America 
 

      It was so hot. Donna opened her eyes enough to tell that she was being bathed in bright, morning light from the window next to her bed. She really needed to get curtains, or at least tack a sheet up, she thought. She threw the covers off and turned onto her stomach. She wore a man’s black t-shirt from some concert and pink underwear. Her hair, though still black at the tips from a dye-job a year ago, was mostly blond. A beautiful blond. A blond she didn’t deserve or understand. A blond she didn’t belong to. She went back to sleep.

      A couple hours later, she awoke again. She got up, yawned and ran her fingers through her hair. She walked through her shadowy room, stepping on pieces of paper, discarded, scattered, like corpses on the writer’s battlefield. Each piece of paper had some writing on it. Usually only a paragraph or two. Some handwritten, some typed. Some were only a sentence, followed by a screaming question mark/exclamation point combo. She went to the bathroom and put her contacts in. She looked at her face. She washed off some eyeliner from the day before. She licked her chapped lips.

      She wandered down the old hallway, noticing the other two bedrooms. Both roommates were gone and had locked their doors. Donna sighed to herself. Her roommates were always gone when she woke up. They took the bus together to class. Donna never had class until later, and she only had one class on that day, a Monday. She walked into the kitchen, her feet cold on the linoleum. She opened the fridge and saw lots of bags and containers labeled “JESSICA” or “TANYA’S—DON’T TOUCH!” Donna decided to make Easy-Mac. As she stood by the microwave, adding cheesy powder to the water and dry noodles, she looked out the window. It was going to rain. Winter had finally decided to show its face in Berkeley. Donna frowned; she hated waiting for buses in the rain. Suddenly, the phone rang. Donna reached over to the white, cordless phone on the wall and picked it up.

      “Hello,” she said in a gravely voice. She cleared her throat. This was the first thing she’d said all day.

      “Hi, Donna?” It was an older woman’s voice.

      “Yeah. Professor?” Donna asked with surprise.

      “Yes, this is Ms. Cameron. I just wanted to let you know that you are doing exquisite work for my class. Really very sophisticated stuff. I wanted to tell you about a really interesting workshop on fiction writing in a couple weeks. I wondered if you’d be interested.” Donna paused. Her creative writing teacher was calling her, at home, to invite her to a workshop?

      “Um, yeah, that sounds really interesting. Where is it?”

      “It’s in Seattle. You’d have to fly up there. I just really think that you have great potential and that you would benefit from this class.” Her teacher sounded like a friend. Donna had known that Ms. Cameron liked her work, but not that she would ever seek her out specifically for an opportunity like this.

      “Well, yeah, I’m really flattered and I’ll see what I can do. Thank you so much.”

      “Not a problem. We’ll talk more later. See you soon.”

      “Bye.” Donna hung up the phone and put it back on the hook. Her Easy-Mac had gotten cold. She put it back in the microwave. She turned on the little space-heater that sat in the corner of the kitchen and sat down at the small, green table. She looked at the clock on the stove: 10:32 a.m. She had class in an hour. She got her mac-and-cheese out of the microwave and as she ate it, debated whether or not to take a shower. As it got closer and closer to 11:30, she leaned more and more towards no. She ended up slipping her favorite jeans on (the one’s she’s had since senior year in high school) and a big gray sweater. She put her hair in a ponytail, slipped some boots on, grabbed a black umbrella, and headed to the bus-stop. Just as she was starting away from the little white house, the little white phone rang again inside. It rang and rang and rang, but no one was there to hear it.

* * *

      “Wait…there’s a…a…message for you,” Jessica said as she sat on the couch, staring at the television, her back to Donna. She waved her hand in the air to get Donna’s attention, and then pointed to the answering machine, all without turning away from the T.V. Donna said nothing and walked over to the machine. She had just come through the door, was soaking wet, and was tracking water all over the wooden floor. Tanya would have screamed. Donna played the message:

      “Hey there.”

      Donna knew immediately who it was. It was Mom.

      “It’s Mom. We need to talk about something so call me back soon.” The message was short and harsh, just like Donna’s mother. The girl in the dripping gray sweater cringed as she picked up the phone and dialed the number. It started with that old, familiar area code.

