Kimberly Gibson-Tran

 
The Club 

I was new to the country. In school that first year
everyone called me a fish. To fit in I played
for the golf team because there were no try-outs
to fail, no coaches blowing whistles for sprints.
And there was a sort of quiet on the course
and at the practice range. The wind licking your
sandy sweat, heat waves breaking over your skin.
You could do your drills away from everyone
else, try again to nudge the little dimpled ball
where it should go. The other girls didn't like me
much. When Coach drove his cart to the clubhouse,
they quit practicing, kicked off cleats and socks,
tried to even out ankle tans on the fringe
      of the green.
They would watch me like some kind of animal.
This was how I learned doing what you're
      supposed to
has a downslope. While I kept my head low, they told
each other stories about me I could hear—about
what other ways I must be servicing Coach to want
to be so good. It made my face hot. I missed most
of the putts. When time was up, they all told Coach
they'd finished their allotted shots. I wasn't done.
I still had to sink thirty three-footers in a row.
The sky was growing dark. Even Coach had gone.
When I hit fifty, I went to the women's locker
to wash. At the mirror, an elderly club member
chatted me up. Oh, you're one of the Lady Tigers.
I saw you practicing. Release of a held breath.
Used to, you couldn't tear me away. Her face
dreamed. I'd leave my husband, leave the kids
behind and fly to the course. You understand,
      she said.
And I guess I did.

In Your Past Life in the Future

When you are sucked back in time to a fantasy of history, of course the man who finds you nearly naked in the woods, beaming with that incandescent magic that brought you there, is the most attractive man you’ve ever seen. Perhaps you suspend your knowledge of the past’s dental care and hygiene, the general access to a mirror or still pool of water. And when he, dazed, too filled with a strange religious awe to react with the violence in him, looks upon your form, you are, in a self-aware second, pleased, ecstatic. It is a good thing you, in your past life in the future, had a boyfriend who read you his dull history books of this region and that you once took a course in anthropology, which opened your horizons. There will surely be tensions. It is known you will have to make your way carefully as a woman. He wraps you in some tattered rag and takes you to the castle because he is, naturally, a rich personage—or at least related to one. And you do not fear when his uncle or patron or father shows an interest in you. There is too much destiny in the soft filter of light through camera lens to mistake what it is you’ll be saved for. Miraculously, you’ll know their antiquated language, though everyone will remark on your accent, your otherness, your not being like other women. And to him, your pluckish manliness is what he never knew he wanted. And your audience loves nothing better than to see a feminist conform to the rude strictures built out of the constant threat of rape. You do not even dream of escape. When the narrow window of return opens with a view to familiar obligations, you shut it tight, you forgo. You remember the light of the screen streaming onto your old boyfriend's careless face, the grace of his snores, the bores. You thrill to replace.

Kimberly Gibson-Tran holds two degrees in linguistics and has recent writing appearing or forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Passages North, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Raised by missionaries in Thailand, she now lives in Princeton, Texas.

<< Sean Thomas Dougherty

Kathryn Gilmore >>