Your Mom is Wearing Mermaid Underwear at Dave and Buster’s A collection of stories by Dawn Tasaka Steffler / @dawnsteffler #MythicPicnicTweetStory _______ Crossing the Limen - Limen, noun. A border between one thing and another. See also Threshold. My dad calls and, in halting pidgin, says he’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I am concerned, but it’s hazy and distant, like storm clouds on the horizon. It feels like I’m hearing bad news about someone else’s dad. A thought catches my attention, like a curtain fluttering in a sudden breeze; Well, at least Dad knows how his story will end, and I recoil slightly. Like a good daughter, I fly home to Hawaii when he undergoes a Whipple procedure. I want to be a good daughter. But when the anesthesiologist comes in to talk with us post-surgery, I am distracted by her German accent, her bright red clogs. My sister schedules a weekly call between the three of us, and I listen to her arrange pick-up times for walks; he asks if they can go to See’s for more butterscotch candies, they help with his chemo dry mouth. She encourages me to call him on my own but I don’t know what to say to him anymore. I don’t understand how my unionized, Japanese-American dad turned into a pro-life, Trump-supporting Fox News fan. What would we talk about — his pain? his opioid-induced constipation? his adult diapers? — so I push it off. The best phone calls between us were always the spur-of-the-moment ones, I’d call from Safeway, needing a childhood recipe, shoyu ginger pork tofu or Portuguese bean soup. Our best conversations were always about food, something he can’t take pleasure in anymore. - Threshold, noun. The sill of a doorway. The place or point of entering or beginning. My phone rings, it’s my sister. I can’t pick up because I’m on a Zoom call, so I let it go to voicemail. A green text bubble pops up on my screen: You should think about coming home soon; Dad is going downhill. A buoyant seasickness washes over me, and I have a vision of my dad as a tree limb floating downriver. My sister is behind him, thigh-deep, hands outstretched, trying to catch up to him. I am not there. I am trying to be useful somewhere else, being a Dutch boy, fingers in holes, fingers plugging up a crumbling dam. I fly home, and the air is thick and muggy with Kona winds. My sister and I take him for a walk in the afternoon drizzle. We go to his favorite fruit stand in Kaimuki, and I watch his loose-skinned, purple-veined hands turn a papaya over and over, then bring it to his nose to sniff. He says he wants to eat Taco Bell on the way home. My mom scolds us the next day, saying he threw up for hours. Hospice delivers a hospital bed. We move him into the room my sister and I shared as kids. When he says he’s having trouble sleeping, I vividly recall staring up at that same popcorn ceiling the night Hurricane Iwa hit, listening to wind-propelled rain slam against the tightly closed glass louvers. He has outlived most of his friends. I wonder if their ghosts keep a vigil over him, watching his chest rise and fall, witnessing his temples and cheeks sink in and conform to the skull shape beneath, waiting for him to decide: Enough already. My sister drives me to the airport to the sound of music and windshield wipers. I see how the Ko’olau mountains are dotted with winter waterfalls again. I catch the flash of them, like long, silvery earrings hidden within emerald green ridges. When the airplane lifts off the ground, I think: This was it, wasn’t it? - Liminal Space, noun. Transitional spaces like waiting rooms, rest stops, stairwells; somewhere unsettling yet familiar; usually characterized by the absence of people. I dream about the river again, swollen with rain. The water is now up to my sister’s armpits. I hear a waterfall’s roar. The day after my dad dies, I go to the grocery store and almost hit another car while backing out of the parking lot. Then, on the drive home, I notice my neighborhood to the point of distraction: strollers on porches, messy garages left open (by accident?), lost pet signs duct-taped to light posts. The edges of everything are extra sharp. I think about something my sister said when she called to say Dad was gone, about how we didn’t ask him what he thought would happen after he died. Did he still think he would be reincarnated? Or did he now believe in Heaven? It felt morbid and too direct at the time, but I wish we had, I wish we knew the answer. Then I would know where to look for him. . First published in Heimat Review / @HeimatReview _______ Survival Instinct It’s been weeks since the sun disappeared behind a ceiling of smoke, and the mountains lost their