"The Dried Tomato"

Vaqueros in Brooklyn, NY

by Angela Pailevanian

Six in the morning, Ruben woke up for his shift at The Dried Tomato, a sandwich shop in the Lower East Side. Ate breakfast, brushed his teeth, put on the weird-looking hat, and off he went to ride the subway to work.

"Ruben, you're late!" Alice said. She was like the veteran of the place. Eighty years old and still working. With at least 20 grandchildren.

Ruben apologized and ran into the back to get his apron. Conversation continued amongst the workers.

"Hey Riley! Have you caught the kid that threw a baseball through your window?"

"No! I can't even fix it, I'm two months behind on rent. I swear that kid's gonna get a beating when I find out who it is!"

It was noon. People were pouring in. The orders were accumultaing quickly.

"I want a turkey bacon sandwich, hold the mayo."

"I want a chicken sandwich on wheat bread, and fries on the side."

"I want a large coke, with a bacon sandwich, no tomatoes though."

Around 2pm, a boy walked in. He had on a Led Zeppelin shirt. Green eyes. Dark skin. Looked like he was ready to kill somebody.

"Welcome, what do you want to eat?" Ruben asked.

"You want to know what I want? I want to know why my father left. But you can't tell me that, can you? Nobody can. Not even my momma. Now she's three months behind rent, he aint paying a dime and we're gonna get evicted."

"Oh. Well I'm--"

"You have any idea what it's like to grow up without a dad? Watchin' my momma struggle every day, not comign home. She's got five kids. Six including me. I'm the youngest."

"How long has he been gone?" Ruben asked.

"Oh, he was gone before I was even born. Momma said she met him at a bar out in Buswick years ago."

"What's your momma's name, son?"

"Ayleen."

Could it be? The Ayleen he met in Vaqueros 15 years ago? The boy had Ruben's eyes, Ruben's nose, Ruben's slick straight hair. But she never told him anything, never called him. They broke up just as soon as they had gotten together.

Ruben stayed silent for a moment. Then he said: "Man, if I found my father now, he gon' wish he never left my momma."

Ruben shook his head and tried to stay focused on the food: "What do you want to eat, son?"

"Chapter 1—I am Born"

by Cassy Sarnell

Jennifer Louise Boyle was born on September 27, 1992. She had stunning blue eyes and little ringlet curls. Her mother, Karen Celia Boyle, had been at the hospital for 6 hours, counting the hour of doctors sticking needles in her to numb the pain. Her father, Matthew Louis Boyle, didn’t see either the mother or the child for exactly 24 hours after the baby’s birth, at which point he exclaimed, “Well thank god all the right parts are in all the right places,” which I resent.

It never occurred to a young Jennifer that there was anything wrong with her. She was not especially “girly,” but not especially “tomboyish,” a term I resent.

The first clue she had that she was less-than-perfect was while watching Motocrossed with her now-ex-best friend. She was sitting there, watching, when I spoke up for the first time.

“I want to marry her.”

Jennifer, not one to keep anything to herself, shared this with her now-ex-best friend: “I want to marry her.”

“Ew. Are you gay?”

Neither of us knew what the term meant, so Jennifer looked it up.

“I’m straight,” I told her.

“I know… Are you my imaginary friend?”

“No.”

“Are you… me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“What?”

“Well, I thought I was Jennifer. But you’re me. So whatever your name is is also my name.”

I thought about it. “James. I’m James.”

I was born 8 years later, on June 15, 2008. James Louis Boyle. I had hair cut too short to form ringlets, and dreary blue eyes. My mother, Karen Celia Boyle, wouldn’t look at me. My father, Matthew Louis Boyle, wavered between joking that now he had the son he’d always wanted, and staring at me with a look that said, "How did this get so wrong? How did you get so wrong?”

"The Skirt Incident"

by Alana Mohamed

It was morning-ish. I say morning-ish because the things you'd usually connect to morning -- sun, people, bumper-to-bumper traffic -- weren't present at 6am on the BQE. Dad had a meeting and was dropping me off to school a bit early. Three hours of wandering around Brooklyn wouldn't be that bad. The half-dead Toyota Camry warmth was all I could ask for this monring.

Then the car stopped.

It stopped nowhere near my school. We were at the corner of Dekalb Avenue and some street that definitely was not anywhere near my school. I looked at my father. He looked at me. He clicked the door unlocked.

"I'm late for work."

"Uh... okay."

"Just head to school yourself; I'll see you at home tonight."

And out the car I went in my skirt and boots and leather jacket. It was a cute outfit, but it wasn't hiking-through-Brooklyn approved. I had barely made it a block before fantasizing about the school's gym sweatpants. They were large, unflattering, unsightly, and very warm. By the seventh block I had been followed by a man in a van who insisted that the back of said van was the safest place in the world -- and another on foot who thought it was perfectly acceptable to stroke my leg.

Ten blocks later I decided I deserved breakfast. That part was okay. Rejuvenated, I strolled outside and took my time getting to school. I had all the time in the world.

I got to school and swiped in my ID card, but then --

"Young lady!"

The scratchy smoker's voice pierced the lazy quiet of the school lobby. I knew that "young lady." It's the "young lady" you get when a teacher decides she doens't like your attire for the day. Don't turn around just keep walking --

"Excuse me!"

