An Excessive Number of Beautiful Things
by Jess Silfa
Nina had only been on the floor an hour when the patient in bed 322 died. The resident. The staff at Shady Oaks were supposed to call the people in their care “residents” or “clients,” not patients. It had something to do with making the residents feel they were paying for a service. It wasn’t good to remind them how sick they were.
Nina wasn’t a nurse, just a CNA, so there was nothing she could have done. She tried to bind random tidbits of information into her long-term memory as Leon and Dr. Beale did their jobs; that would be her one day working the crash cart. Dr. Beale started compressions, and the sickening crunch of cracked ribs filled the room.
“No DNR?” Nina whispered to Terise.
“No. Some people want to live.” But dying was inevitable, especially at Shady Oaks.
A few minutes passed before Dr. Beale took her hands off the resident’s chest. “I’m calling it.” She stepped back, looked at the clock in the room, and made a note of the time. Amber and Leon began discussing next of kin. If they were nearby, the staff would wait and let the family come and say their goodbyes. If not, the body would be transported and held in the morgue.
The white coat and blues left the room, leaving Terise and Nina, in their puke green uniforms, to finish preparing the body for transport.
Nina grabbed the crisp white bed sheet at the end of the bed and held out the opposite corner to Terise. They shook the sheet high into the air. For Nina, three things happened at once:
She saw Terise on the other side of the bed, her eyes looking up at the billowing sheet, the ceiling, or maybe toward heaven.
The second thing that happened was that Nina remembered the giant parachute her first-grade class played with during gym. She remembered the colorful patterns cast a rainbow on the waxed wood floor, and across the way, Kenny Rodriguez smiled at her. He had just lost a tooth, and his smile was all gnarly and wet. Then the parachute fell over the class, and she lost sight of him.
The third thing that happened Nina couldn’t understand. She saw Death. Just a glimpse, just a peek, but she knew it was him all the same, the stranger standing near the bed, looking both as real as Terise and as evanescent as the memory of Kenny smiling at her. Nina was good at seeing what others didn’t see, at taking in every sound, speck, and smell. She recognized people by their footsteps and anticipated their moods. That was how she survived. But this? This was something else.
Nina was good at seeing what others didn’t see, at taking in every sound, speck, and smell.
“You see me.” It was more a thought than a voice. It lingered as the sheet fell back onto the bed, onto the body lying in it. Then the voice and the figure were gone.
“Nina?”
“Did you see that?” Nina asked.
“What?” Terise looked down at the bed. Mr. Avis Johnson, veteran, grandfather, now just the body. His eyes were closed, a small blessing. Nina had to close a pair of eyes once, weeks ago, and sometimes she still felt a phantom tickle of eyelashes against her palm.
“I don’t know what I saw.” But Nina did know. The name rattled in her throat, then forced itself back down and lodged underneath her ribs. “I guess my eyes are playing tricks.”
Terise nodded. “We’re all too tired. Our eyes don’t even know what they’re seeing.”
Nina looked down at the body and frowned. “How many is this today?”
“Just the first, which means we’ll probably get another one tonight.”
“It’s still early,” Nina said. She imagined Death settling in for the night the way visitors do––grabbing a cup of coffee or cocoa, curling up in an uncomfortable chair, leaning forward each time a nurse or doctor entered the room with news.
She imagined Death settling in for the night the way visitors do––grabbing a cup of coffee or cocoa, curling up in an uncomfortable chair
Terise was standing in front of the large calendar in the hallway, hands on her hips, when Nina exited the room. The calendar was full of things for the residents to do, everything from bingo to music nights to pedicures. Today’s offering was Wild Raptors. A volunteer from a nearby animal sanctuary brought two owls, or sometimes a hawk, for the residents to pet and ooh and ahh over. During last month’s Wild Raptor show, one of the owls had pooped in the dining room. The volunteer had excitedly pried the shit nugget open, showing the residents the tiny little rat femur inside. Bed 122 had thrown up her soft scrambled eggs all over her table, and now the Wild Raptor show took place in the solarium at the front of the ALF.
“Goddamn birds,” Terise whispered. “If there’s poop in that solarium, and they expect me to clean it up, I swear to God.”
“They’re a fan favorite.” Nina trailed off as she glanced back at Bed 322 and pictured the body under the sheet. Transport would be up in a few minutes, so the CNAs had to go around closing the resident doors for “housekeeping.” No one wanted to see a dead neighbor wheeled around the halls.
“Deaths still hit you hard, huh?”
“Hmm?” Nina was brought back to the conversation. “Oh. Yeah. Sometimes.”
Terise lowered her voice. “That’s normal, you know. You shouldn’t grow numb to people’s pain.” But Nina knew Terise had grown numb to it. She counted the dead and then thought about her dinner. Once, as she waited for transport to come get a body, she thought so longingly about a pastrami sandwich on rye, extra mustard, that she moaned a little. The newly-widowed woman sobbing at the bedside glared at her, and Terise had to dab her eyes and pretend she had moaned in sorrow. She told the story in the break room to gasps and laughs, then moaned extra loud as she bit into her sandwich. Mustard dripped onto her chin. “So worth it,” she said.
Once, as she waited for transport to come get a body, she thought so longingly about a pastrami sandwich on rye, extra mustard, that she moaned a little.
Nina’s beeper went off when she returned to the nurses’ station. It was her mother.
“Get milk on your way home,” Juana said. “You drank it all.”
Nina frowned. The last thing she wanted to do after an overnight shift was to stop at the supermarket. But she knew her mother would bitch about the price if she shopped at the bodega on the corner instead. “It’s a whole extra dollar a gallon.” She could hear her mother chastising her. The last time Nina had overspent on groceries, Juana had made a big deal of calling the food stamps hotline, getting the balance, and reconfiguring the entire food budget. As if the solution wasn’t simply to just drop one thing from the menu. Canned tuna instead of pork chops. There. Problem solved.
Now that she had graduated high school and completed CNA certification, Nina was saving up to move into her own place, a small studio apartment right off the #1 train in Washington Heights. She didn’t know which building yet, but the neighborhood was full of small spaces. The landlords were always cutting a three-bedroom into pieces, shoving a stove and fridge in any place they’d fit so they could call the apartment an efficiency. Nina didn’t mind.
Amber came strolling down the hall, rolling the blood pressure machine in front of her. “Hey, Sarah was asking for you.”
“Sarah?” Nina cocked her head.
“Your friend. The little old lady in her personal museum.”
Nina remembered little things about her residents: their favorite foods, how they liked their coffees, and the trinkets they cared about the most. Last week, Bed 32 had mentioned a red brooch his mother used to own when he was young, and Nina spent three hours at six different thrift stores looking for something that seemed close enough. Bed 32 was overjoyed.
But names never stuck. When Nina tried to recall them, the letters would twist and distort themselves, and the sounds garbled in her mouth. It was easier to give everyone pet names, and she sighed with relief when most of the residents let her get away with “honey.” It seemed a southern thing, even though she wasn’t southern and gave no twang to the word.
Bed 40—Sarah—was Nina’s favorite. Sarah was 88, widowed, and a former small-time singer in the chorus of old musicals. Once a season, at least, the resident movie night would feature a movie she was in. A CNA, usually Terise, would stand by the television and point out a young Sarah singing and dancing in the background. “See her? Right there.” All the residents would lean forward and squint their eyes at the shadow kicking its legs and shaking its hands in the air.
Sarah was in the early stages of dementia, meaning she remembered these moments less and less. But it wasn’t dementia that would kill her, it was her weak heart and its faulty beats. Sarah always had a wet cough, a symptom of the fluid collecting in her body. Her extremities had started to mottle, and most of the time she stayed in her room, which the staff called “the museum.”
When Sarah moved into Shady Oaks, it had been a production. Or at least that’s what Terise said. Most people moved in with only a few bags. They either did not need many things, or their families had already pared down their belongings and taken the good china. But not Sarah. When she moved in, she brought boxes of treasures: dresses from the 1950s, costume jewelry in small wooden chests, and lamps with soft light bulbs that gave the room an autumn glow year-round. Nina was particularly enamored with a tiny vintage Shiseido lipstick that had to be applied with water and a brush. Terise’s favorite thing was a hat box filled with buttons. More than once, Nina walked in on Terise with her fingers in the box, raking the buttons like sand.
“You can tell which ones are good,” Terise said, “because they’re cool to the touch.” Nina had never thought of buttons being good or bad before, but she realized Terise meant that the cool ones were expensive. It was the difference between pearlized and pearls.
Nina had never thought of buttons being good or bad before, but she realized Terise meant that the cool ones were expensive.
