“I said, can you get me something to eat bitch?” I stiffen. This is early on in my emergency medicine residency and I haven’t yet learned to reply, “That’s Doctor bitch to you, sir.”
When my father said the word predisposed, I felt a twinge of nerves. We were having “the talk.” Not the one about birds or bees, but something bigger and scarier that my brother and I would have to inevitably face…
The shrill woke me out of my sleep. An azaka, one of the newest words in my growing Hebrew vocabulary, a continuous alarm with an ascending and descending tone, an eerie up-then-down sound, echoed into the onyx sky.
I was eight years old the first time my father pawned his wedding ring for drug money. When the fight started, I was standing heedlessly behind my mother thinking about birds.
Even though the train must still be at least 50 miles out, I can feel it chugging towards us in the darkness. It’s out there like an old friend in the night who’s got the means to come gather me up and take me away.
You are wearing your purple knee-length dress because it’s the most pomp and circumstance you could muster for this day. Your brown flats are not so festive – you want to bend down and rub the scuff off the left one, but you don’t care enough.
Ming joined our English conversation course, already in progress, when she first came to New York City. Twenty adult English language learners and me, their U.S. born teacher.
I was six, going on seven, when my brother, Nelson, came home on leave for Thanksgiving in 1943. World War II was in full swing. He was a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the U. S. Navy and a designated Naval Aviator. … I wanted to be just like him.