I turned around. I smiled. My skirt fell just above my knees, perfectly acceptable. There's nothing she can do to me, I thought. Oh, how naive I was.

"You," the teacher spat. "Your ass is practically hanging out of that skirt. Dean's office now."

* * *

And so I found myself victim to another teacher's PMS, sitting in the dean's office, being told I'd need to trade in my brand new shiny iPhone for a pair of those aforementioned sweatpants. They no longer looked appealing though. They looked about 10 years old, smelled of mothballs, and probably had some elderly love juices sprayed on them.

I refused. They yelled; I yelled; they yelled some more. "Could I just pull the skirt down at little so it covers my knees?!" I'm not sure how sane I would seem if I had to explain to them my whole hike to Brooklyn Technical High School, how my father had abandoned me on the street. I pulled down my skirt to shor Mr. Dean and Ms. Teacher. More outrage. More yelling. What was said wasn't quite impertinent, because most of it was unintelligible. I'm not sure if they understood it. They were very excited and excitable.

Because of this "skirt incident" as it's come to be known among a close circle of friends and now you, I spent a good hour and forty-three minutes in the dean's office, waiting for my mother to pick me up from school.

I feel a bit wimpy that my first altercation with school officials was over a skirt -- and not something as ridiculously bad as, like, drugs or sex or injuring someone, But it's a start.

"The Tool Shed"

by Lauren Garrett-Joly

Dad creeps slowly down the steps into our basement workshop, one of his and my favorite places to spend our time. This is where we can fully embrace our "manly man-ness" together. To prove it, Dad is wearing overalls, Timberlands, and has quite a bit of overgrown stubble on his chin that he has purposely chosen to ignore this Saturday morning.

Dad is an obvious country man at heart, though he chose to stop speaking like one since he met my mother. Growing up in New Jersey, he always naturally kept up that tuff-gruff, I'm-a-man persona. The beard thing was a part of this, of course, but he told me he really kept it up to look like Bruce Springsteen.

"So Dad, what exactly are we building today?" I ask as he makes his way down our rickety basement stairs. He grunts, ignoring my question as he acknowledges our surroundings. Our basement, unlike most, is not caked in cobwebs, dust and soot, but instead is generally pretty clean. You can even see the burgundy color of the wooden steps, which until I attended my friend Jimmy's bar-mitzvah (yes--in his basement), I didn't realize was an enviable feat.

But Dad isn't grunting at the shine of the wood, he's grunting at the very unorganized set of tools we've been collecting down here (since I was 7, which then I could only look at, not touch). I had always figured Dad appreciated this, being that this was the only quadrant of the house that wasn't constantly kept tidy. (We do live with 4 females after all.) So I took pride in the disheveled look of our tools and I thought Dad did as well. Apparently not.

"Could we not actually build anything today dad, and maybe just break things apart?" I ask.

I laugh quietly to myself at how impulsively destructive that idea sounds-0but we're initiating our inner man here, so why not?

"I've been really frustrated recently, Dad; mainly since I'm pretty sure I bombed all my finals. So I figured that would be a fun way to let off some steam, you know?"

Silence from Dad. He just kinda sways from his right to left foot, blankly staring into space, and barely listening to anything I say. I sigh. This, for some non-apparent reason, does catch his attention.

"You know, sport, why don't we just skip woodworking today? I'm just pretty worn out from the week, alright?"

"Uh, yeah, no problem, Dad," I reply, with a purposefully good amount of disappointment in my voice. He doesn't seem to notice this either as he walks back up the stairs, leaving our fortress of manly bonding behind. He must have other things on his mind.

* * *

The next morning, our normal pancakes-for-Sunday-breakfast routine doesn't commence. Instead we (being my 3 sisters and I) are brought to the living room, with Mom and Dad sitting on the couch across from us.

Mom hesitates at first, but finally sighs and announces: "So, your father and I are getting a divorce."

I look over at my 3 younger sisters, hoping they don't burst into tears, because if they do, I definitely will. But they simply look confused, their blue eyes deep pools of unhappy surprise.

I stare angrily at Dad especially. I don't blame Mom for this; she's not the man of the family. But apparently neither is he.

"How, why, how could you do this? Why are you splitting our special little almost perfect family apart!?"

"Hey now, Michael, don't you dare go blaming this whole thing on me. This was all your mothers do-" Dad turns to my sisters, saying in a kinder tone of voice: "I mean, a decision made equally by both you mother and I."

"Oh now that's a load of bull!" I shout, angrily arising from the couch. "Last time I checked, divorce isn't the manly thing to do, Dad!"

"What is all this man talk about, son? What, are you trying to prove something to me? Look, if you're gay, you're gay. It doesn't make you any less of a man. I mean-"

Mom cuts in: "What? Michael, why didn't you tell me?"

"What, no, what are you talking about!? I'm not gay, alright? What are you, like trying to sway the accusations away from yourself now Dad?. 'Cause its not going to work. God."

I sit back down on the couch and let my hands sink into my waiting palms. I begin to feel the urge to grab a saw from the basement and carefully cut my heart out with it, but of course I don't because Dad would say: "Now son, thats no way to use a tool."

And I would reply "No Dad, your right. Instead you used it to slice apart your relationship with the mother of your children. Way to be a manly man."