“Good evening, honey.” Nina waltzed into Sarah’s room, taking a moment to clean her hands at the sanitizing station. She went to the large green recliner where Sarah sat, watching Bob Barker on The Price Is Right. Her bed table was up to the recliner, but the grey plastic cover was still over her meal tray. Sarah didn’t have good balance and was supposed to be fed, but with the staff shortages…
“No one has fed you yet?” Nina lifted the cover and saw that the meatloaf and mashed potatoes were untouched. Sarah drank her orange juice, but at a measly four ounces, it seemed like a tease, not a solution for thirst.
Sarah sighed and waved her hand. “Not hungry.”
“How about I put this away for later, and you tell me when you’re hungry, okay?” Sarah nodded. “I bet I can find you some pudding. Would you like butterscotch pudding right now?”
Sarah perked up at this. “My mother used to make butterscotch pudding.”
“I remember. You told me.” Nina put on a big smile. “Let me go get that for you.” She took the tray and headed to the kitchen. After grabbing a pudding and an Ensure, just in case she could get Sarah to consume something more nutritious than pudding, she returned to the room where Sarah was waiting. Just outside the doorway, Nina saw that strange glimmer again, and it felt as if Death was near.
“Who?” she whispered. “Bed 40?” But there was no answer. Nina entered the room and felt relief when Sarah eagerly sat forward in her recliner and extended her hand for her snack.
“Thank you,” Sarah said.
“Do you need help feeding yourself?”
“No,” Sarah said, and she made a big show of taking a big spoonful of pudding and popping it into her mouth, body tremors and all.
“My husband hated butterscotch pudding.” Sarah licked her lips. “He said it would make me fat. The last time I made it, he snatched the mixing bowl from my hands and threw it out into the backyard.” She seemed mad now, a disgust in her voice that, if Nina weren’t careful, would settle in for the rest of the night.
She seemed mad now, a disgust in her voice that, if Nina weren’t careful, would settle in for the rest of the night.
“Well, you can have all the pudding you want here, okay? Give that button a little push, and Terise or I will bring you some.”
Just like that, a bathroom alarm went off. Those were special, extra loud, and extra bright, so none of the staff on the floor could miss it. The truth is many of the residents either injured themselves or died going to the toilet. Pooping was a serious endeavor.
“Duty calls,” Nina said.
After wiping Bed 35’s butt, bringing Bed 101 an extra blanket, and calling an RN to administer pain meds for Bed 220, Nina was ready to sit at the nurses’ station for a few minutes. Just a few. Just a bit to rest her feet and close her eyes. Her beeper buzzed again.
“Mami, you can’t keep paging me during work.”
“Can you pick up eggs too?” Juana didn’t acknowledge her daughter’s complaint. She hated Nina’s job and ranted at least once a week about how Dominicans didn’t throw away their grandparents as white people did. “We keep them home,” she’d say, and then tell one of her million stories about growing up with her Yeya. “This is why some children don’t know to keep quiet. You don’t have your elders to show you how to behave.”
Nina dutifully listened to the rant every time.
Leon, Terise, and Nina settled for their meal together while Amber stayed and watched the wing. The break room was small but adequate, a little place the staff carved out as their own. Management had put up motivational posters, but everyone had added their own touch: a stuffed Garfield, a light-up unicorn, and a picture of one of the members of Menudo. No one owned up to that one, but Leon drew hearts around it all the same.
“Anyone wanna go halfsies?” Leon shook a large, wrapped sub in Nina and Terise’s direction. “It’s an Italian supreme.”
“So are you,” Terise joked.
Leon snickered and patted his chest. “You know it, baby. Like Rocky Balboa.”
“More like My Cousin Vinny,” Terise said.
Leon pretended to be wounded. “No Italian for you. Nina?”
Nina shook her head and waved her own sandwich. “I’m good with my PB&J.” She held up a finger and shot Leon a look. “Don’t make fun of PB&Js, okay? They’re like a warm hug from the inside.”
“They also say that about me.” Leon waggled his eyebrows and ducked from the balled-up napkin that sailed towards his head. “Fine, fine. Change of subject: Are you still living with your mom and her boyfriend?”
<PQ>Nina clenched up, shoulders to toes, then slowly relaxed. If Leon or Terise noticed, they didn’t say anything.</PQ> “For now. I mostly keep to my bedroom,” Nina said. She had finally convinced Juana that she was old enough to have a lock on her door. “But I checked out some studios, and I think I can move in a month or so.”
“Wouldn’t you rather stay home and save money?” Terise asked.
