September 2024: Cammie Basseri

“those in our periphery”

It was past my bedtime when momma swung the rifle up onto her shoulder, but to be honest I couldn’t see much with the porch light shining in my face. I was pulling on her arm like a frantic animal, my brother at her other side doing the same. We were all bathed in the buggy beam of light, but momma kept her eyes pointed down the barrel of the gun—it lead straight to the cab of my stepfather’s Chevy pickup as he tried to back down of the driveway just below us. I looked back up at my momma, then the cab, then back up again, and then mid swing of my head I heard a boom that knocked me to the wooden deck, my ears ringing and everything else falling away from me. Gun powder swirled in front of my mother’s swollen face. Stunned, I laid there beneath her and turned my head to see the break of the windshield through the porch railing, glass crumbling out in cubed fragments. I sat back up into the chaos, crawling around my mother’s legs and onto the darkness of the porch steps, recalling the time I sat there once and fed wild raccoons bits of dried cat food from my hand. Those in our periphery—the memories I mean—always find a way to shuffle back into view.

Sometimes to remind us. Sometimes to keep us safe.

Cammie Basseri is a Creative Nonfiction writer who grew up off the grid in the untamed wilderness of Yosemite, where she was immersed in the rhythms of nature and the seasonal flow of tourists from around the globe. Her forthcoming memoir, It Must Have Been Beautiful, draws its title from the phrase most often heard in response when she shares the story of her unconventional childhood. Basseri’s writing has been published across the web and print publications including The Manifest Station, The Woolfer, Half Moon Bay Review, Medium, The Rumpus and East Bay Times. Find out more at: www.cammiebasseri.com Follow at: facebook.com/cammiebasseri