The Father
On the first Sunday of the month their mother would drive them to the father’s apartment where they would have dinner. The father was a tall, thin man with green eyes and rust-colored hair, and when he’d open the door the sweet smell of his cigar would make their noses sting. They’d go to the...
Wide Open Spaces
The policewoman, let’s call her Ann Marie, doesn’t stop talking as she shows me the crime scene photographs of the woman who shot me when I was seven years old. This is the first time I’ve seen the photos of her suicide, though I was seven a long time ago. Twenty-four years. These are my...
Shock and Awe
Late one night as a child, in bed in my room, with heat lightning quaking sourceless on the horizon and lighting the world in quick flashes, I convinced myself the missiles had flown and the bombs had begun to fall. After each flash came a low concussion like the coughs of my cancer-killed uncle, and...
Hard Candy
The summer my older son was about to turn three, I took him to the library of the college that had just given me one year’s grace to find another position. Such things were supposed to be confidential, but the librarian knew I would not return in September or, at the latest, be gone the...
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,...
To the Moon
I see the telescope first. It’s low and boxy, made of plywood, varnished like corn syrup. The handmade sign reads, as if hawking a tour of a kangaroo ranch or the arrival of a traveling circus,”see the moon.” The sign is small, propped against an empty bucket, but it eclipses everything else on the summertime...
Slide
He slid down the big Curly-Q slide today. It was starting to rain, a light drizzle rare in our desert town, but we agreed it didn’t matter. The feat was too momentous. He knew it, and so did I. While kids his age and height (2 years old, 3 feet tall) have gone flying down...
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