Stories
Emily’s Birthday
Mrs. Kowalski released the first butterflies in June, the week school let out. I was sitting on our front porch doing nothing when I saw them—fifty, maybe more—lifting out of her backyard in an orange-and-black cloud. They scattered across Ridgewood Drive, dipping and rising in the heat. One landed on our mailbox. Another got caught in the Hendersons' sprinkler next door.
Kenforth's Baptism
My brother Kenforth's second baptism occurred on a sunny spring morning when the air was warm but the creek still cold, and it wouldn't have happened at all if he had just trusted me. “There is no money in Pentecostals,” is what I said, my exact words. “Nor Baptists either. Don’t waste our time.”
Baggage
The first thing I did was remove the crucifixes. There were beautiful ones, the blue Murano glass etched with vines adorned with a silvery Jesus, and the brightly colored, hand-painted pinewood cross from El Salvador that featured half the face of Mother Mary radiating Christian love. I couldn’t imagine my mom Alma buying either of them. They must have been gifts in exchange for donations she’d made to groups that kept pregnant teenagers from aborting their babies. There were scary crucifixes, too. Jesus with concave ribs and stigmata on oxidized metal with a ghostly resonance. These were more mom’s style. I used to say they were from her “sinners in the hands of an angry God” collection.
Gyotaku
My father papered the walls of his studio in crisp white washi, covered in schools of Gyotaku: ink prints of fish he’d caught throughout his career. I probe the paper like I’m noodling for a bite until I fumble on the light switch. The LEDs mimic natural light–my father would accept no less. He demanded his works be displayed bathed in sunlight. They usually are, I suppose, though an overpriced sushi restaurant or a software developer’s beach house probably isn’t what he had in mind. In the last month, all those pieces have been resold for ten times the original price. Even these walls are likely worth hundreds of thousands, now. My father was a much better businessman than I thought, if it’s true what they all say. If he meant to die.
The Digital Familiar
Sylvie’s world existed in muted blues and greys, mirroring the screen she clutched like a lifeline. She was fourteen, lonely and keenly aware of the space around her that no one chose to fill. Her bedroom, a sanctuary of dust motes and charging cables, was where her true self resided, hidden from the echoing halls of her high school. She didn’t just feel unseen; she felt fundamentally misunderstood, as if the entire social dynamic of the school was a complex language she simply wasn’t programmed to speak. She was a silent observer, always on the periphery, watching over the life she craved, a ghost moving through hallways thick with connections between everyone else.
Do You Remember Hamish O'Malley?
When I first met my friend Fay at Opal Island’s small elementary school, she was one of three students (including myself) in grade three who would be fast-tracked to grade five over the following year. She and I would end up virtually “skipping” a grade, a practice that I gather is no longer considered wise. Certainly we ended up being significantly younger than our classmates when the process was complete. But how we loved those years at Opal Island New Community School, OINCS, before we left the island each day for the larger world of Kalatin Intermediate Centennial School, KICS. Ya gotta getcher oinks to get yer kicks, as we used to say.
Running Against the Shadow
The studio lights burned bright, but the air felt heavy, thick with the weight of a story she was tired of telling. The anchor, a woman known for her steady composure, sat rigid behind the desk, jaw clenched so tightly her words trembled at the edges. When the red “ON AIR” light blinked to life, her voice carried a controlled fury, low at first, but sharp like a blade drawn over stone. “Good evening,” she began, though nothing about her tone felt like evening warmth. “Tonight, Kenya has lost yet another woman, another daughter, another champion, to the hands of the man she once called husband.”
Bila
It is after we try the charts with the stars, the timeouts, the “ignore and isolate” strategy, that we tell Sila about our other son, Bila. Bila, we say, is our first son. He’s your brother. My brother? Yes. He lives in the backyard now. In the hedges. And he can never come inside. Why can’t he come inside, Sila wants to know. Well honey, we say, he was so bad, just a bad boy. We made him sleep outside until he straightened up.
Minding Yourself
Three stops before yours, a telepathic flare-up comes on fast, like a stream-of-consciousness flash flood you can’t escape in this train car. Immediately you regret skipping your usual afternoon coffee. Without it, everything on everyone’s mind comes rushing into yours, the inner lives of other passengers now impinging on your own, making your consciousness a mess of their thoughts—mental images in rapid succession like a montage by an auteur gone mad during post-production, this deluge accompanied by emotions surging and throbbing through the chatter of overlapping quotidian monologues.
The Last Detail
It started with the grass clippings. I’d just finished mowing the front yard. True, the rows lacked the zigzag symmetry of the adjacent lawns, and the edges were a bit on the shaggy side—I hadn’t yet invested in one of those trimmer gizmos—but I was nonetheless pleased with my accomplishment.
Nepo Baby
Nepo Baby can’t find her sunglasses. She’s driving to an audition, swerving down the 101 in her brand new Bentley, which her father bought her last week. It’s golden hour, selfie hour. This is her favorite hour. It turns her moss-green eyes into an evergreen world. It means more likes, which means more engagement, which means more sponsors.
The Pantry
Emily carefully set the last jar on the shelf, watching the collagen-thick bone broth quiver in the pantry’s dim light. She ran her fingers along each neatly labeled jar; bone broth in beef and chicken, green beans and red tomatoes like Christmas decorations. Some of the women in the Canning Club used jars they traded or bought at the ReUse Center, but that meant they weren’t uniform. The uniformity was key. It allowed her to plan, form straight lines on all her shelves, know what she had without worrying whether she was missing a jar that might be stashed behind the others.
The Train to Union Station
Esther had rarely traveled more than ten miles from her home in Waterloo, Indiana, so when the Amtrak to Chicago groaned and lurched forward, her insides lurched with it. She let her purse thump to the floor and stared at the head of the young man in front of her, as a seasick woman might focus on the horizon.