Jessie’s Life in Three Surnames Mrs. Walker Jessie wakes to the smell of manure being spread. Every day. Or maybe only growing season, but it feels like every day. When her father and brothers come in from the fields and…
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This morning when I walked Jimmy to school, I ruffled his hair and told him he’d end up with a bald head like me. All the men in our family go the same way. He’s got a lovely cheeky face, my boy, and I said even if someday he didn’t have hair, the girls would love him. But they’d hurt him too. Girls always do. The bakery is stifling – I’m cutting three strands of dough to make up the milk loaves and wondering what it would be like to have a daughter with long hair to plait.
Everything is folded up and airy when I’m in love the first time. You walked into my shop with that lonely immigrant look on your face following the elusive chocolaty scents of brewing coffee soon to be served in my Arabian Nights demitasse. You stare ominously at the folding chairs and tables, at the wisps of Arabic among the paraphernalia of blonde heads and dark beards.
There But For I rub in the hand cream, slide it over giraffey age spots, sniff the petal scent. Marcus watches this ritual with unbridled irritation. Before he would have wanted the cream slick on my palm, the better to…
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The objects of my affection My husband, the wall The breakfast sun melts over him like butter. I run my hands across his dips and hollows. No one else comes close like this – feels him soften in the slanting…
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