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Rapture, by Katie Cortese, from Vol 2 of The Ampersand Review
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Rapture Katie Cortese
From The Ampersand Review, Vol.
2
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
Rapture
Katie Cortese
The first time my sister‟s gerbil
died my father found it. While he went to
Debbie‟s Petland with a polaroid of the
deceased, my mother and I took Sophie out
for ice cream. It was January in Eastern
Mass. Not your ideal time for Rocky Road.
The second time, we were on vacation and a
neighbor handled the burial and replacement
according to instructions on the emergency
list my mother left on the refrigerator (#8
In Case Spanky Dies). It wasn‟t until Spanky
IV that our luck quit.
“Ellen,” my father said. “Go light a
fire under your sister.” It was a school day
and Sophie had not come down to breakfast.
I found her kneeling in front of
Spanky‟s habitat, nose to the yellow
plastic, hands flat together in front of her
chest. She was dressed all in black, head to
toe. As for Spanky, he was nose down in the
sawdust, his tail looped through a spoke in
his wheel. We had kept up the charade for
seven years, proving the adage that it‟s not
a problem if your little sister‟s gerbil
dies, unless she finds out about it.
This was a Tuesday and there was a
plate of sausage in the center of the table.
“One link or two,” my mother said. My father
was busy chewing, which bought him time to
think.
“Just bread and water,” said
Sophie. When she bowed her head a silver
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
cross scraped against her plate. We were all
Catholics, but Sophie was a believer.
“They‟re Jimmy Dean‟s, Soph,” I
said.
“Excuse me,” she said, hotly. “But
I‟m in mourning.”
“More for me,” I said. In truth, I
knew what she was feeling. In the first
grade, I‟d lost Goldie, my fish, and had
stopped eating solid food for a week. That,
coupled with my copious tears, had landed me
overnight in the hospital for dehydration.
When I came home, we‟d had a proper funeral
in the upstairs bathroom with a goldfish
cracker substituting for my dearly beloved
fish, who was by then long gone.
Sophie was just a little thing then, not
four years old, but she listened to the
scratched record of “The Saints Go Marching
In” and stood with the rest of us, solemn
and silent, as I did the honors and flushed
the idol of Goldie into the next world. I
hadn‟t wanted another fish after that. The
first Spanky‟s death came a month later and
I guess my parents didn‟t want to see
another kid in a transparent paper johnnie,
drooling on hospital sheets. After the first
replacement, it had seemed easier to keep
doing it than to tell her the truth.
“What say we hit the mall after
school, Sophia,” my father said. “There‟s a
sale on guinea pigs.”
My mother dropped her knife on the
floor. While she was down there she
whispered my father‟s name, Charles. Because
I was next to her I felt the heat of her
breath on my leg.
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
Sophie brought her paper napkin to
her face. “I‟m not going to dignify that,”
she said. My sister read a lot for a nine-
year-old. She took pride in her vocabulary.
Sweating now, red-faced, my father took more
sausage and sat in silence, chewing.
“It‟s eighty degrees outside,” I
said. “You really want to wear a
turtleneck?”
“These are mourning vestments, an
outward sign to the world of my state.”
“Fine.” I had on my yellow dress,
the lightest one I owned. “If you feel like
dying from heatstroke.”
My mother set her mug too firmly
on the table, remembering what they said,
maybe, about hell and good intentions.
“Shush, Ellen,” she said. “Sophie is
perfectly capable of dressing herself.”
“Sorry.” I pushed a rumpled piece
of paper across the table. “I need you to
sign this. It‟s a permission slip.”
My father snatched it up, eager to
reclaim parental competency. “What for?”
“Sex Ed.,” I said. “We‟re having
afternoon assemblies tomorrow, the whole
sixth grade. If we can‟t go to the
assemblies, we‟re not supposed to go to
school.”
My father dropped the paper and
stood up in one motion. “I‟m off.” Kissing
my mother on the cheek, he grabbed his
briefcase from the counter. Exit stage left.
