Anyone Can Be a Pirate

by Jose Chaves

This is the year my mother says, why don't you just wear a nice ball on your head for Halloween? It would be an original.

Nobody wears a ball on their head, I say, and the kids would kill me. I want to be a pirate.

It would be so light, she says, you wouldn't even notice it. We could paint it any color you want and fasten it with a thread so thin, it would look like magic. Besides, anyone can be a pirate.

I don't care, I say, the kids will kill me.

An hour later, it's finished. With only a balloon and some gluey strips of newspaper, we construct a ball of paper-mache about the size of a grapefruit. I want a smaller one, but my mother insists. Anyone can wear one the size of a lime, she says.

I don't know how many times I'm called Gonad-Head or Captain Testicle, before it's stripped from my head by three pirates, then trampled to the pavement with my empty bag of candy.

I take back a muddy strip of newpaper peeling to show her what my night was like. She just shakes her head and tells me it's still beautiful. To this day she keeps it on her dresser, in the mouth of the egg-carton-alligator, she calls her memor

Jose Chaves writes: "I am currently living in Bogota, Colombia on a Fulbright Scholarship putting together an anthology of the Latinamerican prose poem and mini-story. When I am not in Colombia, I live in Portland, Oregon where I teach Spanish and creative writing. I have an MFA from the University of Oregon and have been published in "Highbeams," "Octavo," "Jeopardy," among others."

THIS WORK IS COPYRIGHT OF THE AUTHOR.