Danny's Mom

by Denise Noe

    Heavy traffic.  Marilyn's hands were steady on the wheel.  But her guts
were shaking.
    "Can I turn on the radio, Mom?" Dan asked in a subdued voice.
    Marilyn nodded, thinking: but not the news.
    He turned it to a music station.
    Metal claws reached up inside her chest.
    In silence she cried: I can't get the money for a decent lawyer.  Danny,
you've been such a disappointment.  You've thrown your life away.  Our
savings are gone just for the bail.
    Under her arms it burned, wet.  Her scalp itched, and the back of her
neck.  Marilyn thought: Oh, Danny, such an awful thing, how could you?
    As she slowed at a red light, he started crying.  Loudly.
    "I love you, Danny," she said.  "No matter what, I love you."
    "I didn't do it, Mom.  I didn't do the thing they say."
    Light turned green.  She put her foot on the accelerator.
    Rape is a hard crime to prove; by its very nature it is hard to prove.
That was why the first time it happened to Marilyn--she was a kid, they were
guys from school--she only told her mother.  She was so embarrassed . . .
When she saw one of those guys at school and he'd wink or smile she just
wanted to die . . . .
    Marilyn forced the words out: "I believe you."
    She choked and cried--that guy on the bicycle, how dangerous--
    "I love you, Danny.  I think it'll work out.  Cindy told me the Legal
Aid lawyers are OK.  They might get the charges down so you can get probation.
Don't give up, Dan.  It'll work out."  Her mouth had a bad taste.  Her
armpits were soaking her dress.
    Danny was her son, she would do anything for him.  She scratched her
head and her fingernails got clotted with dirt and oil.
    The second time she was raped was only five years ago and she had
reported it.  After all, the asshole stole her TV.  The police were nice,
not like she'd been afraid they would be.
    But they never caught him.  Not even for burglary and she would have
been happy if they had arrested him just for burglary because . . . she wouldn't
have wanted to talk about it in a courtroom full of people.  Plus that
asshole himself sitting there.
    Rape is a hard crime to prove.  Rape by itself . . .
    She turned onto the on-ramp, sped up--her head was hot, the inside of
her mouth dry, with a stale taste--she was on the freeway.  Dan was fooling with
the radio, switching from station to station . . . not the news, she
thought. Dan left the radio on a rock song.  It was so hot.  Wet from her arms, she
felt dirty, filthy.
    Rape by itself is so hard to prove. By itself.  Her stomach jumped, she
was going to be sick--
    "Danny, you idiot!  That poor woman--that poor woman--why did you have
to break her ribs?"

Archduck

by Denise Noe

Max was watching educational TV with his grandson’s wife Rikea and his
great-grandson Doug.  They were an elderly, stooped, very thin white man
with thick spectacles and a plump, pretty African-American woman with freckles
across a high-yellow face and a coffee-colored eight-year-old boy with curly
brown hair.
    There was film showing tanks and soldiers and Nazi insignia and Doug
asked, "Is that the war you were in, Gramp-Gramp?"
    "No.  That’s the one Gramp would have been in if he hadn’t had asthma,"
Max explained.
    "What one were you in?"
    "World War I," Max replied.
    "Oh, I know," Doug said proudly, a beaming smile showing off his
dimples.
  "That was the one over the archduck."
    "Archduke," Rikea corrected gently.
    "It was also the Great War or the War to End All Wars," Max added.
    "The War to End All Wars?" Doug repeated slowly.
    "That’s what we called it at the time," Max said.
    His great-grandson looked at Max incredulously.  "If it was to end all
wars, then why have there been some since?"
    Max paused and looked at the screen where men were fighting and dying.
From a lifetime ago and continent away, Max recalled the sounds and sights
and smells of terror and death.  From the den of his grandson’s trailer
home, he ordered them away.
    He laughed.  "Because it might as well have been over an archduck."