In theory, my husband and I supported the idea of Nina going away to school. The confines of our small rural town had become stifling for her… But was she ready?
…I was eleven years old, and six of those eleven years had been spent hopelessly in love with Audrey Kerr, the “little red-haired girl” of Clark County R-1
When I drive back into the Missouri humidity after a few weeks away from home, I roll down my window and inhale. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten what we mean here when we say “hot.”
He smiles at the small white bag in my hand. I place it on his lap, and he clutches the top while I wheel him down the hallway to the empty nursing home cafeteria.
Two photographs of my Uncle Tony are the obvious place to begin. One shows him in an open grave with another man. In the second, he’s being embraced by a vampire.
We sit in the harbor and I stare out, regretting my departure before I’ve even left. Haifa spreads out in front of me, teasing me. I think of him, the boy I left behind…
My daughter Frances is a reader. Not that she’d appreciate me telling you this. She doesn’t like me to categorize her. Even though saying someone is a reader should be good. Right? It’s not like saying she’s a thief.
Close to midnight, nine hours after my arrest, I heard the charges against me read. The court clerk spoke en Espanol. Enrique Gonzalez Rodriguez, a lawyer the embassy arranged to represent me, sat too close to me, translating.
When he withdraws his right hand from the can, I see that it’s Cholo, one of the more dangerous mental patients and he has a blue plastic Gillette razor.