“I don’t sleep well at my mom’s place.” She waved her hand and took a big swig of water. “But it won’t matter in a month.”
“You could probably move sooner if you picked up hours at one of the other assisted living facilities,” Terise said. “I used to do that when I first started.”
“I’m here twelve hours a day, four days a week, and I can barely keep my eyes open. Adding more hours would kill me.” But Nina had considered getting a side hustle once she moved out. <PQ>Her big master plan—the one she kept on a post-it note on her vanity mirror—was to enroll in college and get her BSN.</PQ> Then she could be a real nurse, wear the blue uniform, and do things like administer medicine. Changing bed linen and wiping asses would be things she did in a pinch to help out, not her primary tasks.
“Are you still planning on staying a CNA, Terise?” Leon asked.
“I can’t do that school shit.” Terise shook a carrot stick with each syllable to emphasize her point. “The CNA exam was hard enough. And don’t turn that into a sex joke.”
Leon raised his hands. He opened his mouth to speak.
“And don’t offer to tutor me either.”
Leon snapped his mouth closed and shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t try to help.” Then he took a massive bite of his sandwich.
Nina checked if Bed 40 was finally hungry and wanted a meal before sleeping. Sarah’s eyes lit up when she saw Nina, and she beckoned her over. “I need to check the pool.”
Nina reached over and patted Sarah’s hand. “The pool? Honey, we don’t have a pool.”
Sarah twisted a napkin in her hand. She looked around the room and seemed to remember where she was. Putting her other hand over Nina’s, she asked if they could chat for a minute.
“Of course. Do you need something?”
Sarah’s mouth moved silently before the question came out. “Did your mother know?”
Nina’s body reacted faster than her brain did. She felt a chill expand out from her chest and automatically leaned forward as if wanting to curl into herself. She could have said a hundred different things then. She could have said “yes” just to end the conversation. <PQ>She could have pivoted the way she was taught in her one-day dementia intensive and brought up the weather, the buttons, the goddamn butterscotch pudding.</PQ> She could have looked at the television playing Jeopardy reruns in the corner and thrown a random guess into the void. Instead:
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She twisted one end of her napkin again and shifted in her bed with a sigh. “I want to tell you about Marv.”
“Your husband? The one who hated butterscotch pudding?”
Sarah nodded. “Marv was a good husband before the kids. He took care of me, you know? But he was demanding.” Sarah unfurled the napkin and flattened it out. “There were some things about him I accepted as part of those times. Which is silly because my father was the sweetest man alive. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Your father sounded nice,” Nina offered.
“But Marv,” Sarah continued, “Marv changed after Julie turned four. He paid her so much attention.” It was a heavy phrase. Someone else would have shaken it off or commented that Julie was daddy’s little girl. Sarah’s eyes flicked back and forth between Nina and a thought. She was there, and then she wasn’t over and over until Nina had to know.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Every time one of the male nurses comes in here, you freeze for a minute.”
“Oh.” Nina wrapped an arm around her middle. “Are you sure you’re not hungry? Can you drink some Ensure for me?”
Sarah kept going. “You start to recognize when something is wrong. And I still recognize it now, even in other girls.”
Nina stepped away from the bed and turned off the overhead light in the room. “You should get some rest. It’s late.” She promised Sarah she’d check in on her later, then excused herself. She could feel a bubble growing in her chest, something threatening to burst. She made it to the staff bathroom and inside one of the stalls before bending over, putting her hands on her knees, and gasping for air. She opened the small window and pressed her face against the screen, trying to take in as much cool nighttime air as possible. It wasn’t enough. <PQ>She could hear her own ragged breaths, and it felt like her lungs were on fire. Her arms ached. Not one part of her body seemed to be getting enough oxygen.</PQ> Outside, the shrubs shuddered.
Nina didn’t know what had given her away. How Sarah saw the difference between someone who was startled and someone who was wounded. Most times, Nina didn’t think of it at all. Sometimes brief flashes of the routine would pop into her head: the boyfriend’s boxer shorts, a shushing sound, the rustle of sheets. She kept the rest in a box so buried she hoped she would forget it existed. She lived the last few years of her life giving it a wide berth.
There was a glimmer out of the corner of her eye.
“You’re not here for me, goddammit.”
“Nina?” Amber’s blue clogs peeked out from the bottom of the stall. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound okay.” Amber pushed lightly on the door, but Nina locked it. “You want to talk about whatever’s bothering you?”
“No.”
