Patricia Q. Bidar

Other people’s mothers’ hair is the shade of a new penny. When their husbands leave, they hire us to paint their bedrooms lavender. We take breaks to lift the lids of shoe boxes stacked in the closet.

Tom’s Firebird pulls into Alice’s street of windows lidded with wooden and peeked-through blinds. In the kitchen, Alice’s mother stops her dishwashing motions, then resumes.