I was eight years old when Esperanza fell off the swing. In the backyard, she stood on a flimsy piece of wood, rotted from many rains and held together by two strings, rocking her body back and forth. While she reveled in her weightlessness, I sensed impending catastrophe. From my spot safely in the grass, I pleaded with her to stop. Barely hearing my pleas, she rose higher, closer to the sun with each swing. I turned away from her. Bracing myself, I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. She called out to me, determined to show me that if she swung high enough, she could see above the hedges separating our yard from the neighbors, above all the rooftops neatly lining around the cul-de-sac, to somewhere even more distant.…
I was running in Central Park at midnight, so fast that if anyone saw me, they would think someone was chasing me. But I was alone. There wasn’t any other person in the park. Not even a car. My chest hurt and my ankles throbbed, but I ran and ran, past Belvedere fountain, past The Bandshell. My father, who was away on a business trip, would have a heart attack if he knew what his fifteen-year-old daughter was doing that cold November night. Someone could murder me. Just a few years ago Son of Sam was shooting girls with long brown hair like me. “Fifteen-year-old girl found dismembered in park bushes” could be the headline in The New York Post. Maybe my father would blame himself.…
The world isn’t real. The homelands are a trap. The tricks with which a place can lure you in. Some nimbus clouds that imprison you, a shooting star. The space so fragile, gluing every two things between you and everything else. Your mother warning you of the beasts in the woods, the chimeras that assume the shape of men. A man is a baby is a wound. A man is a world that swallows you whole, a red ant that nips at your bloodied toes. Your sleep is deeply troubled, your dreams sold to a troubled soul. This is your new life, the soul insists. This is the home you want to keep. You listen to the trees moaning at night, carry their whispers through the wind.…
Edward slid the eviction notices under the door of every apartment. Then he stuck poster-sized copies in the stairwell on each floor, where the tenants couldn’t fail to see them. Not that he thought it would do much good. Nor was tenants the right term—perhaps squatters was better, since at some point they stopped paying rent, yet refused to move out. Edward’s own neglect was largely responsible for the building’s decay, but he didn’t feel that he deserved the vexation they caused him. He never wanted or expected to become a landlord.
It had got to the stage where he dreaded setting foot in the place. On the top story, Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman gazed at him with disappointment whenever he called. Then there was the bitter lady in 2B, who shrieked insults from behind her locked door.…
The job was easy. No cutting line, no wading swamp water with moccasins and alligators. Suburban work. Boca Raton, mouth of the rat, more rich people than most places, though how many more was, was something I didn’t know. This neighborhood was not all millionaires, but well off, complicated pension plans. We had no assets. Long haired county surveyors. We were tanned, in decent shape, young. We wore yellow safety vests, jeans, no shirts. These suburban folks were wary of us, but the logo on the truck gave us license to be there and made us seem a bit less dangerous. We liked to fuck with people now and then, so as we painted targets, a grid for aerial photos, and they’d ask what we were doing, I said the county decided this neighborhood was getting overcrowded, so they’re going to eliminate one household adjoining each of these circles.…