Head-Turner
We’re walking to the Avis outlet on 12th Street when Kat makes me cry. We’ve just had dinner, and she’s asked me to walk with her to pick up her rental for the next day. She has errands to run that require lugging around large objects. Soon she’ll be gone for six months, to start a...
Drink It
“Coffee?”, Mrs. Coates asked. A peculiar, grown-up question. I said yes, the grown-up thing to do, and she poured the dark liquid into a paper cup marked with squiggly lines and set the cup in front of me. I was in sixth grade. I wrapped my hands around the cup like I’d seen women do...
One Tough Bastard at the Metropole
“One Tough Bastard” is playing this Saturday at the Metropole Bar & Cinema. The title is intriguing, but today is only Tuesday and it’s not really the cinema I’m interested in as much as the bar upstairs. It’s been a long day of trudging around Arusha–the city in northern Tanzania, where I live and teach...
Ornithology
We’re walking to school and Claire is naming the birds. There’s a chickadee, she says. And that one is a nuthatch. I think that one could be a flicker. She’s usually right, though even when she is not, I don’t correct her. Dad, is that a pileated woodpecker? She’s holding on to the index finger of my left hand –...
Dirty Laundry
Are your garments spotless, Are they white as snow, Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? He cooks. I do laundry. That’s our deal. We share childcare. We clean in sporadic bursts, usually when someone is coming over. His mother comes often. She pities him, in the kitchen kneading and mincing and basting,...
Crayons
A student comes to ask me which is the right way to say crayon and I don’t know. As I look into her eager blue eyes, her pink junior high cheeks, all I think is that I never called a crayon a crayon until I was a teacher. I always called them colors. Her question opens...
Dreams of Cats
Tonight I’m sitting here and it’s late and I’m lying about who I am but it’s not really lying, just heavy embellishment on the fabric of my life. So this guy (whose chat alias is Perseus) sends me a private message and says, “Do you want to talk?” Because I am difficult I say, “About...
Mel
In Chicago, Melissa and I adamantly agree that we’re somehow different. Then laugh heartily. The century is playing itself out in clicks of the hand-held VCR remote she brandishes. The summer is long over. I feel like I’ve finally found her, the one. She lives a block and a half away. She’s beautiful. She’s cranked...
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