JUNE-JULY 2009

MEMOIR/Non-fiction

"The rhinoceroses were always angry, butting each other with their heads..."

Zoo Ride

By Minter Krotzer

            Growing up we went to the Audubon Park Zoo.  Back then it was a sad zoo -- the animals looked beat up and hungry and the entire place smelled like the monkey cage which was piled high with excrement and peanut shells.  The rhinoceroses were always angry, butting each other with their heads, and the giraffes stayed hidden in their tower.  The polar bears were the worst off, suffering in the perpetual New Orleans heat, never moving from their melting blocks of ice.  The only animals who appeared happy were the seals who had their own pool far off and away from it all in a shady grove of Spanish moss covered oak trees.  They swam all day to escape the heat and took naps on cool fake rocks.  The Mississippi River wound along the northern corner of the zoo and there was a road where high school kids went to make out and a river watch building called the butterfly because of its shape.  On the road from the butterfly was a mound of dirt called “Monkey Hill” – created for the children of New Orleans so that they would have some idea of what a mountain was like.  Children played on Monkey Hill so often that the grass was always worn away. 

            One of our favorite things to do was to take the zoo train.  It started off at the snack stand and wound its way by the seal pool, Monkey Hill, and the River.  There was always a long line to get on and grown-ups weren’t allowed.  One day while waiting in line I saw a woman coming from the distance with a child in a wheelchair.  As they approached I noticed that the child had the largest head I had ever seen.  It was at least 7 times the size of what it should have been.  The rest of his features – the eyes, nose, and mouth- were normal sized but they looked miniature.  His eyes were like two small raisins pressed too hard into a large cookie and his only hair was a faint wisp at the top of his head.  He looked more like Humpty Dumpty than a kid.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.  His mother wheeled him past us to the back of the line.  I tried to turn around to keep looking but my mother held her hands down hard on my shoulder. 

            “What’s wrong with...” I started to whisper but she put a finger to her lips.

            The other mothers in line were having the same problem with their kids.  You could hear lots of “SHHH’s.”

            When the train came round for us to board, the conductor motioned to the back of the line for the mother to let her son get on.  The conductor put him in the first seat, the best one, and fastened his seat belt, and then the rest of us boarded.  During the ride we were all so distracted by the large head in front of us that we barely noticed the wild animals.  I watched the wind blowing the faint tuft of hair at the top of his head and how, every time we went around a curve, the boy called out “ooohhh!!” in a tinny, high-pitched voice.  And then, half way through, as we approached the swamp installation, a kid behind me screamed out: “Hey Big Head! Hey Big Head! Don’t let the crocs get you!”  The rest of the kids laughed the kind of nervous laugh that you have when you know you’re doing something wrong but can’t stop.  I laughed too.

After that the boy didn’t make any more sounds.  When we got back to the station, his mother was waiting for him with the wheel chair.  We watched as the conductor helped him get out and into the chair.  And then they wheeled off in the direction of the snack bar.

Minter Krotzer's prose has been published in the Saint Ann's Review and in the upcoming issue of Many Mountains Moving, among others. She holds an MFA from the New School, and has taught creative writing at the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York City. She presently teaches private classes through the Mt. Airy Learning Tree. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, poet Hal Sirowitz.

Photo credit: Audubon Zoo

"A russet-colored puppy with floppy ears and a straight sausage-like tail jumped out of my father’s arms..."

Csilag (Star)

By Trish Keleman Szuhaj

     The sunlight through the curtain of my bedroom window coaxed my eyes open.  The thrill of the day, like Christmas, jolted my body.  It was too early for Christmas — June, perhaps — but in my five-year old mind, today was a day I would remember always.  Today was puppy day.  An ordinary day in every other respect, except that today we would welcome a new member of our family.

For months, I wanted a puppy.  Typical for a five year old who watched re-runs of Lassie.  I pleaded.  After refusing initially, my father relented.  I bounded out of bed, my Winnie-the-Pooh footed pajamas clinging to my skinny body, and raced to the front bow window of our rancher.   I waited by the window daydreaming of snuggling with the puppy in my bed.  After a few moments of revelry, I ran to my room to dress.  I wanted to be ready for the arrival of Lassie.

“Daddy’s home!”  My mother’s voice beckoned.  I raced into the back yard, arms wide, a smile from one side of my face to the other.  The sun shone brightly; it was a warm early summer day, a slight breeze tickled the leaves of the sugar maples in our backyard.  My father appeared from around the side of the house.  A russet-colored puppy with floppy ears and a straight sausage-like tail jumped out of my father’s arms and hit the ground running towards me.  I yelled, “Lassie!”  We met each other halfway across the yard and fell down nose to nose.  The smell of freshly mown grass mingled with dog-odor.  Her tongue lolled out of her mouth; she licked me.  “Don’t let her do that,” my mother warned.  I ignored her.   

