58 THENEWYORKER,MARCH2, 2020
and remember who you’re talking to.”
The sensei swept an upturned palm
through the air between my father’s
brick and the cinder blocks. It was a
Jedi-looking gesture intended to indi-
cate that my father should set the brick
atop the cinder blocks. My father’s eyes
narrowed and he stood there.
“Would you please set the brick on
the blocks?” the sensei said.
My father did so.
“Please stand aside now,” the sensei
said.
The sensei stepped in front of the
cinder blocks, inhaled, exhaled, and in-
haled again. He struck the brick with
the heel of his hand and it split in two.
Applause erupted.
Once it died down, Sensei Johnson
again did the Jedi-looking thing with
his palm, but this time he swept it be-
tween my father and the bleachers, as if
to say, “You may return to your seat now.”
My father acted as though the sen-
sei were offering his hand, and he
grasped it, firmly, and turned it over, as
if to shake it, but instead pulled the sen-
sei closer to his face, then whispered in
his ear. I don’t know what he whispered,
but later on, in the car, he told me he’d
only whispered, “Good job,” and I knew
it wasn’t that; the sensei, when my fa-
ther let go of his hand, looked afraid.
- That last part’s made up. I don’t remem-
ber what really happened after the au-
dience applauded the splitting of the
brick, but I remember that when I told
my best friend, Sung Kim, about the
karate demonstration—Sung had had
strep all week, so he’d missed it—I made
it up the same way. I said my father
had whispered something to the sen-
sei that had made the sensei look afraid.
THE FROSTAND
THEFROGS,1985-86
F
or a year or so, I’d throw our cat as
far as I could. It would land on its
feet and come back to get thrown again.
The best place to throw it was the hall-
way connecting the kitchen to the living
room. The floor was stone, and if the cat
made noise in the air there were echoes.
Had you asked me if I thought the
cat had feelings, I probably would have
told you I thought it did. That would
have seemed like what you were try-
ing to get at, and I would have wanted
to be agreeable.
My sisters had tender feelings for
the cat, and only threw it when angry,
usually after it had bitten or scratched
them. They never seemed to get any
joy out of throwing it.
The cat was a frost-point Siamese.
My mother named it Frosty, which
mostly stuck. Sometimes, though, we
just called it the Frost.
- At overnight camp, somebody saw a
snake behind the tennis courts. We aban-
doned our game, Sung Kim and I, and
ran over to the snake. Though I’d never
seen one that wasn’t on a screen, I knew
snakes were bad. Sung did, too. “This
fucker,” he said. “Look at this fucker.
Do you think it’s poison? Do you think
we should kill it?” I struck it an over-
hand blow with my racket. It bunched
up and vomited three small frogs. All
of them were coated in a creamy yel-
low slime, and two were on their sides,
perfectly still, but one of the third one’s
legs was moving. It wasn’t moving fast
enough to call the movement twitch-
ing, but it wasn’t moving sensibly enough
to suggest that the frog was trying to
leap away to safety. Sung started crying.
The snake began to throw itself side to
side. “Kill it,” I said. Sung stepped on
its head and threw up on the frogs.
O. HENRY, 1987
B
ack in the summer of 1983, my sis-
ters wore underwear during the
day, but they couldn’t be trusted not to
wet the bed, and so they had to wear
diapers at night. They weren’t allowed
BUNCHESOFANEST
What I started opposes what I shattered.
Marigolds I planted grow underground in silence.
Your arms hold me tighter.
I love you back with echoes of alternative languages.
Flutter-bees of temporary insanity, cousin of generalities.
My soul in clementine, looking for the gravity
dark matter imposes.
A place of conversations, so spirit-drunk it feels ecclesiastical.
Up the street, a blue jay and a robin in a tree
quiet me with their full-throated tightrope-walking
argumentative vitality.
I walk like a beautiful petrified shell of a woman.
Inside the fabric of my feelings
I am reeling. Disarranged, I long to fix myself
in million-year starlight beyond soil, latitude, season.
To what end are endings, to what end do we?
Below the dogwood’s pinwheel
white blossoms, face up with oxygen petals,
twigs, grass, yarn lie disassembled.
Bunches of a nest. A tiny bird, face down, beyond.
—Diane Mehta
