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...
True story (1) In the midst of war, she thinks about her plants. True story (2) Her friend phones to say she’s arrived safely at her elder sister’s apartment, which, unlike her younger sister’s, is far enough from Tehran. The bombs drop somewhere between “safely” and...
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it was ice and fire, and we felt like both. It was cheap and closer than anyone...
The word victim is designed to slide right between your ribs. It’s a slender blade of a word, and it excels at gutting you, at hollowing you out. What it’s not designed to do is break you. It assumes you’re already broken. The morning of the verdict, we stand across...
She wore her bones like silk. Not with shame, but with memory. Each rib a prayer. Each vertebra a vow. They had once dressed her in red silk and called her divine. They used to carve her name into temple stone. Midwives and mourners and those who bled for too long...