green, and the nights lost their dark to an eerie, orange sky. Barb sees headlights pierce the grainy murk. Eavesdropping from her usual spot, she holds her breath while the deputy tells Frank that CalFire has issued a mandatory evacuation order until Frank bluntly interrupts, Okay, but we’re not leaving. She’s known for years what she’d grab: photo albums, Grandma’s jewelry, Ma’s cookbooks. She packs his stuff, too, because Ma always said, You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit. She doesn’t bother reading the tiny labels of their medications; she just arm-sweeps everything into a grocery bag. Each time she pushes open the front door, she dreads Frank standing there, feet planted and arms crossed, but she dreads the approach of the glowing orange line more. Frank is actually down by the pool, in a blizzard of ash flakes, fiddling with his newest toy, the Acme Portable Home Wildfire Protection Pump and Hose System for Swimming Pools. The pump arrived four days ago, dropped off by an Amazon driver who looked terrified of being in wildfire territory and incredulous they were still ordering shit. The haze makes Frank look very far away. Barb imagines putting her seventeen-year-old cat, Gus, in the car and just driving away. But she pulls the neck of her t-shirt up to cover her nose and mouth and walks down to the pool instead. Frank? As usual, he ignores her. Frank, I’m done packing us up. Can we go now? What the hell are you talking about? CalFire said to evacuate. If someone says jump off a bridge, are you gonna jump, too? Please Frank — And not try out my hose? Don’t be an idiot. Watch your fucking mouth!! Just think about it, you’ll be boiled alive. If there’s even any water left after you shoot it all at the house. She has a sudden vision of him holding his firehose like an assault rifle when the water finally slows to a trickle. What will she tell the boys? She’s scared they will blame her: What do you mean you left Dad there?! She softens her tone and takes his hand, Please, Frank, let’s go, but he yanks his hand back like she’s a burner on the stove. Please, Frank, he says, mocking her. Nope, I’m staying here. But you go. He shoos her off with a flick of his hand. Then he adds, I don’t know why you waited so long. If I were you, I would’ve left hours ago. You’re probably gonna burn on the way out. He clucks his tongue at her. Suddenly a crinkly brightness on the hill catches her eye, bright like a sunrise, the brightest thing she’s seen in two weeks. And she staggers back up the hill. She thinks she hears him yell, Good luck, scaredy-cat! She thinks she hears him laugh. Gus is curled up in his usual chair, and when she approaches, he fixes his ancient, yellow eyes on her. She scoops him up carefully and fast-walks to her car; his purring vibrates against her chest. For the first few miles, she keeps checking the rearview, hoping to see Frank’s headlights emerge from the murk, until the embers start flying, hitting her windows from all sides, and she can’t afford to look away from the road. Her hands white-knuckle the steering wheel at the ten and the two. The trees are on fire, and thick smoke obscures the road like fog. Still, she keeps her foot on the gas, hoping for a red tail light to materialize out of the gloom, something to focus on, someone to follow out. Eventually, the road climbs, and she gets above the smoke, one last glimpse of the valley she’s called home for fifty years, black where the fire has yet to advance and the rest, a furious, glowing orange. Good riddance, she thinks spitefully, but she doesn’t really mean it because already she misses her garden, kneeling in the dirt and the dappled sunlight with Gus nearby, his silly tail twitching, stalking a bird he has no chance of catching. . First published in SoFloPoJo / @SoFloPoJo _______ Alone on Your Kid's Birthday This reminds you of the postpartum depression. Except it's different. The same but different. You call your son to say happy birthday, and you hear your ex in the background, You need to put your shoes on! Tell whoever that is you'll call them back from the car! It's different. You're not exhausted anymore from hours of listening to him colic cry. And he's old enough now to have his own phone and tie his own shoes. You wish you knew how to fix this. The pediatrician had told you to swaddle him, and you did, but you didn't trust yourself, so you laid him in the crib while he colic-cried for hours. You sat in the rocking chair and stared out the window at the dreary end-of-February weather. You didn't know what was wrong with you. Then, when your son was four, and your husband asked for a divorce, you agreed. The