by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
Shhhh-Be-Quiet
Remarkably beautifully, Ms. Mahogany Bones was welcomed everywhere with the exception of bars, buses, restrooms, department stores, restaurants, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, and the library. The library wasn’t a hostile environment; it was just Mahogany had a problem with being quiet. The staff may have known her name, if they hadn’t said, “Shhhh-Be-Quiet” so many times. Wearing a gorgeous yellow summer dress with some yellow Sarah Jessica Parker sandals to match, Mahogany sat on the edge of the quiet zone, just in case folks came at her all sideways with mean, rude, and nasty attitudes. She kept her shades on to mask the hate crimes. With her head covered and the black shades on, it looked like she was either a spy or having a bad hair day trying to get an emergency appointment at the beauty salon.
Anastasia, one of her other transgender girlfriends, invited engaging gender police and immigrant-despising eyes with a je ne sais quoi type of attitude. Despite snarls and snares she flaunted her essence and accessorized it with luxurious handbags. Having been robbed that day, she was not at all pleased, and with a sunken face she sat at the library table across from Mahogany, who was able to lighten the mood by showing off her new Sarah Jessica Parker designer shoes.
They chatted flippantly under their breaths about all the malice that surrounded them, but the gravity of the conversation got really heavy when the Fellow-With-No-Swag and the Simple-Minded Jezebel walked into the library hand-in-hand. The Fellow-With-No-Swag and the Simple-Minded Jezebel had the audacity or were just too blind to see that they were sitting in the quiet zone next to the woman they had wronged.
Mahogany told Anastasia about the night she was waiting for her ride in front of the library. She had her headphones on and was dancing so hard that passersby mistook her for a drag queen street artist and threw money at her feet. She wasn’t high and mighty acting, so she picked up the money and kept right on doing her thing until a fellow with no swag approached her. Because his britches sagged, he walked like a cowboy who rode four days with no saddle. Dazzled by her bopping behind, he started out with a weak pick-up line. “Hey Baby. Do you have the time?”
Mahogany glanced him over unimpressed and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t wear a watch, because I don’t believe in giving some folks my time.”
“Damn! Be that way. Fag!!!” said the Fellow-With-No-Swag. Enraged, she was not the type to forgive and forget it.
“Girrrl . . . and then this simple-minded Jezebel, she jumped me in the library in front of everybody. She beat me like a rented mule at school in broad daylight, Alaskan style! By the time she was done kicking my ass, I was all bruised with not one . . . but two black eyes! I went to the campus police and they looked at me all crazy. I tell ya’ . . . folks don’t like hearing truth, especially when it comes from a tranny.”
“Well, I’mma go show ’em that we are not to be played with. Folks can’t run us over and think we just gonna roll over, play dead, and be all meek. I think I might have to put my foot up his ass and slap her into next week.”
Mahogany waltzed over to their enemies and confronted them. Anastasia looked on knowing there was no holding Mahogany back. Their enemies rose to their feet to spit out more nasty slurs and rude epithets and then . . . that was that. The library clerk heard a disturbance in the force, peeked over her glasses to see but missed it. In the blink of an eye the ruckus was loud, quick, and then Mahogany was gone like an empty tray of delicious banana split.
A week went by before the story could be told to the S.G.P.D. (Stankhorage Gender Police Department) during an interrogation about the incident at the library. Ms. Bones decided to be a good citizen, slid on a pastel blue vintage dress, and accepted the request for questioning. Fashionably late, she stood out in the suspect line-up for the Simple-Minded Jezebel to finger point her out. To Mahogany’s surprise, Det. Kendrick Richard was on her case again. Switching his eyes from her legs to the issues, Det. Richard said, “It sure is nice to have you back in my interrogation room looking like a devil in a blue dress. There is a woman on the other side of that window, that says you assaulted her last week in the library.”
“Is that so? Then why did she wait a whole week to say something?”
“Well, that’s kind of hard to explain. She says you slapped her so hard that the next thing she knew, she had skipped over the past seven days. The doctors looked at her, but there are no signs of concussion or temporary amnesia. It just don’t make no sense,” said Det. Richard, shaking his head.
“Well, that’s quite an interesting story, but it wasn’t me.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t you? We have library surveillance video placing you at the scene of the crime. Det. Bucky, please run the video for Ms. Bones.” As if she wanted to put in a request for popcorn, Ms. Bones crossed her legs and reclined in the chair to watch the footage until it was paused. “You mean to tell me, this is not you in this lovely yellow dress?”
“Nope. It wasn’t me. Do you know how many women wear yellow dresses?”
“Com’on now. Look, Ms. Bones, there is more evidence. Det. Bucky, play the audio testimony of the library clerk.” While the tape played, Ms. Bones folded her arms and listened.
“Last Thursday, about high noon, Shhhh-Be-Quiet walked in wearing this gorgeous yellow summer dress with some yellow Sarah Jessica Parker sandals to match. Shhhh-Be-Quiet was sitting at the table with another crosser-dressing wannabe. That Fellow-With-No-Swag and that Simple-Minded Jezebel walked in and sat next to them. Everything was good so I went back to reading and then . . . well you know . . . moments later I heard a disturbance in the force. I looked up and saw Shhhh-Be-Quiet slap that Simple-Minded Jezebel, and now all of a sudden, I am here today, and a whole week has mysteriously gone by.”
Quietness upheld the interrogation room momentarily before Det. Richard broke it. “Sooo, Ms. Bones here is another witness that not only places you at the scene of the crime in a lovely dress, but stated that you slapped that Simple-Minded Jezebel into the next week.”
“It wasn’t me. That could be anybody. You know how many people they call Shhhh-Be-Quiet in the library?”
“Fine then, Ms. Bones. Det. Bucky, bring that fellow in here.”
“It was him. That faggot put his foot up my ass!!!” said the Fellow-With-No-Swag.
“Like I said . . . it wasn’t me.” said Mahogany, yielding puzzling expressions from her audience and frustration from the detective.
“Now you are really starting to piss me off, Ms. Mahogany Bones. You mean to tell me that the video, audio, and multiple witnesses are all fabrications? Det. Bucky, get me those damn X-rays.” Det. Richard held up a set of X-rays in front of the light. “Look, this is the Fellow-With-No-Swag and a shoe in his ass. Bucky, show her the shoe.” Det. Bucky pulled the funky-smelling, fecal-matter-covered shoe out of the plastic zip-locked evidence bag. “For the last time Ms. Bones. Did you do it? This is a Sarah Jessica Parker shoe, isn’t it?”
The detectives, accusers, and concerned citizens all knew she was definitely going to fall, crash, burn, and confess. Smoothly, Mahogany withdrew her electronic cigarette, mystically twirled it in the air, took a few pulls, and puffed out cool, mind-bending, vaporized smoke rings to dispel the hostile air and cast a spell.
“Yes. Yes, it is. And that is exactly why you need to go talk to Sarah Jessica Parker and not me.” The interrogation was over. They had to believe her, because her truth was undisputed. Plenty of women wear yellow dresses, designer shoes, and are told to “Shhhh-Be-Quiet” in the library.
Furthermore, no one could explain how the Simple-Minded Jezebel got slapped so hard, she time traveled forward into—but still missed the next week. Although it was her shoe in the Fellow-With-No-Swag’s ass, Sarah Jessica Parker was off being fabulous, so she had an airtight alibi.
The next day in the lobby of the library, Anastasia questioned Mahogany on how she beat the rap. Mahogany thought. She contemplated. Maybe a lie is what deserved to be told. People liked the truth, b
ut truth was comfortable, easy and boring; whereas, a lie was shaky, hard and exciting. With her confident Jedi mind tricks, she could invert any lie into an undisputed truth. For she was an honest-to-gawd-good-woman.
“They just didn’t know who they was messing with. I am not going to admit a damn thing. But now I can’t go to the library anymore.” Pointing to the library information desk. “You see . . . they got my mug shot up there.”
In a new set of replacement shoes, Mahogany limped away, leaving her friends behind to read the sign. The posted flyer read:
Attn: Clerks and Staff of the Library.
Shhhh-Be-Quiet is Not Allowed Here.
She is Banned for all Eternity.
If You See Shhhh-Be-Quiet
Please Notify the Gender Police Immediately.
SHELBY WILSON
Shelby “Mahogany” Wilson has been in Alaska for over twenty years. She is the vice president of Black Feather POETS Alaska, a nonprofit organization built on bringing cultures together through art. Shelby is a published poet, who started her poetic venture with Alaska Poetry League. In 2005, she was fourth runner-up in the Alaska Poetry Slam contest. Since then, Shelby has expanded her creative talents to include performance poet, workshop facilitator, writer, spiritual counselor, and motivational speaker. Her work has appeared online in Daily Love, Vox Poetica, Fib Review, Eskimo Pie, Poetry from Wherever, Poetic Medicine, Moon Magazine, and Bent Alaska. Her print work has appeared in SaFire Magazine, Alaska Women Speak, and in the anthology In My Lifetime: Wonders. Shelby produced and appeared on a spoken-word CD entitled Lyrical Finesse, a Black Feather Production. She has self-published a chapbook titled Serenity, and the poetry collections Broken Wings, Mending Damaged Souls, and Verbal Stimulation, An Intimate Collection of Poetry.
Misread Signs
I missed the sign that said OPEN for business
For good times APPLY WITHIN
I overlooked the sign that read FREE RIDES HERE
Forgive me for not understanding the rules
of etiquette for revealing attire
The clause that gave you the right to disrespect me
Just because I have large breasts and a big behind
I’m sorry if the media has lead you
To believe in a fantasy
But lies have been told
Your need for oral copulation and sweaty sheets
Has got you chasing false advertisements
I AM NOT A HO
I don’t do service calls or lunch escapades
If you placed a price tag on me
Then I’m out of your league
I’m a queen and always a lady
I’m truly sorry but a mistake has been made
Please listen while I clarify
My sign says
APPLY BRAKES PROCEED SLOWLY
Fireweed
Fingers slipping between laced lingerie and skin
Gliding slowly over hips, thighs, calves
Feeling the cool Alaskan breeze over every stem
Shoulders, arms, wrists, hands
Dropping to the floor lowering lips,
tongue swirls around erect nipples
Hands scale over thighs as legs
guide in harmony against the wall
Breast against breast, lips on lips, hands free
Her pulse hastens
fingers grazing the tip of her pistil
Caressing and teasing the edges of her petals
from purple to red she blooms
LESLIE KIMIKO WARD
Leslie Kimiko Ward is the recipient of a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum for her forthcoming memoir 1000 Cranes. She has written and performed a thirty-minute monologue and one-woman-show based on similar content. Her first short story was published nearly fifteen years ago, in an anthology of lesbian erotic short fiction. She is a Creative Writing MFA dropout, with little understanding of the term exegesis. Leslie would like to thank her writing mentor, novelist Jo-Ann Mapson, for her stalwart advice and encouragement.
Nest
Standing in her mother’s driveway, duffel bags in hand, Elsa takes a good look around, at the cottonwoods with their golden leaves, at the highbush cranberry’s bright red bundles, the long-legged shadow cast by the water tower, and the jagged snowcaps on the neighboring wall of mountains. This landscape is as familiar to her as the arrangement of her mother’s living room furniture, unchanged since the oak coffee table was as high as her chest, and her father’s pillowy recliner doubled as a jungle gym.
Elsa will spend the winter in this house. With August nearly gone, her mother has already flown south, headed for arthritis-friendly desert country, leaving Elsa behind to wrap the old pipes in blankets, eat dinners off her childhood plates, and look after Little Big Bird, the chatty cockatiel.
The phone buzzes inside Elsa’s front pocket. Dammit, she whispers, hoisting her heavy duffels to one hand, biting her glove off with her teeth so she can swipe at the screen. She checks the glowing picture. A sour face stares back at her. It’s Mel. Jesus. Already?
Mel is Elsa’s tenant and seasonal roommate, a chronically down-on-her luck, post-menopausal curmudgeon with no apparent friends or family in the state. Elsa rents Mel the spare bedroom in her own house, a few miles away. Over the past few winters, Elsa had grown tired of shoveling the snow on two driveways, tired of trekking up the hill each night to see if her faucets were still dripping, or if her roof had caved in under the snowpack.