“Well, I‟m working tomorrow,” my
mother said. “Get me a pen.”
In the driveway, my father woke
the Volvo. “Will Spanky‟s service be right
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
after school?” Sophie asked. She had big,
dark eyes and they were open wide now,
turned up to my mother.
“I‟m sure Daddy will want to
attend,” she said, squeezing Sophie‟s wrist
with the blue Bic between her first two
fingers. “Let‟s make it an evening affair.”
“Lord‟s will be done,” Sophie
said, making the sign of the cross.
“Okay then, that‟s settled. Now
the Lord helps those who help themselves.”
My mother dug a spoon into a large bowl of
scrambled eggs. She was a believer in
breakfast.
“I couldn‟t,” Sophie said. Her
feet were bare under the hem of her long,
black Sunday skirt. I wondered if she was
planning on leaving them that way.
I skewered another sausage and
waggled it at her. “Maple flavored,” I said.
Sophie lifted the crucifix on its
chain and kissed it. “Fine,” she said,
sighing. “Suffer the sausages unto me.”
Instead of removing layers on the way to
school, Sophie added them, twirling a black
fleece scarf around her neck, draping a
shawl over her head so only her white face
showed and – after my mother called her back
across the lawn – lacing on black sneakers.
We walked together, she next to me like the
world‟s saddest penguin.
It was better this way, I thought.
She had to learn about death sometime.
“I know how you feel, Soph,” I
said.
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
“No,” she said. “I don‟t think you
do. Goldie was just a fish.”
“Ouch,” I said. “You‟re allowed
to be sad, but maybe Dad‟s right. Maybe you
should get a guinea pig. Or even another
gerbil. Spanky would want you to be happy.”
“Another gerbil?” She laughed, an
empty sound. “Spanky was irreplaceable. A
miracle.”
I brought a hand to my throat,
which felt as if it were closing. “What do
you mean?”
“Ellen, gerbils usually live three
years. Maybe five at the most. I looked it
up. Do you know how long Spanky lived?” The
edge of her shawl interrupted her peripheral
vision so she couldn‟t see me blush.
“Longer than that?”
“Seven years, Ellen. Seven.”
She was attracting attention from
the kids passing on bikes. One asked whose
funeral she was going to and Sophie paused
so I heard rosary beads rattle in her cupped
hand. At my friend Bob‟s house he fell into
step with us. We‟d been friends forever, but
lately I kept catching him looking at me
sideways, and then something like static
electricity would prickle into my
fingertips, a pesky needling.
“Is the fourth grade having a
dress up day?” he asked. “Who‟s she, Mother
Theresa?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“I‟m getting more cheat codes
today,” he said. “Can you come over?”
“Sorry, we‟re putting Spanky to
rest.”
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
Bob‟s eyes widened. He‟d been in
the know. We were joined on the sidewalk by
groups of kids in threes and fours, and in
the distance swelled the great roar of the
schoolyard. Sophie walked in front of us but
she spoke to Bob now, over her shoulder.
“You‟re welcome to attend. There will be a
short reception following the ceremony.”
“I‟m bad at funerals,” Bob said.
“But I‟m very sorry for your loss.”
We watched her cross over to the
fourth grade side where the teachers were
corralling the kids into lines. “This
doesn‟t look good,” he said.
“She‟ll snap out of it.”
“If you say so.”
“So, have you made any progress?”
Bob see-sawed his hand in the air.
“I‟m at the end of level four, but I‟ve been
stuck there since Saturday. The problem lies
with Bowser Jr. I‟ve been psyching myself
up, but every time, pow.” Bob pounded a fist
into the soft flesh of his palm. “Every
time.”
“Good luck getting those cheats,”
I said. For his birthday early in May, Bob
had gotten The New Super Mario Brothers and
had quickly become addicted. Over the last
month, we‟d logged countless hours in front
of the big screen in his basement. He wanted
to beat the game before vacation or else, he
said, faced with the endless days of
nothingness, no homework, no soccer
practice, no reason to leave the house, he
wouldn‟t see sun until September. That was
no way to spend a summer. “What‟d you bring
him?”
