choice. Because without intentionality, what would suicide be—just another kind of accident?

Sometimes I look at the twitter message the city police issued that morning: Stoney Tr SE is closed at Chapparral Blvd while we investigate a serious collision. Expect major delays in area. A serious collision—oh, how many times I have wished, for my sister and the girls that, if Bruce had to die, it could have been an accident. This could have spared them the deep unknowing.

In recent years, there have been efforts to acknowledge some of the harm in the language of suicide. There’s a slow moving away from the Christian-Judeo harshness of the term “committing suicide”—it’s association with sin. But we should also reject how loudly it speaks to intent. I accept it’s a familiar old marble that rolls from our mouths so easily. But commitment is a strong word. One we normally reserve for marriage, crimes and adultery, things that arguably require consequences to be weighed and hotel rooms to be booked. Many suicides don’t meet this bar. And when someone rejects what comes so easily in favor of “died by suicide” or even “took his own life,” I find myself spared the trial of looking for Bruce’s intention.

As a seasoned English teacher, Bruce appreciated a good grading system. He didn’t oppose pointing out who did well, and who did badly. But, even so, my head spins when I think about how if Bruce had somehow survived, he may have heard at his bedside that he’d had a “failed attempt.” And, mind-bogglingly, some now give him the dubious label of a “successful attempt.” I think it’s safe to say Bruce would have steered us toward the use of the more neutral options of fatal and non-fatal attempts.

I don’t need the vocabulary of suicide to be perfectly curated, and I’m used to seeing people struggle to reach this impossible standard when they speak to me. Most of the time, I can cringe and move on when oversimplifications and speculation are loosely slung around me. And when I hear someone make an honest effort, even a fumbling poorly executed one, it feels as if they have hooked a towrope onto my broken car. It's welcome relief, in a terrible mess.

In the end, a story saved me from my own terrible mess—a mess where Bruce was becoming obscured, his humanity wiped out, under the glare of my spotlight; a mess where knowing Bruce’s past, or his history with depression and anxiety, wasn’t ever going to help me understand his acute crisis. For this, I needed to tell myself a story:

In my bedroom, flames lick up the walls; great tongues of heat rise and forcibly find their way down my throat. My hair singes and curls at the ends, turning my head into an acrid ball of fern fronds. I can’t get to the door. For a split second, I freeze. It’s flight or fight time. In two swift leaps, I go from burning in the room to jumping out the window. The flames chase me. I think of no one and nothing except for the heat. I die on impact. I don’t burn.

Through the lens of the story, I now see Bruce’s suicide not as an act of intention, but rather, as a crisis of self-preservation. I believe Bruce would have felt he was running not towards danger, but towards safety. And, as grim as it sounds, I believe if you are unlucky enough to be trapped in a fire, you will also jump. If you get caught in this moment, there will be no place for remembering, weighing consequences, seeing a future, or appreciating the greatness in your life. Choice will have long since passed you by—and you won’t even know this. You will only live if help or luck intervenes.

Before Bruce left through the attached garage, he did what we’ve all done a thousand times: cursory goodbyes for his wife and daughter, then out the door. He would have put his golf bag in the trunk, knowing his oldest daughter also had a bag packed, and was about to get on a ferry to meet up with friends and celebrate her acceptance to medical school. There weren’t any last-minute calls or texts for his daughters. This is the intensity of fire.

Even children don’t get proper goodbyes in a fire.

The last time I saw Bruce was two months before he died. We were staying the night to pick up our son from an early morning flight. We’d had an appropriately boring mid-week evening watching the Oilers botch another hockey game, and then over coffee the next morning, Bruce asked me about what books I was reading. It was our connection—the English teacher turned vice-principal, and the journalist turned wannabe writer. I can still see Bruce reaching for his book and showing me the title, but I hadn’t been listening and I still can’t recall it. Excited to see our son, I said my cursory goodbye and went to the airport.

I don’t do the impossible math anymore. I see it for what it is: reductive and speculative. Instead, I listen for new words, words that are full, complex and kind. Words that speak to a kind of math that works—a math that is inherently about Bruce.  

a man who loved others + a man who was loved = a life that is > than how he died

—MICHELLE SPENCER

contributors

Celesté Cosme has been teaching high school English for 16 years. She received her MFA from Rosemont College. She is the CNF editor at Philadelphia Stories. Her essays and stories appear in Pangyrus, South Florida Poetry Journal, (Mac)ro(Mic), ROVA, and Rathalla Review. She lives in New Jersey with her filmmaker husband, curious six-year-old, and tuxedo cat Rembrandt. You can follow her on Twitter @celestemaria or read her works on celestecosme.com.

Molly Katt is a food and travel writer with bylines in Delta Sky, Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine, and Experience Life. She has ghostwritten three books with Andrew Zimmern (Travel Channel/MSNBC)—two for Random House and one for MacMillan—and they have also co-hosted the award-winning podcast, Go Fork Yourself, for three years. Molly currently hosts Matriarch Digital Media’s A Mess in the Kitchen podcast. In addition to writing, keeping my kids alive and cooking, she’s a sucker for animal rescue and love fostering dogs. She and her husband are currently restoring a 1903 Victorian house in Minneapolis.

Brina Patel writes creative nonfiction and poetry. Her works has been published or is forthcoming in LEVITATE Magazine, The Mighty, and LA Family Travel, among others. She is a Board Member of the California Writers Club – Sacramento branch and volunteers with 916 Ink, a local literacy-based nonprofit. When she isn’t writing or globetrotting, she enjoys hiking near her Northern California home, curling up with a tear-jerking memoir, and spoiling her sassy Maltese.

Amber Pierson has had works featured in several magazines, including but not limited to: The Elevation Review, In Parenthesis, and Mortal Mag. When not writing, you can find Amber adventuring with her son, tucked in blankets reading, and laughing with her husband.

Laura Jackson Roberts is an environmental writer and humorist. Her work has appeared in places like Brevity, Hippocampus, Still, and Terrain, and she is a regular contributor to Wonderful West Virginia and West Virginia Living magazines. A lifelong West Virginian, she lives in Wheeling with her human and canine family.

Michelle Spencer spent over twenty years working as a broadcast journalist and digital storytelling facilitator. Recent publications include Flash Fiction Magazine, Marathon Literary Review and The Write Launch. In 2021, her work was long listed for the 2021 CBC Non-Fiction Prize, as well as the 2021 Peter Hinchcliffe Award. Michelle writes from her home in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada.