We were both sitting in old-fashioned green metal lawn chairs that rocked back gently on metal tube frames if you wanted them to, and I did. I rocked as I sipped the strong, lemony tea up through the straw, hoping Mrs. Eelpout would tell me a story. She was sniffling, still getting used to the…
for Margaret At the edge of a river and the end of a road, a blue-eyed boy lived with his mother and five sisters. The women sewed wedding gowns for every girl from every town. But not one of the river woman’s daughters made a dress for herself. They were too plain, too fat, too…
The Fisherman’s Son: Teresa Pantaluna Once there was a poor but honest man, what we call un’omu di pazienza, a man of patience, who worked the whole day-day after day-in the unrelenting heat of the scorching sun, casting his nets out into the blue sea, then rowing his little boat wide and far so as…
T he squad was made up of three girls from a school. The girls’ names was Debbie, Donna, and Shenay. They was stalwart, steady, and statuesque, always going round not hurting old people or weak boys but helping them. They strolled down Ronald Drive and Cahill Street to Nathalie Avenue to way over to Jefferson…
When I decided to ask Recita Holguin to marry me, I visited my confessor, The Bishop, in his place of banishment. He is not a bishop now, but he was once. “Red!” he said. “Red!” And he hugged me close, his cheek and ear pressed hard against my chest. He stepped back, and raised up…
I grew up in Garden City, a small Pennsylvania community where my brother, Adrian, and I were the only Jews in our elementary school. I got along better with the kids than Adrian, played sports and made friends more easily, but still I had my troubles. One day I went into Mrs. Nick’s-short for Nicodemus-a…
In the room in Mexico where they finally reunited, Bird knelt by the bed, Kin lay on it as he’d done for weeks, and JJ settled into the canvas butterfly chair at its foot. Bird often knelt by Kin’s bed these days, as if praying-which she also often did these days, though not on her…
In 1969, except for the yearly wardrobe changes of the young officers’ wives, Randolph Air Force Base had barely acknowledged the decade. The young officers discussed shoeshines, the laundry that put the sharpest crease in their everyday khakis, which colonel gave the best TDY. Friday afternoons the wives met them at the Officers Club. The…
There were two women I thought might be able to help me, or rather help Lance, and that night, sitting on the bus on the way home from the hospital, I vowed to find one or both of them the next day, even if I had to cancel a couple of my afternoon classes to…
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