"Preserved"

 

Outside the labs, all along the hallways on the second floor of the science building, display cases stood silently, like sentinels. Most of them contained skeletons; a few held geodes. One was devoted to a collection of expertly preserved snakes. Jeri stopped in front of a case that offered a glimpse into prehistoric plant life through the fossils on its shelves and pondered what it meant that something that had survived the onslaught of so many years had ended up on display at a community college in the suburbs.

In the reflection of the glass, Jeri saw her instructor slowly approach. "You okay?" Ms. DuBois asked her.

Jeri heard her laugh cut the air open. "About what? The fact that I'm going to fail this lab? Not really," she said.

"No failure here," Ms. DuBois said. She folded her arms across her chest and moved to Jeri's side. "Dissection is hard on a lot of people, even the ones who look forward to it. I had a lab partner in college once, the second we made our incision into the abdomen, just threw up right there, right in the opening." Jeri raised her eyebrows and turned to see her instructor smile. "Look, take your time," Ms. DuBois told her, "but come on back. And my advice? Honestly?" Her smile was almost ghostly in the glass. "Ask your group to be the one to use the knife."

Jeri remained under the quiet watch of the display case a little while longer after Ms. DuBois returned to the lab. She took another peek at the fossils inside, split wide, their stories released into the air like souls and revealed to everyone despite what protection the case could lend, before drawing in her breath and heading back to continue with the dissection.

Her group had named the cadaver William.

"Obey All Posted Signs"

 

I stopped the car at the intersection--badly, I know; I felt the seatbelt catch like air in the throat of someone choking--and I looked at my dad, calm in the passenger seat. Again he pointed out the window at the arrow.

"That doesn't look like a real sign," I told him.

He gave a half-smile and let his breath escape slowly, through his nose, a teacher trying to be patient with a bumbling student. "Part of learning how to drive is learning what to look for," he said. "See if this helps." He made a few gestures with his right hand, signs that I had never seen before, and suddenly I saw. I saw everything. Now the air really was caught in my throat. I looked him in the eyes once more, and he nodded. "Same as before, press the gas pedal down, slowly, slowly...." The car's nose lifted, we lurched into the sky in the direction of the arrow, and more than ever before, I felt the enormous weight of moving forward.

"The Best Baker in All the Land"

 

The baker knew as soon as she took it from the oven that the bread was perfect. It smelled of honey and wheat and earth transformed; its edges were so golden and smooth that it made her think of her lover and blush. Without slicing into it, she could imagine what it was like on the inside--flaky, warm, light as a sunbeam. It was easily the best thing she had ever baked.

She sealed the bread inside a wrapper and shut it inside a cabinet. There was no way she could eat it.

But she could tell her friends and a few of her favorite customers about it. They noticed the sweetly lingering scent of the bread when they visited her at the bakery over the following days. She mentioned the new recipe to them, letting some of her excitement slip into her voice whenever she did. Each of them insisted that they had to try some of this marvelous creation.

In response, the baker would shake her head and wave her hand. "I can't serve that until I'm sure that I can do something that well again. Here, let me give you something else I've been working on." And she would set on a plate a fruit tart, or a slice of marble cake, that the person would sample and instantly crow over, saying that if this was how one of her regular offerings tasted, surely that special bread must be divine.

It didn't take long for the baker's reputation to grow, spreading throughout the city and into the distant countryside. Soon, people were tracking dust from faraway lands onto the town's streets as they headed toward the baker's tiny shop. Those who regularly enjoyed her apple bars and her macaroons swore that each day's goods tasted better than the last. Yet when asked about the baker's specialty, few could say anything about it, other than that the scent of it was rumored to be something out of Heaven's kitchen.

It was on an afternoon when the baker was baking more of the eclairs that had left the mayor in tears that she went looking in her cabinet for more ingredients and found the bread. Moisture had seeped through the wrapper; the green mold covering the bread made it look like a hill in a shepherd's field. For a minute, she grieved. Then she looked at the first tray of eclairs she had made and shrugged. She cut the mold away, threw the rest of the bread to the pigeons in the alley, and returned to the work she had yet to do, becoming in that quiet moment the best baker in all the land.

"One Big, Fat, Juicy Apple, Part Two"

 

[I wish I could do justice writing about the large events rippling through the world right now. Until then, I go with the little moments that I know. Hope you're all well.]

Nailah's mother knew things that Nailah herself did not. Nailah understood this fact perfectly and hated it. Something about apples in particular made her mother suspicious, and not even all the books in the library could distract Nailah from trying to find out what it was when they made their afternoon visit.

"Mommy," Nailah said as they entered the children's room hand in hand, "I like apples."

Her mother laughed. "I figured as much, since you made a song about it."

They made their way to a pair of beanbag chairs. "They're really juicy," said Nailah.

"So I've heard."

Her mother handed her a cardboard picture book, which she accepted but kept closed as she pondered what else to say. "I like how they're big," she finally offered. "When I hold them in my hand? They're big."

"That they are," said her mother.

"And hard."

Her mother glanced up from her novel.

"And..." Nailah rummaged through her thoughts for all the words that belonged to apples. "Crunchy?" she said.

Nailah's mother leaned forward. She took Nailah's picture book, opened it to the first page, and handed it back.

"Try reading this for a while," she said. "You know, if you had gone with something like 'smooth,' I probably would have had to ground you." She leaned back in her beanbag and returned to reading her novel, while Nailah, completely dissatisfied with the simple illustrations in her picture book, peered over the top of it at the pages her mother was reading, trying to divide those chunks of words into slivers, desperate to digest that tempting fruit, knowledge.