Thumb-Sucking Girl
Look at me. At me, over here. Look and shake your head all you want. At my uneven bangs, these broken-down shoes, my momma, all us kids, and all our belongings shoved into just one car. Whisper and sigh all you want because I have something better than good clothes and a permanent address. I’ve...
Archipelago
When I was thirteen, my family and I left our home in the West Indies. On the day of our departure I plucked a red hibiscus, putting it in the pocket of my French madras skirt. I lagged behind my family as we walked from the tin-hangar airport, crossed the tarmac, and climbed into the...
Dumber Than
A box of rocks. That boy—oh, you know the one. Dropped his cat from that second-story sleeping porch just to see if it was true, what they said about cats always landing on their feet. Bawled when that tabby hit and bounced, lay dead on the cement walk. Dumber than dirt. One day in school,...
The Ugly Friend
In Prague my attractive friend and I meet two Swedish men at a vegetarian restaurant. We share a communal table. Outside it is raining as is the case all summer in various locations around Europe. Instantly the men begin smiling and then whispering to each other in Swedish. I am eating soup, lentil I think...
Prince Valiant
We lived on Riverside Drive then, in the apartment once occupied by Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. I imagined a bird from a faraway land fluttering through the big open rooms of our apartment, hovering by the window that looked out on the Hudson, yearning to be free. Back then, animals could talk and I...
Missing Mao’s Ear
“Y M C A,” I hummed the English words to the song on the train’s loudspeakers. My friend Luc marked each alphabet letter with his arms. Outside, rice fields stretched into the setting sphere of the sun, a discus of fiery flaming red that the Buddha had thrown into the sky. The man next to...
Step
Jake has decided to move with his father to Alabama. Tonight. No time for discussion. Try to think of some positive images of stepfathers in literature, film, even television. I dare you. I would have said Joe Gargery, the simple blacksmith from Great Expectations, but he’s Pip’s brother-in-law, I eventually deduce, not his stepfather. Mike Brady...
My Mother’s Toenails
As her memory darkened, I did not see my mother. What hold time held upon my mother loosened and, like a shawl, slipped. My father worried that she would walk out the front door in her nightgown, with an empty black purse slung over her arm, into traffic she would not see, having forgotten her...
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