My son is coming. I am enormous. Elephantine. I brace myself against the Civic’s ceiling as I have a contraction in the front seat. My husband lets go of my hand when the contraction subsides. “You should have seen the face of the guy in that car.” My husband prides himself on staying calm. Most …
for Toni Cade Bambara All black women got this thrumming thing inside us but don’t nobody notice. Which is understandable if you know the history of the world, but that thrum just sits in our bellies and then one day it comes on so strong that we can’t stop it even if we want to. …
“The fish is so good here,” says my boyfriend. He’s eating a taco stuffed with swordfish. I say, again, “I had that the last time I came here.” My son is having a pork sandwich and his wife, a Caesar salad. I take a bite of my house salad with its peanut-flavored dressing. Cut a …
We found a gun in the woods, me and Brownie, two of us walking home from school one day, twelve years old, and there on the ground in the leaves was a pistol. Almost didn’t even notice. Almost passed completely by. Had to be the last thing we expected, gun all black and dull at …
I. What is greatness? Funny dad sweaters, a sentimental nose, adorable crunkles in the corners of one’s eyes. Hilarious tales of the old country, Somethingville, North Carolina, when men were men, women women, etc.—long-shouldered negresses being a special commodity, like lucky dice or a prize-winning calf. Fifty-four years ago, directly after our nuptials, Craw Daddy …
The Atlantic is unpredictable in September. A hurricane might gather in the Caribbean and disperse off the coast of the Carolinas, older and weaker. But its winds and currents stretch far like evil, invisible fingers and arrive at the little beach where Betty and Bill go before anybody expects them. This is the beach where …
When my mother first came to America, she wore a pink coat with a rounded collar and four beveled black buttons. A farewell present from her parents and by far the most expensive garment she’d ever owned, the coat was wool, custom-made, and heavy enough to withstand the winters of Boston. It was March 1959; …
They carry votive candles. They stay until well past dark and the candles flicker like small souls. Along with the candles, they carry kerchiefs, red now with the blood of the dead. Like the worshippers of old saints, they believe the blood of martyrs will save them. I do not believe it will save them. …
1. Sometimes he seemed like an old man, other times like a little boy. When she met him in her class—she was his teacher, he was thirty-five and she was forty-seven. Daniel Price. He had not yet learned how to perform the university way of being. Class issues, she told him in bed, and he …
During the winter of 1981 I took the semester off from college and moved back home, despite my parents’ shaky marriage, to make money for a trip to Europe that coming summer. Because I’d earned extra credits from playing in the college orchestra and taking viola lessons I could take the time off without delaying …