21st Annual City Paper Writing Contest

The Winner: Greetings from Lesotho

by April Dobbins

For the 21st installment of our writing contest, we asked for the first chapter of a novel set in Philadelphia. Frankly, there aren't enough novels set in this town. And apparently you agreed, because we received close to 90 entries, which we whittled down to 10 before sending them off to our guest judges, Cordelia Frances Biddle, Edward Pettit and Larry Robin. The winner? "Greetings from Lesotho," by April Dobbins. Check out the judges' comments below, and then check out the work of our two runners up: M.G. Tarquini's "Hindsight" and Chad Willenborg's "Suit of Lights." Huge thanks to our judges, and to everyone who entered this year's contest.

Today, like most days, I loiter about the corner of 17th and JFK and smoke a scavenged cigarette. I watch as dawn succumbs to blaring traffic. The stench of exhaust gradually overwhelms the city. The suited population descends, crushing the hopeful neck of morning beneath their cockroach-shiny shoes. This is a procession of the disenchanted — of briefcases and coffee-stained file folders, of ill-fitting blazers and fake pearls, of blathering small talk and taupe pantyhose. The droves brush, bump and collide in their constant pursuit of onward motion. They are like hot water molecules: a roiling tension mounts beneath their starched collars, their momentum increases and they ricochet. Inevitably, they rupture the city's tranquil surface.

Homeless. I roll the word around in my head as I take a drag from the flattened cigarette. It is such a brutal, dead-end word. A shush word reluctant to plunge, without its cloak of shame, from the lips of its mutterers. It is a darker shade than its cousins: disinherited, dispossessed, exiled, refugee. Those words offer some hope of reprieve. Homeless is the word of no return. I prefer to be thought of as nomadic or better yet, physically displaced. That phrase smacks of hope and regeneration. Like at any moment you could slip into your niche, find something to redeem your broken self and return to the ranks of humanity. But homeless, there's just something about that word, isn't there? An insinuation of some sort, a placing of blame on the subject.

For the white people, I am what they would expect — a coal-black beggar woman shrouded in filth. They make this evaluation and then they press on. The black people, on the other hand, are much worse. The young school kids call me "Kunta." Because, they say, I look like a runaway slave. They approach with their careless swagger and sloppy uniforms — khaki pants dangling from their asses, extra-large dress shirts devouring their scrawny bodies — and they say, "Damn, that underground railroad must be a muthafucka, if it got you smelling like that." They slap palms and snicker at their own cruel intelligence. The black adult faces are slathered with disgrace. I am an embarrassment to my race. All this just to distance themselves from my situation — to look upon me and suck their teeth or shake their heads knowing, just knowing, that it will never be them. Because we are so different now, they can take comfort. But I wasn't this way always. If I could sit them down and hold their attention, I could open their eyes. Make them squint like new kittens stumbling into seeing. If I wanted to show them how delicate the balance, I would tell them exactly how it happened.

She stayed on the island for weeks amidst the rubble — stayed looking for her family. She stayed looking for everything she had lost, but the whole island was strange — overnight, it had become a burial ground. The spectacle of the tourists still clad in floral-patterned shirts and bikini tops and flamboyantly colored shorts, here once for sand and sun, now rummaging through rubble and debris for the bodies of loved ones was too much for her to bear. When it hit the woman, the briny sea smell, it felt like a violation — the way the sea had suddenly reared up and devoured this beach town, the way the clear day and calm sea had erupted into chaos and destruction. A crushing wave that collected tin roofs and cars, street debris, trees, and the thrashing bodies of tourists and natives, of children and animals. The stifling humidity swaddled everything in moisture. For weeks, nothing dried out. Soon the dank smell of mildew was omnipresent, interrupted only by the smell of rotting flesh.

