“The game has been delayed,” Pappy told us through the open kitchen window. The lack of air conditioning in the house is what had brought all of us outside to the back porch. We were witnessing the reason for the delay; a wicked thunderstorm had settled itself nicely over Baltimore that afternoon. The winds came first, followed by the rain that pummeled the tin roof that covered us. The roar of approaching thunder was in the distance. My two younger brothers were hugging tight to mom, while I sat with grandma on the opposite lawn chair. I tried my best to look unafraid, but I, too, hated thunderstorms.
The screen door banged loudly against the frame as Pappy, adorned in the outfit I will always remember him in, handed mom a plate of thickly sliced heirloom tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper.…
Jo-Jo entered commercial establishments sideways, facing right. He hailed taxis with his right arm. During company staff meetings, he planted himself in the end seat, POV starboard. Did Jo-Jo have a psychological problem? OCD? Did an animal eat the left side of his face? Answer: No. Jo-Jo was a mixed-race baby. But not in the way you would think. He is racially divided down the middle. Entire right side, head to toe, white. Left side, Black. Body parts, even-steven.
So why did Jo-Jo’s white right precede the rest of him? He found that people are more likely to take him seriously. Or even take him at all. This is not a practice he pulled out of his nether region, but the result of twenty-five years of societal experience. …
MOTHER, who sits beside me, her breasts bare in the moonlight that invades our small apartment, opens the window. Father watches intently as the figures on the television screen fight one another. Close the damn window, he says. Mother obliges.
MOTHER, who wears a red dress and heels, opens the window. She kisses me on the cheek and waves the nanny goodbye. I do not notice she is gone.
FATHER opens the window, and with it memories of his past come rushing in through the air and into his drunken spirit. Mother places a blanket over him when he falls onto the sofa. He wakes when everyone else is asleep. Father opens the window of my bedroom and kisses me goodnight.…
Author’s Note: The Hudson River that flowed below my childhood home, the high school I attended, and my close relatives’ town is always a force in my work.…
I have not talked yet about the flies. But they are so much part of what has happened, is happening, that any portrait of our collective misery is incomplete without them. They are the buzzing, maddening accompaniment to all our fears, all our sorrows. In the beginning, they invaded our city singly— that is, a few barely noticed droning little aerial grotesqueries, one alighting its bristled limbs on a streetlamp, another on the underside of the bookshelf, still another on someone’s bare arm— then in great black droves, altering the color and tone of the air.
At first, no one commented on them much because, in addition to having other matters to contend with, warmer weather always brought them in fairly considerable numbers into our city, even during ordinary years, and so they were nuisances that we all knew well.…
On my first solo bike tour, I could have been worried about a million things. For example, my inability to read a map. Or my tendency toward loneliness, which, if not cured quickly (by finding a sympathetic soul to jabber with), could lead to rather colorful anxiety attacks.
But who could fret on such a sparkling spring day? As I sailed out of Turku, Finland’s oldest town, on a fantastically wide bike path, my red panniers bulged with dark Finnish bread, Havarti cheese, and chocolate. I pointed my bike toward the Turku Archipelago, a cluster of 20,000-some islands off Finland’s southwest coast. There I’d explore via bridges and ferries, soaking in the Baltic seascapes and staying at family-run guesthouses.
You hand out names to the hummingbirds that squabble a few feet away—on the patio, perching and racing past like fighter pilots, divebombing the red plastic feeder that drips and sways on a hook.
We eat breakfast and we watch as sparrows greedily vacuum the food you pour into a shallow dish each morning. And when they catch us peeking at them, they scatter, splashing seeds—sunflower, safflower, millet, milo, flax, cracked corn.
I’m off to my next meeting, you say.
We work a dozen feet apart nowadays. And you haul it all—laptop and mouse, notepad, and books— to the bedroom. I follow you with a chair to the place where you attend these meetings (and job interviews). Where we plot our escape every night. Alone together.…