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
Bob opened his backpack and showed
me the Double Stuffed Oreos in their pink
and blue package. “That fifth grader‟s got a
sweet tooth,” Bob said. “Don‟t worry, he‟ll
talk.”
By the time I saw Sophie at lunch
she had acquired a veil that was pinned to
her head with bobby pins. It obscured,
entirely, her eyes and nose.
“Where‟d that come from?”
“We had art this morning,” Sophie
said. “Mrs. Haskell helped me make it with
watercolors and some gauze from the first-
aid kit.”
“Nice,” I said.
“I made one for you too.” Sophie
took from her sleeve the rolled up twin of
the veil she wore. She waited until I held
it up against my hairline, eyeballing the
fit.
At Bob‟s house after school on Wednesday,
the day after Spanky‟s funeral, Bob‟s
grandfather opened the front door. He was a
tall man who dressed in red plaid shirts and
brown pants almost exclusively. “Good
afternoon, Ellie,” he said. His hand
jittered against the screen.
“Hello, Mr. Kaufman.” He‟d moved
in with Bob‟s family after his wife died
last year. He reminded me of our principal,
Mr. Fedge. Both men were tall and had sun-
dark skin, both talked with their hands,
only the principal of Peebles Elementary
wasn‟t nearly so old. Mr. Fedge had blushed
a serious shade of cherry non-stop today,
announcing the Sex Ed. presenters and making
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
sure girls and boys got to their respective
classrooms. But the presentations hadn‟t
been anything new, not if your parents had
shown you a book when you were little,
especially not if you were like some girls
in my class, girls like Spacey Miller whose
red and black and pink bra straps made her a
frequent snapping victim.
The upstairs of Bob‟s house
smelled of pipe smoke and meatball subs, but
the basement smelled of old beer and dust
and rot. Bob was moaning when I got down
there. “This is not good,” he said. “I‟m
stuck.”
“What about the cheats?”
“Garbage. A whole row of Double
Stuffs, wasted.”
A map of Mario World was displayed
on the screen. Mario, in small, bounced in
place on an orange stepping stone. Bob had
graduated from the tropical island level
into the jungle over the weekend, but still
ahead were the mountain levels, the ice, the
sky. He‟d already died multiple times today.
I could tell it was wearing on him. “Want me
to take over for awhile? So you can clear
your head?”
His hand closed reflexively down
on his controller, but then he pried his
fingers off, one at a time. “That‟d be good,
I guess.”
The great thing about Super Mario
Brothers was that you never really died. In
every world there was always a free life
mushroom, if you knew where to find it,
which guaranteed that if Bowser won the
fight at the end, you could still live to
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
fight another day. Bob grabbed two cans of
Sprite from the battered mini fridge next to
his father‟s card table. “Has your sister
gone completely off the deep end yet?”
I was easing Mario through the
paces, working his high jump. “I don‟t know.
At the funeral she was really happy. And
afterwards she ate two squares of lasagna
and watched Wheel of Fortune with my dad
even though she hates that show.”
“Why?”
“She says it‟s demeaning to women.”
“No,” Bob said. “Why was she happy?” He
swigged at his Sprite, then used his sleeve
to wipe his mouth. “Watch out, there‟s a
couple of Koopa Troopas in the next frame.”
“Thanks. She said there was no
point being sad since Spanky would be back
tomorrow.”
Bob iced his thumbs on his soda
can. I wasn‟t doing better or worse than he
had done, but in a minute he‟d ask if I was
tired. “Did anyone explain the term dead to
her?”
“My parents are going to tell her
everything. All the way back to Spanky I.”
Bob whistled, long and low. Then,
“Hey, how‟re you holding up?”
“I‟m okay,” I said. Bob tented his
fingers then stretched them out. “But why
don‟t you take another crack at it.”
Bob sat cross-legged next to me so our knees
touched. I couldn‟t tell if he noticed,
but he didn‟t move away and neither did I.
