On her first day of sixth grade at Belle Grove Elementary School, Jenny Bergström had imagined herself to be the only girl who didn’t belong, but after a short and restorative cry in what her teacher called the ladies’ lavatory, she had resolved to carry herself as though the opposite were true. So when the…
We were immersed in the beauty of our place in far northeastern Washington—ponderosa pines, red firs, tamaracks, even spruce trees against the sky, and the Columbia River rolling by. For forty years, my wife, Joanna, and I have enjoyed our vacation home, the more so during the last five when we have lived in it…
I waved goodbye to the Potomac and soon thereafter said hello to the Mississippi. It was 1967, a hot and humid day in the Twin Cities—DC weather for sure. This was my Minnesota welcome, a little warmth to tease me. We left the Minneapolis airport and headed south. We were bound for Southwind. City streets…
When Rajini’s brother Ajay proposed to his girlfriend at a restaurant in New York, their mother grieved that Ajay and Caroline “had gotten engaged on their own, like two orphans.” On a rare visit to India as a teenager, Rajini had accompanied her extended family to her cousin’s engagement ceremony, their side bearing baskets of…
Translation from the Spanish by D. P. Snyder At first, I didn’t realize what was happening or what was going to happen. I was breastfeeding my baby. Newborn and adorable, her hands so rosy and white resting there on my breast. As she grew, she got stronger and stronger. There were days when I…
“These are the best years of your life,” Aunt Connie told sixteen-year-old Christina Falcone at Easter dinner, her voice braying a challenge. “Yeah, I know,” Christina said, a big phony smile on her face. “I’m having a blast.” That might have been too much, she thought, the blast part. She always overdid it. It was…
Madam Tan had decided to ownself buy the flowers. Sure, Luna had offered to bring flowers for the Goddess, but Madam Tan Siew Cheng knew her daughter well enough by now. As soon as they got off the phone, Luna would tap the number on her speed dial and before you knew it, a $200…
Translation from the Spanish by Curtis Bauer There’s nothing worse than an extraordinary story coming out of the mouth of a mediocre narrator, and that was Eduviges, Señor Ramiro’s assistant, who came to fix my water heater because Señor Ramiro was sick. While he struggled with the igniting mechanism, he told me about his…
You make a dime-size incision within the umbilicus. At the base, hidden. Then a quick push with a needle—pop! fascia; pop! peritoneum—and you’re in. Turn on the gas, you say to the nurse, and the belly balloons with carbon dioxide. Tense and tympanitic, it is a flesh-colored drum. Music, please. Glistening intestines, pulsatile aorta, and…
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