| they are all show, no go. I applied for unemployment insurance and called my mother: “Mom, I’m thinking about quitting music. I’m just not getting anywhere and if it fails I won’t have any skills to fall back on. I can take a course to become a stenographer, it doesn’t take very long.” Things had been going better, so when I fell, I fell further. It seemed as if they would never go my way. Getting closer to the mountain had made the mountaintop seem unreachable. What had I been thinking? Who did I think I was? “You want to be a court reporter?” my mother asked. “Yeah, it pays pretty well. Sitting in a courtroom.” “I don’t see you doing that.” “I don’t want to be poor all my life.” I thought my mother would think this was a good idea. I imagined her saying, “Rickie, get yourself a backup job,” but that was not what I heard. “You wanted to be a singer. You’ve been working so hard at it. It’s what you’ve always wanted to do.” I was worn down, I protested: “I’m going nowhere. Nobody loves me, I’ve got nobody, I have no job and I’m lonely. I don’t know what to do.” She stood strong (she was always so strong! “I know you feel bad right now, but don’t give up on your dream. Maybe you’ll be the one who succeeds. Don’t you quit now. Don’t give up without trying Rickie.” My mother. She was |
he would smoke a cigar to celebrate his dinner and his life. As he inhaled, the glow of his cigar lit up the dark shadow inside the hole and he noticed the scorpion who had crawled in with him. Another sole survivor of the fury unleashed by World War II, the scorpion had long considered this his dry, serene world. It was a fair-sized yellow scorpion, perhaps attracted to the cigar’s light, or simply the cool earth where his kind usually congregate. Dad watched the animal walking slowly and decided to stop its advance with his cigar. He set the cigar down in front of the scorpion’s path. The thing stopped. It started to go around the obstacle, but Dad moved the cigar back into its path. The scorpion wanted no part of it. One more time my dad put the red end of the cigar into the scorpion’s face and this time the scorpion had had enough. It struck the cigar with its poisonous tail spike, but the cigar survived and was still lit. Now the scorpion took hold of the tobacco with its scorpion hands and pulled the burning cigar to itself, bringing it close enough to strike, and strike it did—but not at the cigar. As the scorpion brought its poisonous tail down upon its own head, it pulled the fire into its face. It killed itself. Father was dumbfounded. Shocked. He had tormented an innocent thing, a survivor like himself. A refugee, tired and hungry |
