Many years before Zhao lost her right arm, she had used that arm to slap her husband, Yue, in a public denunciation in Wantu. Her hand had hurt after the slap, tingling at her side as she stood and watched Yue kneel in the dunce hat, so that even now when she remembered the incident,…
Scientists are a strange tribe. I was strange too, by the time of that long summer of 1995, but I wasn’t part of the tribe. A little over fifteen when my uncle brought me to the lab, I was too much trouble to be left alone, and the lab, less a means of keeping me…
From my stool behind the cash counter, I watch you through the window. Watch you double-park your Mercedes, turn the car off but leave the music system blasting hits from a time when your life was simpler: Anand, Mughal-e-Azam, Love in Simla. Cars swerve and honk, angry Queens drivers shoot curses as they whiz past….
One morning, I meet three Boers in the Pietersburg laundromat. It is a Saturday. I have half a load going—the full extent of my wardrobe—and I am reading a book called In the Heart of the Whore, a book about Boers, coincidentally. There are three of them, two guys and a girl—big primordial-looking people, red…
After his divorce was finalized, Colin made a list of all theactivities he wanted to try during those days of the week, Thursdays through Saturdays, when he didn’t have his kids. The idea was to keep himself busy. That way, he wouldn’t mope around his house too much. But he also wanted to try tofind…
That morning a lamb was born. They’re born a lot and I’m used to it, but still, to hear that tiny bleating from the comfort of my bed. The mother was Cindy, a Katahdin hair sheep of some distinction, one of the older gals, not a nurture natural. I had to get up at three…
“Let’s ask Dad to drive me. It’s not like he works full-time anymore. And he’s practically begging for our approval.” The fact that Frank had never taken Marina to the orthodontist made him no worse than any other man whose wife ran a corporation while never missing a kid’s appointment, and though the braces were…
One morning, there were footprints in the snow outside our house. Beausejour High School, where I worked in the office, had closed for Christmas break. I let the dogs have a good long run before breakfast and watched them from the porch. The Golden Retrievers I breed for hunting and field trials are beautiful creatures…
They’re not true, you know. The platitudes. God, the itching. Tops of my hands. Base of my skull. Platitudes, Pleiades. He’s in a better place. Who says? Who knows? He lives on in people’s hearts. People forget. They get distracted. Then they die too. Scratch, scratch. Eyebrows. Clavicle. Need a ruler to get at my…
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