Ice Cream & more

by Tara Zafft (January 2026)

Ice Cream
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. —Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
–
I was there when they said
I could eat as much ice
cream as I wanted. Which
should have excited my
nine-year-old self but didn’t.
My post-surgery nausea
erased my appetite, still
we went to Farrell’s in
Fashion Valley, my favorite
ice cream parlor. And it
was a real parlor, straight
out of Hello Dolly where
the men wore striped
shirts and straw boaters
and the women wore
frilly dresses and on that
surgery day they brought
my ice cream sundae
covered in chocolate sauce.
With one of those long
silver spoons. But the
spoon was too cold and
my throat too sore. The
nodules had to be removed
they said, she must be
a screamer, they said. And
I was there for that too,
when my mom nodded,
and signed me up for
speech therapy so I could
learn how not to scream. I
was the opposite of a
screamer. I was there
for that. For all the times
I did not scream. But
felt the hands on my throat.
Threatening. This is what
will happen, if…I was there
for that. I was not a screamer.
If only I had been. And for
some reason, fifty years later
I dream of Farrell’s and the
loud Happy Birthday they
sang at many a birthday
and the table-sized bowl
of scoops of every ice cream
flavor topped with caramel
and chocolate sauce and topped
with whipped cream and
maraschino cherries with the
long wiry stems still in. And
I grab my throat, sore and
scratchy. As if I’d been
screaming, instead of gorging
on a sickening syrupy kind
of amnesia.
–
–
–
Ode to Anna K
Oh, the places we would pour ourselves over, pushing into the meager surfaces. —Rilke
=
You gain a particular sense of time while sitting
on a train, it zooms past. Fast. A blip, that whole
life flashing before your eyes thing.  I think, on a
Monday afternoon Long Island Express into the city.
I didn’t take trains till that first trip to Russia. When
Petersburg was Leningrad and my Navy dad was
furious that I was going to the Soviet Union. As if
it was personal. Maybe it was. Maybe everything is.
Or maybe I just loved Dostoevsky. And Tolstoy.
But why do I always go straight to Anna Karenina
when I think of trains? In a blink I am back in
Russia boarding an overnight train to Moscow.
Feeling the scratchiness on my dry overheated by
winter radiator hands of the bedding given by angry
old ladies in flower dresses who where probably younger
than I am now. Bedding we’d roll out but never sleep
on because who could sleep anyway with the incessant
swaying and screeching and yelling of drunk men who’d
had way too much cheap vodka. But actually we’d
never sleep because it was just plain amazing to get
drunk on sweet tea served in glasses and silver podstakaniki
and gorge on stale prianiki and stare out the window and
zoom through the nineteenth century. And wonder
about Anna K. And why. And sometimes I hate
her and sometimes I feel her. See her trying to be free.
Of all this. See all of us trying to be free. From
the whispers of trains whistling in our ears. Dragging
us. Hither and thither. Seducing us with sweet tea
and over-sugared cookies. And how much we give away
and shape our bodies and minds and say I am…
but are we? Really? Or is it just the safe answer
we’ve become so used to saying? To feel safe
in a world so unsafe. That seems to become more
unsafe every day. But, does it have to be this way?
Anna K? I think, on a Monday afternoon
Long Island Express into the city.
=
=
=
Baldwin
=
I think of James Baldwin this
morning as I order my double
espresso in English at the French
café in Tel Aviv. James Baldwin,
who eschewed the label expat
and never surrendered citizenship.
Baldwin, a stranger everywhere, an
outsider everywhere, who loved
those just out of reach. I think of
Baldwin who helped me find my
voice, who blurred the lines and
opened my eyes. In this café with
black and white tiles and posters
of Jimmy Hendrix the year he
died. Elvis plays in the background.
Suspicion. And I remember the trip
to Graceland the year my husband
and I visited from Paris. When I
was pregnant with the baby. We
laughed and told ourselves it was
a kind of American pilgrimage. To
see our version of royalty. I was
most struck by the posters of
Elvis. Only when we were young
and beautiful. Before drugs. And
all the women. And early death.
How we want to remember. The
barista hands me my double
espresso, asks if I want soda—what
they call fizzy water. Here, and I
smile, remembering my first trip to
Rome and drinking granita di café in
the Piazza della Maddalena. Listening
to a lone violin play Albinoni’s Adagio
in G Minor. And my twenty-three
year old eyes cried. And gripped
her hand, wondering if our love
would last.

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