When the island man arrived at her hotel-room door cradling the drowned body of her 10-year old daughter, things began to fall apart. When he offered the child to her like a designer displaying the finest wedding dress, cradling her back and her legs while slightly tipping her in her mother's direction — knowing that this was just something life-altering, that one could not be delicate enough in these matters — the woman heard nothing. Like her ears were full of water. She thought about her husband because he was with her daughter — because they were together, always together — and she felt her lips mouth something, but the man just softened his eyes and shook his head. Her husband's body had been carried away with the second wall of water.

She gazed in amazement at her daughter: How her slick black hair clung to her face like hungry clumps of seaweed. How her limbs dangled as if she were sleeping — her fingers and toes still wrinkled from too much time in the ocean. She accepted her waterlogged child into her arms. When the woman realized that she'd never seen her daughter this way and nothing could be done for her now. When she realized that the way she knew her child — warm and smiling — would never be, ever again, she lost herself. She choked and struggled with her own breath.

When she returned to Philadelphia, she immediately went back to work at the university teaching creative writing classes. How people marveled and touched her about my shoulders and whispered, "If there's anything I can do...." Not even finishing the sentence, as if uttering the sentiment was merely enough. Well, nothing was, but she plodded ahead. Her students seemed less animated than usual — sadder. But, unlike her colleagues, they said nothing. They just waited with sympathetic eyes, eager for a glint of emotion. But she was silent. She was stone. She returned to the empty condominium each day and ignored the accumulating bills. Bills she knew she could not pay: the car notes, the rent, even the credit card bills from that so-called vacation.

Most passers-by think I should just get myself together and get a decent job. You know, stop languishing on park benches and hit the proverbial pavement. Well, I do hit it sometimes... the pavement. Usually while the business world is sleeping, I am pounding the pavement, going through Dumpsters, trying to keep myself busy. Only fools sleep on these streets at night. I learned that my first day out when I woke to a mouthful of boot and blood. Three drunken frats boys were stomping me and when they were satisfied, they pissed on me. I once read an article in a discarded newspaper on homeless Indian women and how they sleep on the streets of Mumbai in groups of 20 to 30. They all spoon together in one row. Body to body, sari to sari. Each night a different woman sleeps on the outside of the row to be raped repeatedly by passing drunks. It is a meager sacrifice for the collective — for the promise of those nights when she too will slumber undisturbed.

Once, the police tried to take me in — "downtown" in police jabber, though we were already downtown — because I was breaking mirrors. The mirrors were beautiful, life-sized mirrors with intricately twisted bronze frames. I stood a few feet away admiring them for an eternity. When I finally approached, I ran my fingers over the cool gnarl of the metal. The woman reflected looked like death. Her lips crackled white and her skin blue-black. Her hair knotted into unruly dreadlocks with clumps of dirt and debris scattered throughout the tufts. Her pants, once blue, were so horribly stained that she resembled an animal in her dustiness. I felt the bile pooling in the back of my throat. Compared to that reflection, the beauty of the mirrors was devastating. I heaved the mirrors into the busy street and watched myself splinter into a mosaic of sky, trees and snatches of sunlight. My world shattered at the feet of onlookers. The cops let me go on my way with the usual warnings. The cops know me really well — this is my neighborhood after all.

I spend most of my days in front of a tiny apartment building at 10th and Clinton. There is a woman who lives there who reminds me so much of my daughter that it is eerie. From the moment I saw her, I knew. I knew she was my second chance to make things right — to protect her and watch over her. The woman doesn't appreciate my presence as much as I'd like.

Stalker. Such an ugly word. It implies that the perpetrator is less than human. An animal lurking in the bush. A predator thirsty for blood. I am neither. I prefer to be described as one vesting her interests in another human being. After all, I don't want to take anything from her. The only thing I can really see as a legal conundrum is that I do read her mail sometimes. But I never read the business mail — no bank statements or credit cards bills. I respect her confidential things. I only read postcards which I surmise are public information anyway and an occasional letter from a friend. Mostly, I just give her letters of encouragement that I've written. Despite the threat of police interference, I find myself perched on the bench across the street from her apartment building. Some days, I wait hours for her. When I see her bouncing toward her building in a dreamy haze of blush-colored cashmere, I am satiated beyond belief. It is a strange sensation of personal assurance. Seeing her go about her daily routine is a sign that the world still revolves and rotates on its invisible axis.