For awhile there were only the delicate
clicks of buttons sinking and rising under
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
his thumbs. I had shorts on and the corduroy
on Bob‟s pants impressed a striated pattern
into my knee. In that spot a warmth began
spreading under the skin, rushing sudden and
alive, like hives. I wondered if the same
thing was happening to Bob, in his knee, and
if it was something to worry about. Hives
had not been covered in Sex Ed.
Bob manipulated Mario down a green
pipe and the screen filled with a hundred
rotating coins. “Your parents are going to
give her a complex,” Bob said. “Nine is a
little old to believe, what, that Spanky
will rise again on the third day?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.” But
I‟d been nine three whole years ago, a long
time, and it was hard to remember what I had
or hadn‟t believed.
A miscalculated jump launched Mario into a
bottomless abyss. “Your turn,” Bob said. He
leaned back on his elbows and stretched out
his legs. The skin on my knee felt new-made
in his absence, and all at once it was
easier to breathe. I saved Bob‟s game and
started a new one, as the Princess, who I
liked because she could hover at the top of
her jumps. “So yesterday, Sophie pulled a
disappearing act after school. My mother was
ready to call the police when she walked the
door.” On the screen Princess Peach leaped
over a Venus fly trap and got nipped,
shrinking from full-grown to mini. “My mom
yelled, but Sophie just said she‟d been
walking around.”
“Weird.”
“Right. So today, after school, I
followed her. She went to church,” I said.
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
After school Sophie told me she
had permission from Mom to walk to the 7-
Eleven on Poplar for an ice cream sandwich.
I‟d waited until she was a block ahead of me
and kept something big, a van, a large tree,
a mailbox, between us in case I needed to
hide. She skipped past the 7-Eleven without
a glance and I waited at the corner,
watching while she went up the stone steps
into St. Anthony‟s. There were some elderly
people using canes to propel themselves up
to the door and she held it open for them. I
got an ice cream sandwich and waited until
Mass let out. They didn‟t hire an organist
for weekdays, so the whole thing only took
thirty minutes. She‟d come out holding hands
with an altar boy. A fifth-grader whose name
I thought was Greg.
“Sophie has a boyfriend?” Bob
said. On the screen, Princess Peach got
crushed by a sliding wall panel and died. I
handed over the controller. “Grampa thinks
you‟re my girlfriend.”
The muscles of my face felt frozen
and that strange throbbing began in my knee
again, like the aftershock to a great
natural disaster. “What did you tell him?”
“That I only have one mistress.”
Bob nodded to the screen.
“Well, there‟s no sense competing
with that,” I said. In the girls‟
presentation today the gym teacher handed
out two pamphlets printed on shiny paper,
one about menstruation and other female
maladies called “You‟re a Woman Now;” the
other about A.I.D.S. We also got two Playtex
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
tampons. We thought the boys would get
condoms, but they came back empty-handed.
Now, in the basement, Bob went to
the end of the level and paused before
meeting the Big Boss. “This is it,” he said,
flexing his fingers. “This time I‟m going
all the way.”
On Thursday, Sophie ate oatmeal at
the table without calling attention to
herself. I was completely stumped. One
morning inconsolable, one elated, today
perfectly neutral as if Spanky had never
died, or had never existed.
“What do you think?” she asked on
the way to school, handing me a yellow piece
of paper. In red crayon she had drawn a
three-dimensional rectangle with a cylinder
coming out of the top like a chimney. Above
the box she‟d neatly written:
For Sale!
One Perfectly Good Jerbil Cage
Wheel and Extra Saw Dust Included
Contact Miss Sophia Cavia, 4th Grade, Room
222
Price Negoshable
“There are a couple of mistakes,”
I said.
“I did them on purpose,” she said.
“So I wouldn‟t intimidate anyone. We haven‟t
gotten to „tion‟ words yet.”
“Well, in any case, it‟s perfectly
understandable.”
“Good,” she said. “I‟m going to
post it in the cafeteria.”