     The puppy’s features were sleek, her fur short and smooth. She looked like a red greyhound.  Her eyes were yellow.  Pretty, but…no Lassie.  My excitement shifted to disappointment.  This puppy lacked the soft covering of deep fur Lassie had, the markings of a collie.  Where was Lassie?   

     “Her name is Csilag.”  My father had already named this puppy.  His face said “no arguments.”  I gave up minutes into having a puppy.  I tried to pronounce the name.  Chee-lug.  “What does that mean?” I asked.  He said, “Star in Hungarian.  See her white patch?”  He pointed to a white marking on the puppy’s chest; the spot stood out from the sienna-colored fur.  “She’s a Hungarian vizsla.  A hunting dog.”

     I found out later that Csilag was the daughter of another vizsla we knew, Yevrah, a slight, thin-boned dog that belonged to a friend of my father’s, Russ Harvey.  Ingeniously, Yevrah was Harvey spelled backwards.  I wished we could do the same, but Namelek didn’t make a good dog name.  Russ was a World War II vet, a high-strung, bony man with a wild-eyed look and huge hands that he slapped against my father’s arm when re-telling stories of being held as a prisoner of war by the “Japs.”  On the day Csilag arrived, I didn’t realize that Yevrah was Csilag’s mother.  I only knew that here, in my yard, there was a droopy-skinned puppy with a strange name.

Vizsla.  The word felt odd on my tongue.  It sounded exotic and a bit unfriendly.  Still, this puppy seemed sweet.  She nudged her wet nose into my palm.  Maybe she would do.  I ran around the yard.  Csilag followed me loping back and forth, almost tripping over her too-big-for-her-body paws.

     I turned to head to the house.  I was thirsty.  Csilag was, too, I was sure.  I’d get us both a drink and show her my bedroom…

     “Patty Ann!  She’s not allowed in the house!”  Dad bellowed, in a tone that told me this was not a point of debate.  My dreams of dreaming with the dog in my bed disintegrated, like the tiny particles I saw in the sunbeams.  I went into the house.

     That evening, I read a handbook on vizslas that my father had purchased.  I didn’t realize you needed a guide to raise a dog.  The handbook was titled, “How to Raise and Train Your Vizsla,” and on the cover was a color photo of a red vizsla.  Inside, the text was punctuated with black and white photos of the dogs.  Puppies with loose skin and St. Bernard-like eyes filled one page; on another, a young vizsla was being disciplined, looking ashamedly at a wagging finger in the photo. 

In one photograph, a tautly-muscled adult vizsla stood with tail erect, nose straight, and right leg raised delicately in a hunting point.  That was, I learned, what real vizslas did: They pointed out prey in the fields.  “It’s what they are bred for,” my father said.  Yet another page had a photo of a “perfect” vizsla, especially bred for dog shows.  This dog stood at attention, not in a point, but in a way that made me feel tense, as if the dog hardly dared to breathe for fear of ruining its perfect stance.  I stared at this photo, comparing it to Csilag, trying to discover why she wasn’t good enough to show.  The only difference I could see was the white star on her chest.  It was a distinctive mark that I loved, yet it seemed to mark Csilag as imperfect.  Much to my disappointment, there were no photos of vizslas sleeping with children in beds or sitting underneath the kitchen table begging for scraps.  Vizslas don’t belong in human houses, I thought.

My father built a dog house, enclosed with chain link fencing and set on a concrete foundation of about five feet by seven feet, with a shingled flat roof.  Actually, it was a dog house within a dog house: Inside, on the concrete slab, stood a smaller house, with siding that matched our own home’s trim; the house had a plexiglass window and an orange carpeted interior.  Csilag’s house was the queen’s suite of a Las Vegas hotel for canines.  “It’s so big, we pay additional property tax on the darn thing,” my mother told everyone.

     From the day her house was built, Csilag slept outside, often peering through the window towards our house, sometimes barking so much that my dad yelled at her.  She wanted to sleep inside, with me, I knew.  “You wet the bed,” my mother reminded me.  “But I won’t with Csilag there,” I promised.  The dog stayed outside; in bitter weather, my father would let her into the garage.  Some days, I would sneak into Csilag’s dog house to sit in the orange-carpeted room with her.  We would cuddle, her body splayed across my lap, until it became too hot for one of us.  Other days, I would run with her in the yard.  On very special occasions, usually when my father worked night shift, my mother would let me bring Csilag inside, down to our basement rec room that my father had built and decorated.  The basement featured a front room that had a bar, carpeting, a stereo, my mom’s sewing machine, and a living room complete with gas fireplace.  Csilag and I would curl up in front of the gas fire and watch the flames lick at the fake log.  I would nestle into her red fur and listen as her heart beat.   

     Csilag was never the family dog.  She was my father’s dog, bred for hunting, one of his favorite past times.  My father trained her lovingly, casting a bunch of pheasant feathers on a fishing line so she learned to point towards the prey.  She picked this up instinctively.  It was in her blood.  They would hit the fields early on hunting days in the autumn, my father decked out in his neon orange hat and vest and camo pants, traipsing through the cornfield that bordered the back of our property.  Hours later, they would return, my father triumphant, Csilag exhausted.  In tow were the carcasses of dead pheasants and rabbits.  I held them, outside, sitting on the deck of our in-ground pool with the sun glinting off the waves in the water.  I felt their soft feathers and fur on my bare skin, grieved over their still-warm bodies. 

