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Why I Love Penguins

December 1, 2019 By MFC Feeley

Why I Love Penguins

Back when I had to reach high for her hand, everyone thought my mother was a cop. I don’t know if it was her clinical gaze or that she found the false friendliness of California obscene, but she retained an authority from her days as head nurse that made people tremble like they’d left socks on the kitchen floor. Everywhere we went, secretaries terminated personal calls, herbalists hid their pot, and jay-walkers corrected course. One jaywalker, freezing in the street, got hit by a VW Bug. My mother administered triage until the ambulance came.

Against the hippies, my mother gleamed like an icicle, sharpening in the swelter of ‘69. Men chased her shade, and she wanted a man, but fear of arrest halted their advance. This constant harassment, coupled with frustration, increased my mother’s taste for being alone. Silent in ribbons and Mary-Janes, I traveled, safe as a wallet, inside her psychic shield.

But her favored escape—cigarettes—made men comfortable. Between men offering her lights and men trying to distract her from their partner’s petty crimes, she could never puff in peace. Until one day, at the zoo, when one too many men asked if she wasn’t really a stalking panther, she spied a shady nook in the penguin house.

Straightening her back, she clasped my hand and turned the latch on the almost invisible door carved through the wall of artificial ice. The penguins raised a fuss, but no one questioned us. We waded through flapping fish and sat on a slimy rock.

Still wearing her gloves, my mother took out her crushed pack of Winstons while I patted the friendlier penguins, all of whom I named Sid, on the head. I expected squelchy patent-leather, but found their craniums soft to the touch. My mother smoked in glorious peace. I flapped my wings and fell in the water.

Walking home, the smell of guano, our dripping dresses, and my bloody shins (where—understandably—Sid bit me for plucking his feathers), kept the men at bay. My mother stripped off her ruined kidskin and pointed at trees and flowers; ribbons of smoke trailed from her cigarette and, when I stopped to pet a caterpillar with my penguin feather, she squeezed my hand.

About MFC Feeley

MFC Feeley lives in Tuxedo, NY and attended UC Berkeley and NYU. She wrote a series of ten stories inspired by the Bill of Rights for Ghost Parachute and has published in SmokeLong, Jellyfish Review, Brevity Blog, Liar’s League, and others. She was a Fellow at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and twice received scholarships to the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Winner of the 2018 Northern New England Review Raven Prize for Creative Non-Fiction, she was a 2019 runner-up for Pulp Literature's Raven Short Story Contest, has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, The Pushcart Prize, and was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist. She has judged for Mash Stories and Scholastic. More at MFC Feeley/Facebook and on Twitter MFC Feeley @FeeleyMfc.

Artist Credit:

Orlando native Kaylan Stedman is an illustrator out of Torrance, California. With a Master’s in TESOL, she teaches English by day and pursues her passion for art and illustration at all other waking moments. For more art, peruse past Ghost Parachute issues, follow her Instagram, @naryakal (K. S. Illustrations), or support her on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/ksillustrationsstore.

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