I decided to leave on the day I was given a baby with my bottle of vodka. On a dark January morning we stood waiting in line under the high, blank wall of the factory, under the tall chimney that meant so much to us. …
When I heard the words, “I can’t find your clitoris,” it occurred to me that hiring a male escort had been a stupid idea. I hadn’t slept with anyone in a long time. I hadn’t slept with anyone I liked for much longer. I wanted …
A spider lives in a crack in my bedroom wall. The crack is highlighted by white smears where ineffectual insect spray has cleaned away the yellow smoke stains. I see the spider most mornings. It goes to bed as I rise. A huntsman that hunts …
I wish school would start up again. But it’s July and Mom doesn’t believe in summer camp, where I know my best friend Susie’s kissing Jake DeMoe on the mouth. Normally that’s something I could fix during recess at eleven. But the camp they’re at …
Hammy came home. Late that afternoon, I watched our handsome brother step out of the Mt. Shasta blue Merkur he rented at the airport. I ran down the steps of the porch. “You look beautiful.” I threw my arms around his neck. Hammy and I …
Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements on a scale of one to three where one equals a firm yes, two equals maybe, and three is a firm no. 1. “I sometimes find myself laughing at other people’s misfortunes, even though I’m …
ALL Miss Price had been told about the new boy was that he’d spent most of his life in some kind of orphanage, and that the gray-haired “aunt and uncle” with whom he now lived were really foster parents, paid by the Welfare Department of …
Samuel hates killing raccoons, though he feels he has no choice. They descend on his tiny pole house in packs, searching for food. He hears them in the bushes. They scrape on his garbage cans. He loathes the thought of them underneath the floor boards, …
It’s 1990, an ugly year, and that’s my brother Joss in the middle of the picture, sitting on his creaking bed in a cell at Wormwood Scrubs prison, West London. He’s shivering, caressing his arms – he’s his own baby. He’s in there for breaking …
“Hey, Sloth,” my father said. I was playing cards on the ground behind the tent. It was the only place in camp that had any shade, and even so I was half in and half out of the sun. My back baked like the dirt. …