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
In less than a month, school would
be out for the summer. Sophie and I were
going to Cathedral Camp for two weeks like
we always did. Last year Sophie had snuck
Spanky IV in her backpack for the last day
and passed him around during campfire. I‟d
been amazed she‟d gotten him safely back
home. There had been a Spanky around for all
her important moments.
“I thought Spanky was coming back
today,” I said.
Sophie folded her ad and slipped
it into her backpack. “I was wrong about
that.”
“I don‟t understand. You were so
sure yesterday.”
Bob‟s house came into view and I
could see him dimly through his kitchen
window. His bangs were long enough to fall
in front of his eyes.
“I thought maybe God would bring
him back, you know? I knew he couldn‟t live
forever, but I got so used to him that I
started taking him for granted. That was my
sin, so it‟s me that‟s being punished, not
Spanky.”
“Who told you that?”
When we got to Bob‟s house Sophie
would walk a couple feet in front of us. She
could talk a blue streak around me or her
friends in Mrs. Hatch‟s class, but around
older kids she was tongue-tied. And Bob was
already halfway down the flagstone path.
“It doesn‟t matter,” Sophie said.
“Animals don‟t have souls anyway.” She
quickened her gate to move in front of us. I
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
watched her red jumper sway around her knees
with each step.
At recess, Bob‟s Mario source pointed out
Greg the Altar Boy on the tire swing right
away. I planted my feet in the sand and
waited for it to come full circle so no one
could say I snuck up on him from behind.
“You don‟t know who I am,” I said
to Greg when he was facing me. “But you‟re
about to find out.” There were two other
kids on the swings, a skinny redhead who
fell over backwards in his haste to
disappear and a girl with two messy, blond
braids. “I‟ll give you back your swing in a
minute,” I said to her. “This won‟t take
long.”
Greg‟s cheeks were peppered with
freckles. He clung to the swing chains with
both hands and only when I came forward did
he try to scramble his legs out of the
middle.
“Not so fast,” I said. “We‟re
going to talk.”
He froze, white-faced, like Sophie
had been Tuesday morning when she woke up to
find Spanky dead. “What-” he said. “What?”
I started the swing going in a
small circle. “In a second I‟m going to get
on,” I said. “You are not going scream for a
teacher. You are not going to kick me.”
“Okay,” Greg said. I could see his
throat work when he swallowed.
I waited to climb on until we had
enough momentum to swing like a pendulum
between the supporting posts, glad that I
was wearing jeans today. My ponytail whipped
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
the back of my neck with each sideways arc.
“You know my sister,” I said.
“I don‟t think so,” he said.
“What‟s her name?”
“She‟s the little girl whose
spirit you crushed yesterday. Her name is
Sophie.”
Greg leaned forward, fighting the
inertia that wanted to suck him back. It
would take one quick movement to push him
off. I could lift one foot and place my
flip-flop over his heart; hardly expend any
effort at all. “I don‟t know any Sophies,”
he said.
“You‟re an altar boy at St.
Anthony‟s,” I said. “You served yesterday
afternoon.”
“Oh,” he said. “Her.” We were
slowing in our orbit now. There was less of
a wind between us, less of a need to shout.
“I didn‟t lie to her. She said her gerbil
died. Dead is dead for animals. Even the
Bible says they don‟t have souls.”
“Actually, Greg, it doesn‟t say that.”
I was bluffing now. I had no idea what
Sophie‟s Illustrated Children‟s Bible had to
say on the subject. But what he said felt
wrong. “And the part about her sin, her
punishment?”
Greg blushed. I could see it
creeping up his neck out of the collar of
his polo shirt. I gripped the metal swing
chains hard. “I‟m going to be a priest,”
he said. “I was practicing.”
The swing had slowed to a point of
hardly moving. “If you‟re going to be a
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
priest then you better stop holding little
girls‟ hands, and breaking their hearts.”
I stood up on the swing, balancing
us, and then leapt off in one powerful jump.