I understand why I upset her, but I only wish she could see how she overjoys me. I imagine that she and my daughter are one and the same, but not in some fatal attraction-type way. No, she is my daughter in a parallel universe — the woman she would be had she made the left turn instead of the right on this damn road of life. Watching her, I know some part of my child is still alive and thriving. I understand her wariness, her frustration. Once, she even yelled across the street, "Why won't you just leave me alone?" Her face was a delicate mix of angst and vulnerability. How do I respond to her without seeming psychotic? How do I yell "parallel universe" to someone who thinks I am a scabby omen of life's cruelties.

Today, she returns from work with a man I've never seen before. Tall, slim, basketball build. Black like me. I can see his eyeballs and his diamond-stud earring from across the street. He's clad in a long linen shirt and has a face full of nappy beard. He looks like one of those fake black Muslims. You know the ones who don't eat swine, but grind at the club with Hennessy in one hand and a whole lot of booty in the other. I immediately don't like him. We could do much better. He lingers at her front door standing a hair too close to her. She hugs him and whispers something over his shoulder into the bling of his diamond-stud earring. She hurries inside, bypassing her mailbox. He strolls away.

When they are both finally out of sight, I rush to her box, 1-A, and I work my magic on the flimsy lock. The small metal door swings open to reveal a letter in an international air mail envelope. The letter is from Brandi, a friend doing Peace Corps in Lesotho, which is a small African country surrounded by South Africa. I am so excited to open the letter that I pee myself in the lobby. I take off my coat and wipe up the puddle. I know I would be angry if I came home to a puddle of stranger pee in my lobby. I take the letter to my bench across the street.

The envelope spills a glossy picture and a postcard. The photo is of a gangly man with stiltlike legs. He's caramel colored and the extent of his smile reveals his Africanness. He is wearing nothing but boxers, dingy white tube socks and a woman's faux-fur coat. On the back of the photo, Brandi wrote, "Alex, my boyfriend, posed willingly for this photo." The postcard of Lesotho stirs something in me, an immense yearning for escape. Lesotho looks so foreign in landscape that it could be Jupiter for all I know. Lesotho is greener than any green Philadelphia could offer. It is no jungle, but more a temperate area rich in vegetation. There are over-sized aloe vera plants that look like towering trees. Happy children are herding goats among the fronds. For a moment, I am there. Peaceful.

"Bitch!" My daydream is severed by a slap across my face. The letter falls to the sidewalk and the postcard threatens to float onto the street. I want to return the letter unmarred to her box. I gather up the sparkly envelope and run toward the glass door of the apartment foyer. Four-one-zero is the combination to the antiquated lock. I reach for the dull metal buttons of the combination lock, and in the reflection of the glass, I see him headed in my direction. Eyeballs, teeth and diamond stud approaching with the urgency of a rabid animal.

"Bitch!" He grabs my shoulders and spins me to face him. Though his hands are on me, he is trying to not really touch me. Disgust laces his anger. His fist meets my face with perfect force and aim. I can tell he hits often enough. As the blood from my lip dribbles to my chin, the Lesotho postcard tumbles again to the ground. The picturesque postcard and sparkly envelope are spattered with a bloody mist. The letter is ruined and I want to cry, but I blink back tears.

"I never hit a woman," he spews, "but you... you don't even count." He pants through the words like he has climbed a flight of stairs. I suspect he's a smoker.

"Asalamalakim, my brother," I raise a black power fist, "got a Newport to spare?" He wrinkles the thickness of his dark mouth and spits in my face.

