Czechoslovak Radio, Wednesday November 22nd: Wenceslas Square, 12 o’clock and 10 minutes. It’s hard to guess how many people are here, tens of thousands of citizens. They’re expressing their longing for democratic changes in our society. The singer Marta Kubišová, who had been banned from appearing in public for nearly twenty years, will sing her best-loved song, “A Prayer for Marta”.
The singer sang her prayer acapella, give us back our peace, give us back our governance, give us back our decency… her voice expanding into the hollow between the mass of heads and the sky.
Radio Prague: Can you remember how people reacted when they heard the song?
MK: I was very high above those people, but friends told me that all the people were crying and pointing upwards.
Green duffle bag in hand, the one Tammie had got her in the hope that she’d join the soccer team, Zorka raided her uncle and aunt’s money cache, a coral-coloured fanny-pack tucked in the back of a sock drawer.
It was only when the bus crossed the state line that the murmur of memories created a soreness of unidentified longing, like for Ray-Ray with his holy lungs, running through the woods. She pushed her teeth together and smeared her face with her palms, then turned completely to the window and watched the pines passing in rows.
She had spun Tammie’s globe one last time before leaving. She placed her index finger on the spinning surface like a needle to a turning record and listened to her nail run across the grooves of continents.
“Tell Tammie, I’m going to call the cops myself and get that girl deported.”
“Marja, you’re no longer her legal guardian, she’s eighteen.”
On the Amtrak train to Pittsburgh, a man wearing a dark business suit sat across from Zorka, looking at her suspiciously.
“What?” she said straight at him.
“…How old are you…?” he asked.
Zorka unzipped her jacket and squeezed her cushioned tits.
“I’m a porn star,” she said, then zipped her jacket back up.
The man went back to reading the paper, as Zorka continued to stare full-force at his forehead until he folded up the pages, put the newspaper in his briefcase, got up and switched seats.
From Pittsburgh she kept going east, one train then another. In the stations, she studied the railway map, brushed her teeth in the toilet, paced about the halls, eyeing around for predators, then slept in the plastic chairs, curled up over her duffle bag.
The train pulled into South Station in Boston and she decided to stay a moment and have a look around the city. She got onto Summer Street and walked straight towards the flow of water. The river was curling beneath the arches of the bridge and cresting out, towards the tree-lined banks, glimmering at the sheer skyscraper with its reflective windows absorbing the sky above.
Zorka watched the water’s surface unable to rush itself as much as the current insisted, folding into its own burden, and thought of Jana. That serious girl with the puddle-coloured hair and slate-grey eyes. She picked up a pebble and chucked it over the bridge into the river.
“Agnes Dei and the Jans!” she screamed and pinched some air-guitar chords at her gut.
It began to drizzle.
Zorka stopped by a 7-Eleven to get a bottle of Sprite and some of those spicy Cheetos she liked even though they turned her fingertips neon orange. The guy at the register was looking at her. She clocked him a couple times, putting his features together in her head. Short brown hair with a side parting, the front slightly flipped up, his two eyes curved down towards his big ears, just in line with his long, beakish nose, thin lips shaded by a bit of stubble…
As Zorka was slipping the bottle of Sprite into her jacket, he called out “Hey,” but didn’t move from behind the register.
Zorka grabbed the bag of chips and began to walk around the small aisle towards the door.
“You can take whatever you want, I don’t give a fuck,” he said.
Zorka stopped.
“My name’s Paul,” he said. “You from out of town?”
Zorka gave him the middle finger.
“O yeah I heard of that place. It’s hot over there… full of flames…” Paul laughed and took out a pack of Marlborough Reds from behind the counter and chucked them at Zorka. “On the house,” he said.
Zorka caught the pack and put it in her jacket pocket and began to leave.
“Wait, hold up. You ain’t even gonna tell me your name?”
Zorka stopped and thought about it.
“Zorka,” she said.
“You got a place to stay Zorka?”
Zorka shrugged.
“You wanna place to stay?”
“Not looking for rape,” Zorka replied.
The man laughed.
“Yeah me neither. Shit’s gross,” he said. “Wait, hold on – hold up. Look. Just hear me out. Like take me, right: thirty-six years old, working the cash register at 7-Eleven, most people’d think, that dude’s a fuckin loser, right? Bet when people look at you, they don’t see the truth neither do they? You ain’t a loser and I ain’t a loser.”
One could have called it a chance meeting. Paul was just filling in this shift for his younger cousin Ben, who worked the 7-Eleven after school. Financially speaking, Paul was not a loser. He lived in a pale-yellow house with a teal and purple painted porch in Jamaica Plain, off the orange line on Barowell Street in south-east Boston, which his uncle had left to him and his cousin Ben, after he got diagnosed with prostate cancer and tried to move down to Florida to take it easy for a couple months, but seizured in the airport and died near the baggage claim. Ben’s mum was living in Dorchester with another family, and Paul’s family had moved to Florida after his uncle’s sudden death, thinking, life’s too short. They called Paul from the baggage claim area, whispering into the phone.
“Why you whispering, Ma?” Paul said.
“I love you, Pauly, you be a good boy.”
“What the fuck, Ma, why you saying that, what’s going on?”
“Don’t swear, Pauly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m putting your father on the phone.”
“Ok.”
“Pauly?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s your father.”
“I know. What’s up with Ma?”
“Pauly we’re ok, we’re just—” His father stopped speaking and a muffling sound twisted in the phone.
“Pa…? You crying?”
His father sniffed.
“Can I be honest with you, Pauly? You a grown man now so I can be honest with you.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re scared… We don’t wanna… go…”
“Go? Go where?”
“You know, Pauly. We don’t wanna… die…”
“DIE?! You think cause Uncle Hal drop dead all the sudden that it run in the family or something, I’m sorry but it was Uncle Hal’s time, that’s all. It ain’t your time and you know it. So just relax, ok?”
His father sniffed again into the phone.
“Maybe you’re right…”
“Take Ma to the beach.”
“I will.”
“Get some vanilla ice-cream in a cone.”
“I will.”
“I love you, Pa.”
“We love you too, Pauly!” his father said into the phone, then he heard his mother yell out in the background “I love you Pauly! Tell Pauly I love him and to be a good boy and to take care of Bennie!”