If Elsa was being brutally honest, ever since her divorce, she had begun to loathe that tumbledown house. She’d only bought the house for its land: eight wooded acres just outside of Palmer, a few driveways down from the guy with his very own castle, complete with turret and vertical aluminum siding. Elsa had hoped to build her own cabin on the property someday, nestled between the birch trees. She planned to level the old house and haul it away for scrap, provided it hadn’t already fallen flat on its own.
But this was all before Elsa got married, and before her new wife needed a dishwasher, and a linen closet, a greenhouse, and an affair. Between home improvement projects, Elsa used to flip through the pages of her log cabin magazines, the ones she kept stacked in her closet like vintage porn. Eventually, even the reminders turned sour.
The winters Elsa spent alone in her mother’s house had helped to take the edge off. She’d started dreaming again, even renewing a few of her canceled subscriptions. Last summer, Elsa cleared a foundation, to the right of the greenhouse, in a spot where the morning sun could shine into her imaginary bedroom windows.
When winter hit, and Elsa burned out the motor on yet another snowblower, she decided she needed a tenant. She took an ad out on Craigslist seeking “a handy recluse with a steady job.” What she got instead, was Mel.
“Found a yellow jacket nest,” Mel coughs into the phone. “In the crawl space. You’d better come look at it. Don’t want to get stung in my sleep.”
“Shit, Mel. Do you go hunting for problems as soon as I leave? How big is the nest?”
“Big.”
“Is it live?”
“Dunno. Didn’t stick around to find out.”
Elsa sighs. “I’ll be over tomorrow. I’ve got to unload my bags and check on Little Big Bird.” Elsa lumbers up the sidewalk. She jiggles her mother’s floral-printed key in the latch. Opening the door, she is surrounded with the fading scent of her mother’s lilac perfume. It mingles with the kitchen smells of leftover biscuits and warm flour.
Elsa drops her duffel bags at the foot of her mother’s bed. She’ll unpack later, she decides, eyeing the stack of empty milk crates left for her beside a teeming armoire. Forty-five years old, and still dressing out of milk crates like a college kid. Some things never change. It’s the ones that do that break your heart.
The cockatiel chirps from his cage in the living room. “Jungle bird,” Elsa calls out. “Who’s a jungle bird?” Little Big Bird recognizes Elsa’s voice and launches into a piercing series of open-beaked trills
that bounce off the walls like a fire alarm.
The next afternoon, Elsa drives up the hill to check out the yellow jackets and the growing list of issues Mel has managed to compile over the past twenty-four hours.
In the kitchen, Elsa squats, and shines her flashlight under the metal sink. Mel stands beside her, takes off her shoes, and stretches her toes wide inside her socks. “Finally,” Mel mutters. “Damn wrinkle’s been rubbin’ my foot raw all day.”
“What’s that?” Elsa asks, but Mel doesn’t answer. She’s already turned around, and is heading for the living room. Elsa gets down on her knees and reaches for the Allen wrench she left dangling underneath the pipe. She tethered the wrench there months ago, using a strand of green dental floss, in the hopes that she could encourage Mel to become more self-sufficient in the fix-it department. The garbage disposal clogs about every other week, but so far it hasn’t broken so Elsa doesn’t see the need to replace it. Instead, Elsa inserts the tiny wrench into the bottom of the machine, and gives it a few cranks. “Why didn’t you fix this earlier?” she calls to the adjoining room.
“Couldn’t,” Mel grumbles, pushing against the arms of the Naugahyde lounger. “Ain’t no way I’m takin’ off my shoes at work.” Mel tilts the seat back, and the footrest creaks in protest.
Elsa turns on the water. The pipes rattle. The faucet burps and spits before settling into a thin stream. Elsa flips the switch up, and a horrible clatter erupts from the sink. She quickly flips the switch down again, and the clatter tapers. Elsa waits, then reaches her hand inside the clammy disposal to feel around. The shape of the gears, the way they’re set up to spin against one another, they remind Elsa of that carnival ride, the Scrambler. When she was a kid and her dad was alive, Elsa’s family went every year to the state fair. “No screaming now,” her dad would say. He took her on all the rides. Elsa always screamed anyway. That was half the fun. “You nearly squealed my ears off, kid,” he joked, making a big show of it, gingerly patting the sides of his head, shouting “What?” and “Huh?” to Elsa’s mother for minutes afterwards.