"If I see you around here again, I will cut you open."

Furious. Diamond Stud. Blacker than me. Fake Muslim.

"She's not your fucking daughter," he sputters, "and she'd have no problem with me beating the life out of you right here on this corner. As a matter of fact, I don't think anyone would give a shit."

I want to tell him that thing about parallel universes — about how we all have a counterpart somewhere on this planet. I want him to know that I've lived in this neighborhood longer than he has existed, but then I see her watching from behind the glass door. I see her and I realize that her eyes have changed — they're more sinister and cold. They are the eyes of a stranger, of a woman I don't want to know. She smirks with satisfaction. Only then do I realize that she has planned all this. I slide past her boyfriend and head for my cart on the other side of the street. I glance over my shoulder to see Diamond Stud glaring in my direction. I mindlessly shove my cart to the nearest set of subway stairs and abandon it there. I descend into the treacherous underbelly of Philadelphia. The PATCO line runs to Jersey, but the destination is of no real importance — a train is a train. I stand on the yellow caution line and watch the rats scatter. A light approaches and the slow growl lends an earthshaking rumble. The train screeches to a halt. People board the train and the rumble moves on. There is a whining noise emanating from the trash can on my right side — a high-pitched whistling accompanied by a slight rustling. I peep into the receptacle and spot a small, white dog matted with dirt and grime. Pleading eyes stare back at me. As I lift the dog out of the newspapers and discarded burger wrappers, I notice that her back legs dangle lifelessly. I gently place her on the cement floor, and she pants with excitement while scooting herself in pointless circles. She then pees herself and whines as she tries to move her body out of her own puddle of waste. Her efforts are futile as she only manages to spread the puddle with her dead legs. I lift her up and place her in a dry spot. She seems satisfied with the relocation. Something about her makes me feel human. Humane. Like I actually have something to offer the living. I tuck her into the breast of my coat and button her up so she faces out. She can see the world as I see it. As the rumble approaches, I think about my daughter and how much she loved the water — how maybe her death was perfect for her. I remember that her face was peaceful — that there was no sign of grief on it. I think about change and how it signals death for some and survival for others. I think about Brandi running with her African boyfriend through the immense green of Lesotho hill country. I think about what the morning smells like on the other side of the earth. I think about how I abandoned my life on that island, and how it is time to abandon the life I've lived since then. When the train doors part, we walk in and take our seats. We are returning to the world. First stop, New Jersey.

"A deft handling of a homeless black woman's worldview. The writing is self-assured and fearless, and possesses a painterly awareness of the broad and small strokes on a story's canvas. By turns caustic and yearning, the narrator demands the reader's attention.

—Cordelia Frances Biddle, author of the forthcoming The Conjurer (Thomas Dunne Books), a tale of intrigue, passion and murder that exposes the gritty underside of 1842 Philadelphia

"A rich portrait of a homeless person that is not full of the hackneyed cliches of a down-and-out urban life. I especially love the author's examination of words (their meanings as well as their impact), the realized back story of the narrator, and the themes of loss and how people connect or willfully disconnect in an urban environment. More importantly, I like that this piece is not trapped by its urban setting. So many novels set in cities concentrate on the city as its own universe, self-contained and either fulfilling or oppressing. But this first chapter recognizes a wider world; the island where the narrator meets tragedy, the vacation land in the postcard from Brandi, the allusion to homeless women in India. So this isn't the tired cliche of city dwellers who live close to one another but still fail to connect. This is a much bigger story. I could go on about the introduction of issues of race, gender, class, etc. I'd love to read the rest of this manuscript."

—Edward Pettit, reviewer and literary blogger at The Bibliothecary (bibliothecary.squarespace.com)

"I like the play of words (homeless, nomadic). And the ideas — the frailty of us all, the aloneness and search for connection, and, of course, redemption."

—Larry Robin, owner, Robin's Bookstore