“Well, can we at least sit in the break room for a minute?”
Just then, the bathroom alarm went off. A resident needed help.
“Terise can get it,” Amber said.
“She might be busy with someone else.” Nina opened the bathroom stall door and went to wash her hands. She hadn’t cried, but she knew she looked shell-shocked, spooked. Amber came up behind her in the mirror.
“Can I give you some advice?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “This job will chew you up and spit you out, whether you’re an RN, ARNP, or CNA. You need to take care of yourself, including getting your rest.”
“This job will chew you up and spit you out, whether you’re an RN, ARNP, or CNA. You need to take care of yourself, including getting your rest.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to talk with management. Two CNAs a wing per shift? That’s not enough.”
“Agreed.”
“Seriously, Nina, do you need anything?”
Nina’s breathing was under control. Overhead, the bathroom alarm lights were still flashing. She needed to find out which resident needed her help.
Bed 25 was happy to see her. “It’s the darndest thing,” he said. “I got on the toilet just fine, but then I couldn’t get my strength up under me.” The elderly man chuckled a bit, but his cheeks were red in embarrassment.
“They make the toilets too low, is what it is,” Nina responded. “It happens to all of us.”
The sun was rising. Nina could see it through the windows at the end of the main hall as she leaned against the wall and tried to stay upright. She would swap with the day shift in three hours and head home. Well, first to the supermarket for milk, eggs, and god knows what else, and then home. Then perhaps she could sleep. The thought made her feel more tired.
A loud cough came from one of the rooms; Nina knew it was Sarah. She got that deep congestive cough whenever her head was too low in her bed or her recliner. Terise was already walking toward the room, but Nina waved her away. She wanted to rip the bandaid off, face Sarah again, and return to their routine.
“We’re almost done, girl!” Terise gave her a fist bump and then continued down the hall to someone who had yelled for water.
<PQ>Sarah was indeed lying down flat on the bed. She must have felt like she was drowning in her own body.</PQ>
“I’m here, honey. I’m here.” Nina grabbed the controls and lifted the head of the bed until Sarah was sitting up. “That’s going to feel so much better.”
Sarah gave a sleepy smile. “Leon sprayed some of my perfume earlier.”
“It smells very nice in here. Very fancy.”
“I didn’t finish my story,” Sarah said.
“What story?”
“About Marv.”
“You don’t have to finish that.” Then Nina added, “If you don’t want to.”
Sarah took a deep breath, as deep as she could take with that cough. “Things were different back then. Women didn’t earn much money.”
“We still don’t earn that much,” Nina muttered. She sat in the recliner beside Sarah’s bed and crossed her arms.
“I couldn’t just leave him.”
“You don’t owe me any reasons. I’m sure you did your best. I’m sure your daughter knows you did your best.”
“One night, I sent the kids to my mother’s to have a date night. I cooked Marv his favorite dinner: mashed potatoes and meatloaf with green beans. I put almonds in the green beans.”
Nina remembered the tray in the refrigerator and that Sarah hadn’t eaten dinner. She felt a tinge of guilt. The meal must have triggered something, even though mashed potatoes and meatloaf were as common as pudding and Ensure at Shady Oaks.
“What happened during dinner?”
“Well, I put on my best dress and asked him to put on his best suit. Marv loved parading me around town every so often.” Sarah’s eyes lost focus a little and then closed. Nina stood up to leave, but Sarah stirred, so she walked around the room, stopping at the box of buttons. <PQ>She dipped her fingers in and out until she settled on a black pearl oval. Cool to the touch.</PQ>
“I need to go to the pool,” Sarah said.
“It’s okay, honey. Just go to sleep.”
Sarah’s eyes regained focus. “I got him drunk.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t know how to swim,” Sarah said. Nina was slow to piece it together. And Nina still felt like she was missing pieces, even as she filled in what Sarah left unsaid.
“You had a pool.”
“Oh, it was Marv’s stupid pride and joy: an 8-foot in-ground pool. That night, I convinced him to take a little dip with me. I told him to strip down and wait for me.” Sarah’s lungs were wheezing. “He was already falling over himself, drunk as a skunk.”
Nina should have stopped her. “What happened next?”
“He went for a swim. I went up to change into a swimsuit. When I went back, he was already floating face-down.” Sarah closed her eyes and let out a little humph. “I made a show of it, of course. Jumped in, tried to drag him out, called the police.”
