For Mi Dya U
Jeanne turned and smiled at her lunch guests. Not long before this charade was over.
She held the first
two plates – salmon roulade, rocket leaves, a drizzle of balsamic reduction –
in either hand as she approached the huge cedar dining table beneath their
kitchen’s weathered eaves.
Her husband, James
Bassett, looked round at her fondly as she approached the table, his glasses
sliding slightly down his nose. He’d started sweating already. But then, that
was hardly surprising when you were forty pounds overweight.
“Here we go”,
Jeanne announced with a forced grin.
She set a plate
down in front of Dave’s girlfriend, a blonde twig in her early thirties who
looked like she hadn’t eaten a full meal in years.…
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Lake Victoria, it is said, is what sustains life in Uganda. The second
largest freshwater lake in the world, it breeds the White Nile and the Katonga
River. Transport cargos and ferries carry goods and passengers. Water is
harnessed for electricity. Fisheries are established along the edges.
And
yet, we cannot call it our own. The lake seeps into both Kenya and Tanzania. As
much as we’d like to think so, it belongs to us no more than it belongs to
them.
But that’s the problem of perspective. You might believe something is
yours, and only yours. It only takes a trip over the other side to see this is
really an illusion.…
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The summer I turned nineteen I was broke. I had three more years of university to pay for and who knew when the Canadian government would cut student loans? I was living on my own in Ottawa. My parents were having a love-affair with Western Canada and I didn’t receive as much as a postcard.
I
was ill-equipped to compete in the job market in a small city that boasts two
large universities and a big college. The economy was in recession and four empty
summer months stretched out before me like a treacherous road. I was not the
waitress type and the thought of selling ice-cream cones on Ottawa’s only beach held no appeal.
After
weeks of combing through the classifieds, I saw an advertisement for a front desk
clerk at the Downy Woodpecker; a rundown motel, the kind you see in movies
where the main characters have been run-off the road and walk for miles until
they see a light in the distance.…
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The office is small and modest,
with a window behind the mahogany desk and an overflowing bookcase to the
right. There are mountains of manuscripts—some stacked neatly on the surface,
some piling overtop of one another on the floor. Framed book covers line the
walls, most of which, you’ve read at least twice, if not three times. You pause
to stare at them when you walk in. You take a deep breath and exhale.
There are three of them here for
you. An intern sits in a chair to the left. The three execs sit behind the
desk. The window is open, because the room is cramped and it’s mid-summer. You
wish it were cooler. The room cools down. Everyone feels it. They look around,
confused, then look at you, remembering.…
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The day was
sweltering. There was a distinct smoky smell of baking skin, of salty sweat
breaking through layers of carefully applied make-up and deodorant and cologne.
It was the first sunny day of summer and by 11AM it had reached peak
temperatures, threatening to break records. On the radio they were calling it
an Irish Heatwave as it neared the mid-twenties, encouraging everyone to get
their sun-cream on and their swim trunks out, and journey to Dun Laoghaire or
The Strand for a day of sea and sand, one not to be missed.
I knew the
scorching temperatures were no accident – that they would come on this day
seemed entirely appropriate, as I drove away from Dublin, early that morning,
overwhelmed by the aroma of sweating leather and the sizzle of metal from my
seat belt.…
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Vanessa Jackson slipped gracefully out of her clothes and frolicked across the sand. Her lithe body and flowing blonde hair fed my long-held fantasies. She splashed into the shallow surf, and when the water reached her waist, she plunged beneath the waves. After a few seconds her head bobbed up.
“Cut,” yelled Morgan Breedlove. He gestured in my direction, and I snatched up a towel and robe and ran to meet Ms. Jackson as she emerged from the sea. I held up the robe for privacy while she dried herself.
She rewarded me with a smile. “Thank you, Angie.” She slid one arm and then the other into the robe, knotted the sash, and linked her arm in mine as we trudged back to the camera set-up. …
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On a day that felt like summer but was not, we all gathered in our circle for the first time.
Our lives were but streams of pain and loneliness punctuated by brief moments of wonder, and studded throughout by a persistent hope that merely ensured we fell even harder after each disappointment. Many times I wondered why I had not been an abortion. I concluded that it must be out of pure vanity or boredom that people chose to procreate.
There were 12 of us today, but by the end of the month there would be only four. The room was much too drafty; every so often a scream would echo down the halls, followed by the concerned patter of thick-soled nurse’s shoes. They told us to meet here at the hospital. …
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