weather outside is dreary. But you need fresh air so you put your shoes on for a walk. The divorce was his idea, and you agreed because your head felt like a dryer, the same thoughts tossed around and around. You check your pockets to make sure you have your phone because your son is going to call you back. You walk, and it starts to snow. You leave the maze of townhouses where you and all the other divorced people live and head into the neighborhoods with the houses where all the married people live. Your son calls, and you hear his friends in the background; they're going to Dave and Buster's. You feel two things in your body: you wish you were there in the car with him, and you wish you had never had him in the first place. The streetlights flicker on, and the houses light up like little TV screens, their families moving around oblivious of any audience. The snow crunches under your boots. You tell yourself there are more things to life than being a mom. You stare into the lit-up windows, assuming they can't see you standing out here on the sidewalk because it's very dark where you are. . First published in Many Nice Donkeys / @ManyNiceDonkeys _______ Thorns “Knock, knock?” A woman’s voice from the hallway accompanies soft rapping on my door. It’s Susan and her five-year-old, Jill, who fell while picking wild blackberries last week. Thorns tore up the girl’s palms. They come every morning so I can examine her hands. They were part of the early influx of women and children emerging from the forest. People said it was safer here, away from the cities. Less shelling. But being far away means you eventually run out of things, like gasoline and medicine. We had stockpiles, of course. Now, we’re rationing what’s left until we can get a helicopter drop. Only no one seems to know when that will happen. Susan is anxious; Jill wouldn’t walk today. “How’s that boo-boo of yours?” I position my wheelie stool in front of the girl and swallow my despair over dull eyes and flushed cheeks. I can smell the infection, like overripe plums left to rot beneath a tree. Jill’s fingers are swollen like sausages, and the wounds on each palm are black and bubbly, like the dangling berries that started all of this. Jill cries and squirms in her mother’s lap when I clean her wounds. Susan is usually a real Mary Poppins, but today, she can’t seem to summon the energy. She kisses and shushes the girl, trying to hold her still. “I want to go home. I want to see Daddy,” Jill sobs over and over. I apply a thick layer of Polysporin, fuck the rations. From a drawer, I pull out pink bandages that I made from a t-shirt I found while sifting through our outpost’s precious recycling piles. “Jill,” I say, “Look what I have for you.” But she keeps her eyes tightly closed against me. When they leave, I step outside to catch my breath. Jill is clinging to Susan like a baby possum. I’ve never asked Susan where they sleep, but I assume the Visitor Center, in one of those stuffy rooms crammed full of cots and laundry, and donated toys, and disorienting photographs of smiling families on vacation. I wonder if the other moms whisper about Jill, if they scoot their piled-up belongings further and further away from Susan’s, put more space between their cots and hers? I wonder what Susan will do when the inevitable happens. Will that little mound of dirt tie her to this place, or will she disappear back into the forest? . First published in MicroLit Almanac / @MicrolitAlmanac _______ Unmentionables When you’re old enough to know that four fingers is your age, Mom drives for so long that you fall asleep in the back seat. You wake because the car isn’t moving anymore and outside your window is a white house you don’t recognize and a large woman peering in at you. “This is your Grandma. You’re going to stay here for a few days.” You cry and struggle in Grandma’s arms when Mom's car disappears down the driveway. When you finally give up and collapse against her shoulder, Grandma pulls a golden disc of butterscotch from a pocket and slips it into your unsuspecting mouth. Grandma hangs her laundry on a clothesline, unmentionables sandwiched between the sheets. Dangling, sugar cookie-colored bras. Big, billowy panties that you slip over your head and wear like a strange, lopsided dress. She serves sweet tea and cold egg-salad sandwiches for lunch. She plugs in a nightlight because the nights are dark and full of insect noises. One day when the leaves are turning red, orange, and yellow, Mom returns. You whisper in Grandma's ear that you don't want to leave, and she lovingly corrects you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” On the first day of middle school, the P.E. teacher warns, “No one is allowed to change in the bathroom stalls.” You side-eye the pretty girls with their flat stomachs and boobs that mound like a dinner roll. They have the prettiest bras you’ve ever seen: lace, satin, push-up, plunge. Your bras are from Walmart, and they’re dingy because Mom doesn’t care about sorting the laundry by colors like Grandma does. You turn your face into your locker while you change, trying to hide your pale, fleshy belly. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you, right? The next time you and Mom go to Grandma's for monthly Sunday dinner, your stomach gurgles as soon as you walk through the front door and smell your favorite: pot roast and gravy. Grandma makes you a heaping plate, but Mom intercepts it, scrapes half the food into the garbage can, "What are you trying to do, make her fat?” You feel bad for Grandma, but you also wonder if Mom is right? Mom is skinny and Grandma isn’t. You’re not sure who to trust. You’re surprised at the amount of people who show up for Grandma’s funeral. You hold up the viewing line because once you’re in front of her casket, you can’t stop the flood of silent apologies, as if you are a busted dam. On the ride home Mom shoots you nasty looks. Because earlier, when all the usual poisons were pouring out of her mouth, you had yelled, “Grandma’s gone! Can you shut your mouth for just one day?" She’s not talking to you right now, but you know she'll lay into you soon, double vicious. She can’t help herself. But you don’t care. You graduate soon and then you’ll move out, get a job. And you’re fine leaving earlier if you have to. You imagine telling her to fuck off. You stare out the window, daring her to push you. You walk back to your car as casually as you can, but your heart is hammering. Once the car doors are locked, you pull up your skirt, and wedged between your thick thighs is the most beautiful lace bra. While you’re looking at the price tag and feeling a thrill — because this is the most expensive thing you’ve ever stolen — your phone buzzes. Again. Mom has finally given up and left a text message: I know you’re there. Thought you’d want to know someone finally broke in through that window with the broken lock. You fight the urge to whip up a petty reply; it’s what she wants. Suddenly your stomach growls, and you cold-turkey any thoughts of Mom, her tossed apartment, her broken window. You decide to celebrate with McDonald’s on the way home. Because you're starving! And a criminal! And a horrible daughter! Poor Grandma is probably rolling over in her grave, so you offer up a quick “Sorry, Grammy.” You start up the engine and the stereo comes on at full blast because that’s how loud it was when you drove over. When you exit the garage, you notice the sky is the most perfect shade of blue. You put on some cheap sunnies that you stole from Target, roll down the windows, and let the wind blow your hair around like a fucking tornado. . First published in Stanchion / @StanchionZine _______ Your Mom is a Pineapple Express SEVERE WEATHER ALERT… The National Weather Service has extended the Winter Storm Warning due to another round of atmospheric rivers that will impact the region with life-threatening weather conditions, including but not limited to excessive rainfall, crying, flash floods, high winds, and alternating periods of your mom pretending nothing is wrong, and your mom giving you the cold shoulder. WHAT… A potent control pattern is tapping into a moist subtropical fear of being exposed to Covid. This will impact the holidays when your mother discovers your sister-in-law and her boisterous family of six are visiting from the mainland and have been invited to join your family for Thanksgiving. This system will result in your mother boycotting dinner and spending Thanksgiving completely alone now that your dad is gone. Local creeks, seething, and sulking will likely exceed flood stage, and extensive playing the victim is anticipated. WHEN… Forecast applies to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend but will likely extend through the end of the year, potentially increasing in intensity just before the Christmas holiday. IMPACTS… Strong, gusty words may bring down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages are expected. Roadways will be extra slick, making communication difficult to impossible. Do not drive through flooded egos. Water depth and road conditions may be unsafe. Localized ponding is likely in low-lying arguments and areas of historically saturated soils, like on the day of your wedding when you and your sister spent hours in your hotel suite drinking champagne and doing