By Molly O’Toole Illustrated by Ravela Smyth I have been waiting for this day my whole life Beep! Beep! I spring out of bed when my alarm sounds, but no alarm was needed to wake me up. I have been waiting for this day my whole life. I keep my pajamas on, because I need to wear clothes that aren’t important for cooking. My stomach is doing that all too familiar flip-flop motion that indicates Today is St. Lucia day. Today, I am Lucia. Bella and Matthew are already up and dancing around the kitchen. They look up when I come in. “Elizabeth!” they cry, and Bella runs up and hugs my waist. Bella is only five, but she’s super smart. She’s quiet and only speaks when necessary, but mostly because there’s too much going on inside her head. It must sound like a Lowell mill in there. Matthew’s eight and is a lot louder and more outgoing. He’s kind of a class clown. The stairs creak, followed by loud thumping and groaning. It’s Kathryn. “Shush!” I say. “You’ll wake up the adults!” She gives me her classic touch-me-and-I’ll-kill-you look and grabs the recipe book off the shelf. “OK, everyone knows the drill. Bella and Matthew gather the ingredients for the Lucia buns, I put them in the oven, and Elizabeth makes the coffee. Am I understood?” I glare at Matthew, trying to warn him, but he can’t resist. “Sir yes, sir!” he shouts in a stern voice, then puffs out his chest and salutes Kathryn. I roll my eyes. Matthew has to learn that you can’t joke with her at 6:00 a.m. But Kathryn’s response takes me off guard. “That’s more like it! Everyone, get busy!” I grab the coffee pot and ground coffee and set some water to boil. Since coffee takes the shortest amount of time, I go to the hall closet and fetch the white robes and hats and wreaths. My family is Swedish, so we celebrate St. Lucia Day. The oldest girl in the family wears a wreath with seven candles (fake, or real in my case) and a white robe with a red sash. She walks into the kitchen with St. Lucia buns and coffee, singing the St. Lucia song. Some families sing it in English, but we were always taught the Swedish version. The other kids wear white robes, and the really little ones dress up as tomtar, which are little Swedish mischievous elves, and sing other songs. The boys wear hats decorated with stars. They are stjärngossar, or star boys. Kathryn was always Lucia, and now I’m thirteen and it’s finally my turn. There’s really no way to explain the way I feel. I guess you could say that it’s like waiting in line at the amusement park; waiting for hours and hours. But finally you get to go on the ride, and it’s the most amazing and exhilarating roller coaster that you will ever go on in your whole life. It’s like a breath of fresh air, a rainbow after a thunderstorm, light after darkness. It’s finally my time to be the special one, the one in the light. And I have never been more ready or eager. I smile as I fold the robes and look out the window. It’s the kind of winter day where the sun shines golden light on the ground, melting the early morning frost and creating a warm kind of air to the chilly sky. “Elizabeth! The buns are ready!” shouts Kathryn. I snap out of my daydream and head to the kitchen. Awaiting me is a tray of fresh-out-of-the-oven Lucia buns. They smell like saffron, and small little heat waves are slowly rising towards the ceiling. I love Lucia buns so much that it makes my mouth melt just looking at them. But these aren’t for me. I remind myself that I have to be Lucia, which means bringing the buns to other people and pretending that I’m glad just to watch them eat. But even that burden doesn’t take away the honor and glory that I get when I walk into the dining room. My great-grandmother wore that crown, and my grandmother, and my aunt, and my mother, and my sister. But now I’ll wear it, now I’ll get to share my Lucia story, and I’ll get to be part of that club, that knowing. Me. “Elizabeth, get Matthew and Bella ready, and I’ll finish the coffee. We need to hurry!” Kathryn wipes her forehead and gets out the mugs. I take Matthew and Bella to the living room and pull the robes over their heads. “Here, Matthew—take your hat. Bella—get on your shirt.” I fly around, tying this and adjusting that, and finally the two young ones are ready, and I can get myself tidied up. Myself. Me. Lucia. I shake a little in a feeble attempt to calm myself down. It just can’t be done. It’s almost time. I run to the bathroom and change out of my pajamas and put on my white robe. It flutters just to the floor—but not quite touching it. Below the bustline there are some pleats, which go on for a few inches. It’s simple but elegant. The sash is beautiful. It’s a deep, wondrous color that’s somewhere between scarlet and burgundy. You can’t see this from afar, but it’s embroidered with tiny little flowers—poinsettias. I tie it around my waist and remove the crown wreath from its little box. It sits there while I brush my hair—I’m not really looking at it but I can picture it perfectly. It sits there in its own little glory, sitting on the bathroom cabinet; sitting in my thoughts and tinting them with a St. Lucia evergreen smell. Even though it’s made of artificial pine needles, I can still smell it. Soon it will sit on my head and boast that I’m Lucia, its bright candles illuminating my face and the tiny flames flickering in my eyes.