I could never understand how my father could hunt.  My father would say, “You have a gun here, Patty Ann,” but I never went hunting with him.  I was slight and he probably felt I couldn’t handle the physical demands of walking the fields bearing the gun’s weight.  The truth was that I couldn’t bear the thought of killing any living creature.  The skinned carcasses of the birds and bunnies my father shot revolted me.  But I ate the pheasant my mother roasted in the oven.  I ate without relishing the gamey taste.  And refused to eat the rabbit meat.

I had the job of picking up Csilag’s poop using a “pooper scooper” my father fashioned from iron, a glorified shovel.  I dutifully walked the yard looking for poop and depositing it in a special hole in the ground covered by a metal cover my father made.  No poop ever went into our garbage can.  Csilag was rarely walked on the street, unless my brother and I attached her metal link leash to her collar.  She had run of the yard. 

We took Csilag with us to Lake Wynonah , a resort in central PA where my family owned a plot of land upon which my mother’s much-longed for vacation home never materialized.  We would make the 45 minute drive with our boat hooked to the hitch of the car; once there, we would walk around and look at the bare patch of land that was ours.  String and a few posts marked the boundaries.  I knew that somehow it meant something that we owned this patch of land, even if there wasn’t a building on it.  There was a lake near the property on which we boated.  On one visit, I threw a rock into the lake and Csilag dove in, trying to retrieve it.  That made everyone laugh.

I also remember returning home after a visit with my Hungarian godparents one summer day.  The yard was filled with white clumps of snow.  “Snow in July!” I shouted.  Amazing!  My father went into the yard to inspect.  Hungarian curse words wafted into the air: “Jesus Maria! Istenen!”  The snow turned out to be stuffing from patio furniture cushions Csilag had ripped apart.  My father yelled, chased her into her house, grabbed her, and beat her until she yelped in pain.  I cried.  “Don’t kill her,” I repeated over and over again between frantically whispered Hail Marys. 

     The dog forgave my father and continued her companiable hunting with him.  The next hunting season, Dad and Csilag returned from another successful excursion with one of dad’s friends, a portly mustached man named Jeff.  Dad gave Csilag water.  What happened next is hazy for me.  Did someone pull into our driveway?  Or were the men engrossed in conversation about their hunting exploits?  I know my father told me to lock the gate.  This was important.  Csilag was smart.  She knew how to push up on the gate latch with her nose and open it.  We padlocked it as a precaution.  I was excited to see who was visiting and to be part of the fun.  I followed my father and Jeff, closing the gate behind me, but not locking it.  Csilag caught our excitement and nosed her way out of the gate.  She tore across the front yard and barreled into the street in front of our house.  The car cruising down the road couldn’t stop.  It slammed into her sleek body, crushing her hind leg.  Csilag howled.  Worse than when my father hit her.  My father screamed, at me, at the world.  He scooped Csilag up and raced to the vet.  Hours later, he carried her home, her leg and hip in a cast. 

     “She was never the same,” he said, years later.  Without blame, I thought, but secretly I knew he was angry with me.  We never talked about it after that first horrible moment when Csilag was hit. 

     Csilag wound up with Jeff, ironically.  Jeff, who was there at the moment of her catastrophic accident, demanded the dog in payment for helping my father with some work on our house.  My dad gave in and Csilag went to live with Jeff, his wife, and three children on a remote farm.  My father admitted, when I confronted him about giving away Csilag, that he did so because she could no longer hunt.  “I paid $190 to repair her hip.  The vet told me not to take her hunting anymore, that she would be in pain.  So I gave her away.” 

I have no memory of this. “Don’t you remember,” my mother told me when I was well into my 40s during a Sunday afternoon phone call, the type of call in which old memories bob to the surface.  “We gave her to Jeff.”  I didn’t remember.  I didn’t remember the visit my mother said we paid to Jeff and his family.  My mother insisted.  “Csilag hid under the table.  Jeff mistreated her—she was afraid, but when she saw us, she wagged her tail and came out to see us.” “What happened to her,” I have asked both my parents.  “We don’t know,” they answered.  Jeff died in a car accident.  But we never found out what happened to Csilag, except that she lived a miserable life with him.  All because of her accident.  “We should have kept her,” my father said recently.  “We should have done a lot of things.”  

Trish Keleman Szuhaj's non-fiction work has been published in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, spring-summer 1999 ("A Paperweight's Sojourn") and her flash fiction may be found online at the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette ("Creature Comfort," December 27, 2008) and the Summer 2008 issue of Mystericale.com ("Six Minutes").  She publishes her flash fiction under the pen name Kaye Sebastian.

Photo credit: Vizsla, Ltd.