      “Hello?” a man’s voice said loudly on the other end of the line.

      “Hey, Dad. It’s Donna. I need to talk to Mom.” Donna knew what was coming.

      “Donna! Well, aren’t I lucky to have the pleasure of talking to my own daughter? How long’s it been? Three months? Four? I feel so honored! What do you need, Donna? Bail?”

      Donna switched the phone to the other ear. “Good one, Dad.” She got her sarcasm from him. “No, I just need to talk to Mom.”

      “Fine. Susan!” He called to Donna’s mother the way he always had. Every time he had needed anything. To find his shoes, to get him a drink, to explain some new purchase he had noticed in the house. Suddenly, there was a new tone on the line.

      “Donna?”

      “Hi, Mom. What’s up?” Donna was tired.

      “Well, you had said that you might try to fly out the weekend after next. I know you said it a long time ago, but I was just wondering if maybe you had remembered and were still planning on coming. Or did something else come up?” Maybe she got her sarcasm from her mother.

      “Actually, Mom, that weekend is this writing workshop thing. I was actually wondering—”

      “Oh! Of course! Something always comes up! Something about writing! About you! You, you, you! You haven’t changed a bit. I thought college might help you, but no. It’s just like high school, Donna. Do you realize that? This is just like high school. You were never around to see us. Never around to do your homework. You had more important things to do. Your friends—”

      “Mom!” Donna yelled. Her mother was silent. Jessica even turned around on the couch. “Mom. This is really important to me. You know, my professor called me personally. She thinks I’m really good. I just need some, you know, cash. To fly up there. It’s in Seattle.”

      “God. You never stop to think about other people’s situations, do you? You know we don’t have a lot of money right now. You know that. We’ve never had a lot. But I guess that never stopped you from asking for anything before…” Donna’s mother was a blond woman.

      “Mom. This is really important to me. I’m good at this.” Donna looked at her boots. They were black and worn out. Her socks were wet inside them. She looked around the room; Jessica was watching Jeopardy. These brothers committed the first train robbery in the United States in 1866, prompted Alex Trebek. Jessica whispered something over and over that sounded like “we know mothers, we know mothers.” Who are…the Reno Brothers? asked the ugly, female contestant. Correct! said Trebek.

      “Look. You can’t just take, Donna! You can’t just take from everyone in your life,” her mother said, exasperated.

      “Ok then, Mom. Thanks anyway. I’ll see you…around.” She hung up the phone. She went to her room and dug for a clean piece of paper on her desk. With an orange pen, she wrote: If I have no mother and no father then, really, I don’t exist.

* * *

      The next three days passed slowly for Donna. She hardly spoke. There was no one to speak to.

      “Shit.” Donna reached for her lamp after turning her alarm off, but the bulb was burned out. She bit her bottom lip in frustration. While keeping her eyes closed, as if she was sleep-walking, she made her way to the light switch on the wall. She stood there, and stared at her closet door. She sighed and walked toward it, opened the door and stood inside the closet, staring up at a pair of gloves, lying together on a shelf. She sighed again and reached for them, pulling them down and letting them rest in her hands. She stuck her hand in one of them and pulled out a little wad of money and then went back to her bed and started counting: $20, $40, $60, $62, $67, $87…

      She had $210. Plus $500 in the bank. Half of that would go to her flight, maybe more. She stared at that money and shook her head.

      All the time she tried. She tried so hard to do so well. She worked and she studied. She tried all by herself in the dark. And sometimes she wrote. But was this what she had been working toward? Is this what she was saving up for? How was there any way to know?

      “Screw it,” she said triumphantly as she threw the empty gloves back into the closet. She was going.  
 
 

      Seattle was different. It was sad, in a way. It was busy. It was raining. Donna stood under her black umbrella, her most responsible outfit of a nice top and pants hidden by a big sweater, coat, and scarf. She stood staring at the building in which the workshop was being held. Then, suddenly, she climbed the stairs to the entrance. She told herself to be confident.

      The moment she entered the room, she saw them. The others. They were mingling, eating store-bought cookies and baby carrots off a snack table in the back of the room. Suddenly, she realized they were all her. They were all her in different forms. Each one had been that person—that student. They had probably all been invited by their teachers. They were all the favorites. They were all the best.