Greg flipped backwards without any weight to
counterbalance him. His hands went to his
head and I could hear his breath rasping in
and out. In my arms unlovely veins stood out
beneath the skin. I wanted to bury him in
the sand he lay in, to kick him while he was
down. Other kids were staring at us now. We
had an audience. I moved the swing aside so
he could see me clearly. “Stay away from my
sister,” I said.
After school I walked Sophie home, no
excuses today, and when I called Bob his
grandfather answered. “Robert,” he called.
“You are being hailed.”
“Halfway through,” Bob said. He
sounded physically exhausted as if he and
Mario had switched places, Mario working the
controller and Bob running endlessly through
someone else‟s dreamscape.
“Do you think your grandfather
could take us to the mall?”
“He doesn‟t drive anymore,” Bob
said. “We‟d have to ride the B bus.”
“Would he do it?”
“I heard what you did to Greg
Pultz at recess.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He deserved it.”
At Bob‟s house a television was on
to something with a laugh track. “Okay,” he
said. “But he‟s going to rag me about this
later, like it was a date.”
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
I didn‟t know how much a gerbil
cost but I had twenty dollars saved up from
Christmas. The bus driver greeted Bob‟s
grandfather by name. I‟d never ridden the B
bus before. It had a ramp the driver could
lower for wheelchairs and on the way to the
mall he had to use it four times. There were
mostly old people on the bus, women with
blue-tinted hair like my Gramma had. Bob‟s
grandfather sat next to a smiling lady in a
red dress.
“I‟ve seen her before,” Bob said. She wasn‟t
one of the blueheads. Her hair was dark gray
shot through with white. “She‟s been to our
house for dinner.”
“Then maybe your grandfather won‟t
be living with you much longer,” I said.
Bob dug an elbow into my side.
“That‟s nasty,” he said. “They‟re old.”
His hand was almost on my leg,
having fallen there after the elbow. There
wasn‟t time to think about anything. My
heart a frantic piston in my chest, I laced
my fingers through his then immediately
turned my face to the window, watching the
houses go by in the twilight. In the sweaty
cage of our hands, Bob‟s fingers tightened
on mine.
“Is this okay?” I said. I risked
turning towards him, whipping him in the
neck with my ponytail. My skin felt dusted
over with glitter, shining and fragile.
“Well, if it wasn‟t I wouldn‟t
tell you,” he said, mouth twitching. “You‟d
beat me up.”
At the mall we left the chaperones
having coffee in the food court. Two golden
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
retriever puppies occupied the front window
at Debbie‟s Petland. One slept, half-buried
in newspaper, the other languidly licked the
glass. The small rodents were in cages along
one wall.
“Spanky was black,” I said.
“Which Spanky?”
“All of them,” I said. “That made
it easy.”
We scanned the cages. There were
no black gerbils. A Debbie‟s Pet Helper was
feeding an aquarium full of neons at the
rear of the store. When I spoke to her she
looked down her nose at me from the height
of her stepstool. “Whatever product we have
is out on the floor,” she said.
“But there are always black ones,”
I said. “There have always been black ones.”
The Pet Helper, whose name tag
read Ginny, closed the lid on her aquarium
and removed one latex glove. “Let‟s take a
look,” she said, snapping each finger.
The wall of rodents was almost as
tall as it was wide so Ginny brought her
stepstool with her. She stood on tiptoe on
the tallest step. “There‟s one that‟s sort
of calico.”
“Let‟s see it,” Bob said.
Ginny reached her non-gloved hand
into a cage and emerged with a wriggling
handful of fur. “Here,” she said. “Careful.”
Its paws found purchase in the cave my
fingers made and it stuck its quivering nose
as far out from its body as it would go.
“Looks more like a Spot than a Spanky,” Bob
said. The gerbil had dots of white behind
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
one ear and a kidney shaped patch on its
stomach.
“A gerbil that‟s been to the
afterlife and back has got to have something
to show for it,” I said. Ginny, on her
footstool, sighed audibly. “Thank you,” I
said. “We‟ll take him.”
“Her,” said Ginny, climbing down.
