No Bananas

By Lisa Harries Schumann

“They say there's a banana shortage,” the grocery store clerk sweeping vegetal detritus off the floor of the local Aldi told Thomas, who had entered the store in search of bananas for his daily Fitness Smoothie—banana adding exotic sweet to counter the more virtuous greens—to find them gone, gone as if there'd never been bananas, gone as if in all those places far from Berlin where bananas grew there'd been a monstrous banana-smashing storm, or a blight of banana weevils, or as if some all-powerful government had once again turned off the banana faucet, or had halted bananas at the border as they tried to enter Berlin, had checked that they were eligible for legal entry and decided they weren't—and how could a banana have had enough Western currency to exchange for East German cash when it tried to enter back in the days when this part of Berlin, Thomas's Berlin, was still East Germany?—because back at that time bananas were like contraband, so precious that when the Wall fell Westerners came to East Berlin with bunches of bananas, whole truck-loads of bananas, armadas of bananas, and threw them to the East Germans lining the sides of roads as the Westerners drove by in their expensive cars, waving and cheering and beeping their horns and looking with pity at the banana-impoverished children, of which Thomas had then been one, and as he stood next to his equally banana-deprived grandmother on the street, a royal blue Mercedes drove past and a boy his age wearing an Adidas T-shirt tossed him a banana—“As if you were an ape at the zoo,” his grandmother muttered—that plummeted to the asphalt and burst, splitting at its seams, and, “You know,” Thomas said to the clerk, who was bending down to pick up a renegade red grape, “I don't really want bananas.”

Lisa Harries Schumann is a translator from German, a 2020 graduate of Boston's Grub Street “Short Story Incubator,” and is currently at work on a series of stories that stem from her obsession with narratives left ignored by histories and buried by families.

Art by Martin Harries.

What I Got From The First Good Night's Sleep In Years:

By Ellie Gordon

the arrival of Nick in his famous burgundy Buick, recalling the time he ran over my foot when I attempted to tuck-and-roll because he was in a hurry and I refused to make him slow down on my account, the assured thunder of a Chrysler 426 Hemi drumming through his hood, the elastic hole at the bottom of the rear passenger side door, my seat a velvet pouch wedged between the upholstery and child lock, my head rested against the window warmed by July’s sun, the hum and rhythm of rigid pavement rumbling up from the grooves of new tires through my feet to the back of my neck, peace, comfort in knowing Nick became a master mechanic despite only recently graduating from our community college’s automotive program, the miracle (a word I hadn’t used with any sincerity in ten years and two days before tonight) he never got injured when he’d switch to cruise control and climb onto the outside of his car while a friend took hold of the steering wheel, how he was now defying science and God by drifting around dirt road corners with the Buick’s whole back half teetering along the edge of the cliff skirting Lake Whatcom, fording six feet of water without flooding his transmission, ascending the Chanterelle hiking trail switchbacks at 60 miles per hour, me being unable to say anything else when we reach the viewpoint except "In my dreams I die in accidents,” the Douglas Firs blackening against the sunset, Nick getting sentimental for once and saying "Even though the world is going up in flames, I'm going to miss the place,” how I want this to mean he’d come to terms with his ugly demise, the jack giving out beneath the weight of his girlfriend's ride and crushing him, the warmth of his body when I pull him into my arms, his light yet lasting kiss on my cheek, losing him again when I wake, memory as usual blurring first at the edges, forgetting Nick was a notoriously irreverent jokester, that the dream was less a chance for me to say goodbye and more an elaborate gag where he waits more than ten years and two weeks after death in order to surprise me by peeking over my shoulder as I write for the first time the part where he kisses my cheek, his bold voice booming “WOW GAAAY,” my laughter confined yet absolving as prayer.

Ellie Gordon has published work with Hobart After Dark, Daily Drunk Magazine, Wondrous Real Magazine, and others, but is mostly known for their appreciation of werewolves.

Photo by Jason Thayer.

Unsocialized

By Ania Payne

A frail gray mouse runs out from underneath the fridge and I chase it outside, the dogs chasing behind both me and the mouse, and a man who lives in a neighbor’s shed across the alley sees us and opens our gate with his good arm that’s not in a cast to let himself into our backyard, the bottoms of his Batman pajamas dragging through our muddy yard because we’ve finally gotten some rain–it’s been so dry–and he smokes a cigarette with no hands and as he tells me how much he loves our dogs (especially our husky) while the cigarette bobs up and down in the corner of his mouth but never falls out, I hear his own husky howling from inside the shed that he lives in–I think your dog is crying, I say, I’ve got a Zoom call in fifteen minutes, no, you can’t come inside because we’re social distancing, yes, the dogs like you very much, c’mon dogs, gotta get to that Zoom call, yes, my husband has your phone number written down somewhere, I’m sure he’ll text, ok bye, and I drag the dogs inside and he shuts the gate but I see his eyes still peeping through the holes in our wooden fence while his own dog continues to howl from his shed, and I wonder if we’ll all emerge from the pandemic like that–in our pajamas, struggling to read social cues (we had fooled ourselves into thinking we were so stable)–and back inside the house I open my computer but I don’t really have a Zoom call, just remorse, and the dogs chase the cats upstairs, but they’d be thrilled to go back outside and get pet by the neighbor again, they’d greet him with such pure dog joy.

Ania Payne lives, writes, and teaches in Manhattan, Kansas where she lives with her husband, Great Dane, Husky, and backyard chickens.

Art by Jeff Kallet.