      Donna sat in one of the plastic chairs that were arranged in a large circle. She took out some gum from her bag and started to chew. She kept rustling around in her bag, like she was looking for something, just so she had some purpose. And so no one would bother her. Finally, a thin, blond woman in a brown suit came floating into the room.

      “Hello, everyone! I’m Margo Robinson. I hope you are all excited to be here.”

      Everyone took their seats. A good-looking man with black hair and thick, black glasses sat to her left, while a short, pretty girl with brown hair in a French braid sat on her right. The girl also wore glasses, but these had thin rims—almost transparent. Everyone took out a notebook, so Donna followed suit.

      “Now, we’re going to start with an exercise. I want you all to describe a specific memory. Details are very important. Don’t be afraid to overdo it. Describe every detail of the memory. Think hard. How ‘bout we shoot for 25 minutes?”

      Shit. A memory. A memory. Shit. Childhood. 20 minutes left. Thanksgiving. My parents. My brother. Everyone else is writing so fast. The bathroom. The needle, the ice, my ears. Blood. French braid girl has written a page! The white towel. The little diamond earrings of my mother’s.

      It started coming back to Donna; the way she had done it—pierced her own ears on Thanksgiving. The feelings of pride and revenge and of being 14 were present in every corner of her writing. They were hidden in places no one would expect them to be.

      This is good. I like this. I’m really good at this.

      “And stop! Now, turn to a person next to you and trade pieces. Read each others’. Really pay attention to their details. What did they remember about the event? Are colors prominent? Think about things like that. What did they feel was important about the event?”

      Donna began to read French braid girl’s piece. It was about a hotel room in Italy. Suddenly, Donna seized up with panic. This is so good. This is incredible. I would publish this. This is like…like some Henry James shit. This is really dense. Jesus. She looked up at French braid girl reading Donna’s paper in front of her, her eyes darting from line to line. Her expression stayed firmly blank. Donna’s heart sank. Was she really all alone? She looked around at other pairs reading quickly, seriously. Some were marking papers with red pens. Then she noticed a boy. He was wearing some stupid college-boy outfit: flannel shirt and jeans. But he was looking around too. And then he looked at her.

      If it had been anyone else, or anywhere else, Donna would have looked away immediately. But it was as if she had not seen another human being face-to-face in years. She stared at his face. She soaked it in. She had no one else in the world to stare at.

      He dropped his head and glanced at his feet and smiled. Then he raised his eyes again. His head stayed bowed, but his eyes looked again, right at her. And then, while first giving a nod towards the door, he got his things, got up, and walked out of the room. Donna knew what he meant—to follow him. She grabbed her bag, leaving her notebook in the hands of that little French braid girl, and left the room.

      “Hey.”

      Donna had walked right past him.

      “Oh, hey.”

      They were silent for a moment. A long moment. Donna suddenly thought twice about her choice.

      “Do you think, maybe, we should just go back?” she said, not looking at him.

      “My name’s David.”

      “I’m Donna.”

      “Can I call you Bathsheba?”

      “What?”

      “Nothing. Just kidding.” He laughed to himself. “Wanna go someplace?”

      Now she laughed.

      “Sure.”

      She thought about him on the walk to the library. She thought about him while they looked at old books and photos of Seattle in the 1900s, books about nature, and books about famous dancers. She thought of him in the elevator, which was hopefully never going to stop. She thought about him, as they looked out over the city from the top of that big building, where he kissed her shyly and then turned away. She thought of him as they rode in the cab to dinner. She thought of him while having her spaghetti, then chocolate cake, then coffee. She thought of him, while he spoke softly, but passionately, about work, school, errands to be done, leaks to be fixed. She thought of him when he pointed to a man in a suit and said “be careful, his bow tie is really a camera,” to which she answered, “that’s Simon and Garfunkel,” to which he kissed her on the cheek.

      And as she lay in the hard, hotel room bed, staring at him in the dim light coming from the bathroom, she thought so hard about him that she had to get up. She went to her bag and took out a little maroon notebook and a black pen, flipped to the next blank page, and wrote: It is wonderfully refreshing to be able to suddenly think about someone else, more than I do myself.