Bob held out his finger for the
gerbil, who opened her mouth and chomped
experimentally on his nail with her two
plank-like front teeth. “Spankerella,” he
said.
At home, I draped my jacket over Spanky V in
her plastic ball. I could feel the gerbil‟s
weight in there, shifting as she ran in
small circles. It didn‟t seem like panic
though. Probably she felt at home in the
close dark, gerbils being nocturnal. Both my
parents were in the kitchen, which I should
have taken as a sign.
“We told her,” my mother said. She
had her hands starred flat on the wooden
table.
“Why?” I said. “What for?”
My father ran a thumb and finger
over his moustache. “She called us liars,”
he said. “She said we were just trying to
make her feel better.”
“Do you know anything about a
penance?” my mother said.
I took the newest Spanky from her
ball and held her inside my sweatshirt pouch
where she nibbled on a hangnail next to my
pinky, then systematically stuck her nose
into the cracks between my fingers. My plan
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
was to hide the new Spanky by the last one‟s
grave and then get Sophie to come pay her
respects. We‟d marked the spot in the
backyard not with a cross or a headstone,
but with the upside down globe of Spanky
IV‟s yellow-tinted exercise ball. Back
outside, walking across the lawn to the
grave though, I found Sophie already there.
It was damp outside and a wind was shivering
through the border of pink rhododendrons.
“Hey,” I said.
She looked up at me and it was too
dark to tell if she‟d been crying or not.
“Mom and Dad told me,” she said. She pointed
at me, lifting her arm slowly so it seemed
to hover free of the rest of her body. “And
you helped, Ellen,” she said. When she
turned to me the light filtering out from
the back of the house caught the silver
chain around her neck and made the whites of
her eyes flash. She was a girl who had lost
her mystery.
“I don‟t know what they‟re talking
about,” I said.
“But they said. They said the
first time was when we got ice cream in the
middle of winter. I remember after that
Spanky never liked his treats as much. He
never finished them.”
“I think you‟re imagining things,
Soph. I really do. I think they‟re lying.”
Sophie‟s little fists clenched. I
could see that even in the dark.
“That‟s what I told them,” Sophie
said. “They denied it.”
There had been nothing mysterious
about the Sex Ed. presentations, the
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
mechanics of it all, and yet the way I felt
around Bob had no easy explanation. All I
knew for sure was that our hearts beat, that
my heart could beat faster just from sitting
near him. I didn‟t know how a gerbil worked,
how it saw the world or heard it or what it
felt when it got hungry, but here it was
anyway, a tiny creature breathing of the
stale air in my pocket, its heart beating
steadily against my fingers. It had been
wrong to lie to Sophie, but to take away her
faith would be worse.
“I think you should see if they can
prove it. Make them give you dates and
receipts. Even saints had to show evidence,
document their miracles.”
Under our feet lay one marked grave and
three unmarked ones.
“Well, I don‟t think our parents
are saints,” Sophie said. She turned on her
heel and ran barefoot across the lawn. The
screen door slammed behind her.
After Sophie was out of sight I
pried up the yellow ball we had sunk into
the earth as a monument to the monumental
life of Spanky. When Jesus rose again the
boulder blocking the cave had been rolled
aside. It was part of the miracle. After I
got Spanky V situated she went to work
exploring the grass floor. I put my foot on
the top of the ball and pushed just a
little, just so the mouth of it sunk into
the soft earth, leaving her plenty of air
and a small circle of ground to scamper
around on. I watched her nose at the grass,
press her paws against the sides.
T h e A m p e r s a n d R e v i e w V o l . 2
This was as close to freedom as she would
get. In a minute she would be home.
Katie Cortese is a Cape Cod native,
currently a Ph.D. student in Fiction at
Florida State University. She received her
MFA from Arizona State in 2006. Previous
employment includes grant-writing for a
children's theatre company, writing articles
about hot tubs, and feeding gastropods at
SeaWorld San Diego. Her fiction and poetry
has been published in NANOfiction, St. Ann's
Review, Zone 3, The Comstock Review and
Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction.