Sunday, July 9, 2006
Three I-Love-You's, Two Omissions: One Real Thing
A check had bounced in her brand-spanking-new checking account. A friend had written her a check in return for cash. Then his check bounced, and so did one of hers. Her mother, the guardian of the account, opened the statement with horror. "You, young lady, are getting another job." She had worked...
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
It Was All New Madrid's Fault
April in Missouri: time when it should be getting a bit humid and the warm sun should force you into shortsleeved shirts. Instead, snow was falling at an alarming rate. Cars began to pull off to the side of the highway and people trudged out into the snow, leaving their cars behind. My father saw an...
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Monday, May 22, 2006
The Love Cake
Every year of my childhood, and just about every year of my adulthood, my mother has baked her famous (in our family of four) Devilsfood Cake with Mocha Icing and Coconut Topping. Of course, we never call it that. For us, it's simply Birthday Cake, and if you don't get one made for you when you come...
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Fading Fictions
How quickly childhood passes. It's so cliche, but as my young ones grow what everyone said about it being over in a minute is too true. I vividly recall all of my imaginations from my childhood, but mourn the day they stopped being real to me. Like the Velveteen Rabbit (one of my childhood faves)...
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Friday, May 5, 2006
The Price of Silence
The music room was warm, but that's where the piano was and the music rested on it while she played her trumpet. After several choruses of Star Wars (very hard to get that high note right) her mom had had enough and she quietly entered the room, listening to the last of the final chorus. "It's such...
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Monday, April 24, 2006
J'accuse
She had gotten the old wallet from her grandmother. It was brown and pretty beat-up, but she liked it. It folded very flat, even when full of ones, and slipped into the back pocket of her uncool GAP jeans with ease. Now, to make it more attractive. Down in the basement, there was an old can of black...
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
La Maestra
He was new on the street. His flaming red hair belied his Caribbean ancestry. Rumor had it he was Venezuelan. Rumor had it he was also a dealer. Rumors were proven fact the day she stepped out of her tenement in Loisaida (the Hispanic Lower East Side), otherwise known as Alphabet City. She lived...
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Sunday, April 16, 2006
Love...first: Revisited
Walking down an undiscovered (by her, anyway) alleyway that day, she felt brave and free. Chris, an older girl, had been her protector for about a month now and she felt that she could go anywhere without fear. As they approached an open garage door, Chris bade her to follow inside. There, sitting...
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Friday, April 14, 2006
"The Doyty Boyd" Revisited
She’d met him on the first day of second grade. Their last names were side by side in alphabetical order, so they had to share a locker in the hallway. He was a neat locker-mate, but other than sharing a locker they hadn’t had much to do with each other. One day, on the way home from school, they...
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Thursday, April 6, 2006
Love...first
Terrified of being beaten again by a punk named Scott with whom she was forced to share a locker, she gladly accepted the protection of Chris, the toughest girl in school, on her walk home that Spring day. In the manner of boy-likes-girl-but-shows-it-through-violence, he had spent the better part of...
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