Nina tried to picture Sarah as she would have been back then: a slim blond doing jazz hands in the background of musicals. Was she even capable of such a thing? “Did anyone suspect anything?”
“Bad judgment, maybe. Somewhere there’s a newspaper clipping with a photo of me in a swimsuit, smoking a cigarette, and looking absolutely appalled.”
Nina made a note to look for it among Sarah’s things, though she doubted she would find it. “Did you say anything to Marv? Did you—” Nina struggled to put together what she hoped to hear. She wanted Sarah to have made a final statement, spit upon Marv’s corpse, or maybe have him cremated and have his ashes scattered in his least favorite place. Death didn’t seem like enough. Drowning didn’t seem like enough. “Didn’t you want him to know what you did?”
“I didn’t care about Marv. I cared about Julie.” The sunlight was strong enough to peek through the blinds now. “And we were fine. I sold the house and got something smaller—without a pool. Julie used the life insurance money to go to college. She’s an urban planner, you know.”
“What does an urban planner do?”
“Hell, if I know.” Sarah chuckled weakly. “Something about how best to use public land and resources. But she loves her job and gave me the most adorable grandkids. You’ve seen them, right?” Nina had seen them, not in person but in countless photos.
“They’re precious,” Nina said. Then Sarah let out a cough and another long wheeze. “You okay, honey?”
“I need to check the pool.”
Nina saw the glimmer again out of the corner of her eye, but this time it moved slowly, deliberately. She stood and put her fingers on Sarah’s neck. She knew Sarah had a DNR; she wasn’t like the resident from earlier who accepted cracked ribs or intubation if it meant an extra week or two of life. Even when her daughter protested, Sarah had spoken with the doctor about not wanting that. She didn’t want to be alive if it didn’t mean living.
Nina didn’t call Terise for backup. She didn’t alert Dr. Beale, Leon, or Amber. It wasn’t like the movies where a loud, long beep of a flatline filled the room.
When death was inevitable, there was no signal to try and prevent it. Instead, she kept her fingers against Sarah’s neck and counted the beats as they slowed.
“I’m right here,” she whispered to Sarah. “Close your eyes.” When Nina felt a chill pass over her, she shook her head. “I’m staying,” she whispered to something in the room. “I’m not leaving her.”
The air smelled like expensive perfume, and the buttons glistened in their box, and something Nina vaguely recognized led Sarah to a place she couldn’t follow.
Content Summary
Move upMove downToggle panel: Content Summary
Search Engine Optimization
Move upMove downToggle panel: Search Engine Optimization
| Title Tag | Title character count: 0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Meta Description | Description character count: 0 | |
| Meta Keywords | ||
| Canonical URL | ||
| Noindex |
- Post
- Block
Summary
VisibilityPublic
PublishToday at 1:01 pm
URLwebsites.harvard.edu/transition/2023/11/29/an-excessive-number-of-beautiful-things/Stick to the top of the blogAUTHORDan CabralJoseph WeinerTanya LarkinTom Wolejko
Rewrite & RepublishMove to trash
Video Tutorials
Categories
SEARCH CATEGORIESUncategorizedAwardsFor ContributorsFor the MagazineCover Artist SpotlightCurrent IssueFrom the ArchiveLocation – InstituteAfricaW.E.B. Du Bois Institute/Hutchins Center at Harvard UniversityNewsTestAdd New Category
Tags
ADD NEW TAG
Separate with commas or the Enter key.
MOST USED
- Yvonne Osei
- Ama Codjoe
- Looping the Loop
- Essay
- T134
- larcher
- neo-fascism
- french caribbean
- Shringarpure
- Shivji
Featured image
Set featured image
Excerpt
WRITE AN EXCERPT (OPTIONAL)
Learn more about manual excerpts(opens in a new tab)
Customizations
Move upMove downToggle panel: CustomizationsOverwrite Sidebars Visibility
YesNo
Enable to overwrite sidebars settings configured in “Customizer”.Disable Page Title/Hero Area
YesNo
Removes page title and hero area (if enabled).Custom Top Margin- Select -Remove Spacing
Select to overwrite default spacing between header and content.Custom Bottom Margin- Select -Remove Spacing
Select to overwrite default spacing between footer and content.
Advanced Settings
Move upMove downToggle panel: Advanced Settings Disable wpautop
This will stop WordPress from turning double line breaks into paragraphsOpen publish panel
- Post
- Paragraph
Notifications
Post published.
Help Center
Docs
Email Support
Getting Support GuideNeed Help?