Mirzakhalili & Ostrowski – November 2023

Nicole Ostrowski and Lauren Mirzakhalili traded art and words. Nicole shared this image, titled “Plunge,” with Lauren:

In response, Lauren wrote this piece of fiction:

Plunge

              There’s this thing in my family where everyone is convinced that our dead loved ones return to us in animal form. My mom swears up and down that grandma returns to her as a cardinal. I was skeptical of the whole thing but then again, maybe I wasn’t. When I was in middle school, I used to spend hours in the library finding any book that was even remotely about the supernatural. I felt like my librarian and I shared a dark secret as she nodded approvingly every week while I cycled through books about the Salem witch trials and poltergeists.  

      When my grandmother died, she didn’t leave me anything. My mom merely collected things from her house that I had given her over the years and returned them to me. A few mugs. A fuzzy bath robe (“she never used this; it still has the tags on it”). She also found a note I wrote my grandma when I was a kid. I made some corny joke about her playing the slots too much. I was touched at her saving this for all those years, especially when I wrote her things much deeper felt, that now I know she didn’t keep. She had a tough life and I think that made her crave the funny and playful things. This led me to the inevitable conclusion that my mom is dead wrong, and grandma has returned to us as an otter. I start spending down time at work watching this otter that I’m convinced is grandma on the aquarium live cam. It looks like all the otters, but somehow more so. It swims with the other otters out of the frame of the camera, then back in, as if departing our plane, but then returning. 

      On grandma’s birthday, I call out sick and head to the aquarium for a visit. I’m the only person there alone. Or at least my eyes are drawn to all the families and summer camp trips. As I hand my ticket over, I begin to crave a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Grandma used to make the best ones. She’d always make her own jelly, canning berries in the summer. I don’t know how she was able to do so much. She had given birth to all seven of her kids (six survived) and graduated from nursing school when she was the age I am now. I can barely keep up with my much less impressive job and my dishes. I don’t think I’m ever having children.  

      I go to the cafeteria and there are these pre-boxed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for eleven dollars. Unbelievable, but I buy one anyways. I sit at one of the tables and scan the cafeteria, but my eyes focus on nothing. I concentrate on chewing the smooth peanut butter and grape jelly between two slices of white bread. It’s good, but not as good as grandma’s. Nothing ever is, or ever will be again, I guess.

      I go to the gift shop. I still haven’t looked at a single fish. I’m doing everything out of order. I see a kid and her grandmother, just the two of them. The grandma says the kid can buy one stuffed animal. The kid is hopelessly torn between an otter and a starfish.  

      “I just love them both so much,” she says, wistfully, somehow managing to not sound spoiled, like she has just too much love for this world and not enough places to put it.  

      The grandma bends down to the grandkid’s level and says, “Sometimes we have to make tough choices.” She sounds like some sort of grizzled veteran, and in that way reminds me of my grandmother. 

      I’m watching behind a bunch of snow globes, totally transfixed. I experiment with watching the grandma and granddaughter through the snow globe. They are behind the fish and snowflakes, their images warped. The grandkid slowly puts down the starfish and clutches the otter to her chest. I decide that I too would like to buy a stuffed otter. I grab one and stand behind the two in line. On second thought, I also want the starfish. I don’t want to make hard choices. 

      As the grandmother pays, the grandkid clings to her leg and squeals, “Thanks, grandma, you’re the best.”    

      The cashier sees my purchases and raises an overplucked eyebrow and flares their septum-pierced nostril. I shrug.  

      I decide to do the aquarium backwards. To swim against the current. I clutch my stuffed otter and starfish in front of me like flotation devices. Sometimes I think grandparents are flotation devices, and when they are gone, we all just sink. And parents are… life rafts? I am so lost in all these metaphors. I just can’t believe my parents are orphans, and if I’m lucky, I’ll live long enough to be one too. I somehow make it to the otter exhibit, and I stand at the window. The kids seem to have some sense that I’m not well, some sort of stranger danger instinct, and they give me a wide berth. I stand in front of the glass and look up at the otters mingling on the surface of the tank. The light around me is that blue you only see in aquariums. I cry stupid saltwater tears as the otters take turns plunging beneath the surface. Their tiny feet, slicked back fur, whiskers, round noses, all rendered more real and lifelike than the stuffed otter clutched to my chest. I swear for a second the one that looks like all the other otters, but more so, looks me in the eye and it’s my grandmother, and she’s telling me that she’s alright. There are crossword puzzles and slot machines in heaven, which definitely exists, and she’s fine. I’m fine. Maybe we’re all going to be fine.

* * * * *

Lauren shared this piece with Nicole:

Jogging Woman Meets Mother De[e/a]r

In the evenings she jogged. In the mornings she jogged. This morning there was blood and guts all over the road where they most certainly weren’t yesterday morning. It was the road that ran right over the creek, woods on each side of the concrete.

Last night she jogged slowly, right in this spot, towards four baby deer on the right side of the road. To her left, a bigger deer stood, left behind, watching. She almost jumped when she saw it, three feet away. 

“Your babies are over there,” she whispered to the deer, smiling, still jogging.

The deer didn’t move.

She stopped. The deer across the street look back at her, and the mother deer. 

“Tomorrow they are going to kill all of us,” the deer croaks, its voice unnatural. 

“What do you mean?” the jogging woman feigns ignorance. As if she hasn’t seen the yellow signs posted all over the neighborhood. 

“You know,” the deer says more clearly, in a more human-sounding voice, as if her first utterances were due to not having spoken for a long, long time.

“Tell me,” says the jogging woman.

“I have been here forever. Before your apartment complexes, highways, fast food restaurants, anxiety pills, jogging routes. This has always been my home, and yet, we are the ones who die every year. We are the ones who are overpopulating.”

The jogging woman is a vegetarian. She loves animals. She loves the deer mother. She drives a hybrid car and calls her senators about climate change. She recycles. Jogging woman knows about the killing because she was once at a dinner with a woman who worked for the state parks. The state parks woman said that every year the deer had to be hunted because of the overpopulation. Because there was not enough for the deer to eat. Because death by shotgun is more humane than death by starvation. At least that’s what state parks woman said. 

“I’m so sorry,” says jogging woman who is no longer jogging. She wonders what deer eat. She wonders what would happen if there were truly too many deer. How bad could it get? She remembers her grandfather always running out to his vegetable garden with a bb gun when he saw a deer. He loved his vegetable garden but when the jogging woman was a little girl, she loved the movie Bambi. Well, she loved to cry while watching the movie, Bambi. 

“No, you’re not,” says mother deer baring her teeth. Her hooves scratch at the ground. Her eyes shine in the streetlights. 

“Maybe I’m not sorry enough,” says the jogging woman beginning to twirl the drawstring of her hoodie, “You must know how hard it is for us to live in this world? How hard it is for us to live the life we really want? Have you seen it? Have you seen me trying?” the jogging woman’s voice cracks as she says this.

“This is not your tragedy; this is my tragedy. It’s not my job to comfort you,” says the mother deer her head tilting downwards. If her eyes weren’t so black and beady and round, you might think she was looking at the ground but instead she looks like she’s looking everywhere, but especially directly into jogging woman’s soul.

“What do you want from me?” asks the jogging woman, her calves begin to cramp from standing so still.

“I want you to be a witness,” says mother deer.

Jogging woman wipes tears off her face in frustration, “How can I be a witness?”

The deer says, “Like this,” and trots into the road. 

Jogging woman rubs her eyes with both hands like a small child before bed. She then opens them to a truck barreling into mother deer. 

In response, Nicole made this image, titled “Theirs”: