We meet at a fifteen-year-old’s birthday party. You’re attractive in an offhand way. Girls dressed as pop stars with weaponized fingernails giggle as you pass. You catch my eye and smile. We are two in an army of waiters careening under blossoming trees with silver...
They are standing on the woman’s porch. The woman and her friend. They stare at the road in front of them. Empty. And beyond the road, an apple orchard. And beyond that: sky. Night sky. Stars, and a hint of moonrise. The woman is smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t...
First came the click of the front door lock, then the thud of his heavy American shoes dropping to the wooden floor. My silence and sleep were interrupted. I rubbed my eyes and checked the time. Garbage trucks were starting their rounds. 3 a.m.—fourth late night in a...
You are running late to catch the bus to the train to the plane trying to get to your boyfriend who thinks you’re The One but wants to make sure you’ll start to exercise more first, eat less, and somehow you think getting lost is because you are fat and now...
My father brought home strange things: a crumpled five-rupee note, a nose stud, a baby’s anklet. Things the dead no longer need, my mother muttered while grinding rice for idlis. She steadied the pestle, afraid it might slip and bruise her thigh. We lived near Canal...
On our street, the fathers who hunted had sons who hunted. Their rifles and shotguns, the working ones, were never visible, but each living room displayed a weapon from their father’s or grandfather’s past, some heirloom hung over the mantle like a flag that declared...
The one-hour photo smelled of vinegar and metal, the scent clinging to the back of my throat like it might stay there forever. My hands sweated inside the sleeves of my windbreaker as I slid the yellow Kodak envelope across the counter. The clerk, a man with...
You are a billionaire's new, about-to-turn-19 wife. You are the youngest person at the Mint Green Party, which is being held in Central Park. Everything is mint green. Even the earrings. Even the cuff links. Even the parasols protecting skin tight over cheek / chin /...
My mother called my father from the airport to tell him she wasn’t coming home, not that night or the next or the next. When he stopped talking over her, when he finally understood what she was saying, he put her on speakerphone. “You better talk to Colleen, she’s...
The wind keened in the birches as the door swung behind Claire and the house took her in. Ice climbed the windowpanes in delicate ribs. On the mantel, three birthday cards leaned like little doors; all of them were blank inside. “Do you like the house?” Aunt Maureen...
My momma is a professional wrestler. At night, I hear her practicing in her bedroom, stomping around in her sparkly red boots. When I can’t sleep, or all the bumping and grumbling wakes me up, I lie in bed and imagine the matches. In my head, she always wins – jumps...
Ma keeps Nabh home again because he’s still fatigued, and she says he has such heavy bags under his eyes he could go for a month-long trip to India. No fever, though. He’s well enough to be bored. And … he’s going to miss the fire drill today. No big...