January/February 2015
Lunch in the Morning
THIS IS A TRUE STORY Guang’s stomach grumbled. He sighed, took his bread out of his backpack, and looked at it, trying to control his appetite. “Remember, don’t start eating it as soon as you get off our doorstep!” his mother had said as she placed the bread in a small paper bag with her flour-covered hands. But his stomach growled again and he took a very small bite. It was 1960, and ever since the Communists had taken his parents’ land and business, Guang had been given only a small loaf of bread to eat for lunch at school. His once handsome features were now pale and almost fleshless. There were six children in the family: three boys and three girls. As the fifth child in his family, and the second boy, Guang was not given enough to eat, as Chinese in those times thought that the oldest and youngest children were most important. Being a boy didn’t help (Chinese considered boys superior to girls); he had one older brother and one younger one. The three-year famine between 1958 and 1961 had been caused by Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy. Chairman Mao had stated that China could catch up with Europe and the U.S. in industry if more steel could be manufactured. The whole population was forced to make steel. Anyone who didn’t comply was considered an enemy of the state and punished. Farmers stopped farming and melted their farm tools for material to use to make steel and cut down scores of trees to make fires. People in the cities melted pots and pans—Guang remembered how his family had only been allowed to keep one pot and one pan. Over the fires they placed a huge stove and threw all their metal in there. But steel-making is a very exact procedure. Metal must be burnt at just the right temperature, and the exact procedure has to be followed. The ordinary people didn’t know the procedure, and a small wood bonfire is definitely not the right temperature. The metal they produced was not steel; it was useless scrap metal molded into shapes. Meanwhile, no one was farming, and even if they were allowed to, all the farm tools had been melted. Food was scarce. There was only bread to eat, and very little of that, too. In the countryside, some people were forced to eat things like tree bark and flowers. Before the Communists took over, Guang’s family was wealthy and well-to-do. It had owned two factories: a soy sauce factory and a biscuit factory. Then the Communists came to power and took away all their land and property because the Communist theory was that money, property, and other possessions should be distributed evenly amongst all citizens. His parents had often muttered about the Communists, and Guang had heard them sometimes. Guang still longed to gorge himself on a bag of biscuits and a plate of well-cooked meat. He missed the life he had once had. Now, standing on the cracked, broken sidewalk, he couldn’t resist his hunger. Even though he knew that by the time he got home after school, ten hours later, he would be starving, the temptation won. He took another bite, savoring the sweet taste of the bread. As he ate he thought of the biscuit factory his family had owned. He remembered the bags of biscuits, with buttery crusts and soft, delicious insides that he had feasted on so often. He remembered how privileged he had felt every time one of the factory’s delivery trucks trundled by, how glad he had been that his family was so well-to-do. But now, whenever he noticed one of those delivery trucks, he remembered the Communists, and now he tried not to walk past the factory, now owned by the country. The loaf was only the size of his fist, so he tried to make it last as long as possible, holding each piece in his mouth until it softened. Taking care not to drop a single crumb, he broke the bread in half, then took one half and broke it again. The aroma of fresh-baked corn bread tantalized him, and he pulled off another piece. He started ripping off large chunks and stuffing them in his mouth, but instead of subsiding, his hunger elevated. Albert’s grandfather, Guang Wu Zhao, as a teenager When Guang arrived at school, he was just finishing the last piece of bread. Though he had devoured the equivalent of a small meal, he was just as ravenous as he was when he had taken that tiny first bite. Digging into the bag, Guang pulled out a few crumbs and swallowed them as well. The bag was crumpled into a small round brown ball and tossed into a nearby wastebasket. Guang pretended to be a basketball player, flicking his wrist and muttering, “Two points! Score!” in Chinese. He gazed out at his school, a long three-story brick building with long windows that looked out on the grassless field where some children played with a ball. His friend greeted him with a halfhearted “Hello!” as he walked through the gate and into the schoolyard. The bell rang and he trudged up the stairs and along the hall to his classroom, slung his backpack down on the floor, and pulled out his textbook. Another long day, he thought. Guang is my grandfather, and this is his true story. Albert Shu, 10Milpitas, California
Below the Ice
He was trying to stop, but it didn’t work Alex skied down the mountain and breathed in the scent of the pine trees. Everything was peaceful. He spotted a cluster of dark blue puddles of water seeping through the cracked ice. He longed to investigate and decided to stop and take a peek. As he got closer there was a quick flicker in one of the bigger puddles, creating a growing ring of tiny waves. He supposed it was a fish. As he slowed down he pushed his gloves back on his hands and covered his mouth with his neck warmer so his frosty breath would not come out. He quickly skied down but surprisingly skidded on the ice and one of his skis fell off. The screeching of the wind echoed through his ears as he fell on his back and slid down the hill in a tumbling heap of snow. His body was twisted up. He was trying to stop, but it didn’t work. He managed to take a glimpse of the puddles only several yards in front of him. He heard the icy ground crunching beneath him as he plunged into pitch-black water. All his consciousness streamed from him as he felt the deathly chill of the water. He tasted the saltiness of it in his mouth. He was drowning. It would be the end of it all. He couldn’t manage getting his ski off, so he desperately tried swimming upward toward the surface, which already seemed miles overhead. He could feel thick walls of ice on his palms that he could climb up. He slowly climbed it with great difficulty. The coldness threatened to freeze him to the core until his death. Random thoughts arose in Alex’s head, which pushed him away from his life. He remembered all the times he went out to dinner with his mom. And all the times he went out to play sports with his dad and all the times he talked and talked for hours with his brother Lucas and watched his cat play with a toy. He remembered the first time he ate mango frozen yogurt with chocolate shavings and he tasted the creamy deliciousness as it entered his watering mouth. The first time he got a home run in baseball, all the momentum and the crowd roaring. His first time playing Handel’s Water Music, the beautiful tones of the notes humming through his ears. The exciting feeling that he had worked hard and accomplished something. Speeding along through the ocean when he was boogie boarding and when he went crashing and tumbling onto the beach and laughing with excitement. The wind rushing into his face as he went down the steep roller coaster with his dad at Six Flags. His first flip he did off the diving board when he landed on his back. Feeling the feeling of doing something he never thought he could do. His life was flashing before him. All these special times in his life. Life. He wanted it. But he didn’t think he could get it through all the chaos and the freezing blackness. He opened his eyes as much as possible and he saw light. Was it actually light? Could this possibly be it? Right as he took his first gasp of air he fell into a sleep he would probably never have again. He awoke in the hotel room staring with fuzzy vision at a burning fire in front of him. He had fresh clothes on and he could feel the leather of the armchair he was sitting in. His mom brought a steaming dish of spaghetti with his favorite sauce, tomato sauce. He took a long sigh and slowly blinked… Alex Perry, 9San Francisco, California Audrey Zhang, 11Levittown, New York