each other’s hair and make-up while your mom claimed she was just dandy hanging out with your dad in their room with her Oprah and her sudoku, but actually, she was working herself up into a tizzy, waiting for an invitation that never came, imagining all the fun her daughters were having without her, all because she didn’t have the guts to just knock on the door of your suite, and so right before everyone was supposed to leave for the church, your mom turned into a wailing, sobbing mess, and your poor then-fiancee had no choice but to chase her around the property, finally catching up to her at the towel stand by the pool, and he tried to comfort her, but she’s not a hugger. Besides, she wanted you to be the one to comfort her, not him. . First published in Alternative Milk Magazine / @altmilkmag _______ Somewhere Else Better We begin each day the same way: a fresh diaper for my wife, Brenda, getting dressed, and brushing teeth. The pop of toast and scrape of a spatula in the pan, errands maybe, then a walk, the top of her head warm from the sun, mumble mumble mumble, her tongue thick like a piece of well-done steak. Then we do it all in reverse until I’m tucking her into bed again like we used to tuck our daughter in. Brenda, asleep next to me, while I read in a circle of lamplight. Tonight, I’m reading The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Brenda’s sudden outburst catches me by surprise. “But he doesn’t know!” I haven’t heard her speak this clearly in years. I take off my glasses and close my book on my finger. “Who doesn’t know what?” Her face turns steely, “That I’m a mermaid!” Ah, she’s dreaming. I see her pupils zig-zagging beneath her lids. Brenda has always been a vivid dreamer. I imagine her as a mermaid: fierce stare, magnificent tail, and salt-and-pepper hair billowing like smoke. “And,” her rheumy knuckled hand rises from the covers, a single index finger pointing, “I saw Sylvie!” I freeze. Sylvie was twenty when someone found her in a ditch, without pants, dark purple bruises around her neck, and the whites of her eyes completely red from blown-out blood vessels. “A dragon grabbed her with its talons! I saw it fly away with her!” Brenda’s other hand rises, and together, they rediscover grace, flap away from me. A few years ago, when Brenda started to noticeably confuse things, I contacted our old friend Tom. He’s a neurologist. Or was, he’s retired now. He was part of the families we hung out with when the kids were small. After Sylvie’s funeral, he was the only guy who didn’t get weird: either gushing over me and treating me like a pity case, or avoiding me if we were in the same place, pretending he didn’t see me. Tom was always kind. I reached out because I needed to talk to someone who understood what I was going through. And, Tom remembered Sylvie. It was Tom who told me Mark’s wife has Alzheimer’s, too, comatose in a nursing home. Mark was of the assholes back in the day. But I didn’t have any hard feelings anymore, only a profound and exhausted sorrow. “I need to go, or I’ll lose her again!” Brenda yells, her eyebrows arched, voice ringing through all the cobwebby silences between us, and I just want to cup her cheeks! But I don’t dare touch her when she’s this close to finding Sylvie. She’s been telling me about her Sylvie dreams for decades. Sometimes, she’s on a galloping horse chasing a train. Sometimes, she’s searching through the rubble of a collapsed building. Sometimes, she’s lost in a jungle. Then, just as I dreaded, Brenda’s fierce aliveness melts back to blandness. I put my book on the nightstand, fold my glasses, and turn out the light. I lie on my side very close to her and examine her profile — in the moonlight, she is so beautiful — until my eyelids grow heavy. I’m glad she’s dreaming about dragons instead of trash bags in dumpsters or crawl spaces, like I do. The thick, green algae that cover the bottoms of lakes. Daughters dismembered, dissolved, or burned. Or worse, never found. At least, our Sylvie was found. Meanwhile, satellites continue to trail delicate seams in the sky and airplanes dot the sky with embroidered knots, and the stars still refuse to release their secrets, but there was never a map to this place. . First published in Anti-Heroin Chic / @Heroin_Chic_Mag _______ Dawn Tasaka Steffler is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 long list. Her stories appear in nice places like Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, and The Forge. She is working on a collection that explores the challenges and joys of parenting queer kids. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on X, BlueSky and Instagram @dawnsteffler