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Vocation
Small Favors
I started using carry-out at the grocery store when I got pregnant. Even when I could still lift the bags, I decided not to. Having put off pregnancy until forty, I didn’t want to take any risks. After a month or two, Cao showed up. He looked Vietnamese, his black hair slicked back, new-employee shiny. At first I didn’t care who carried my groceries, but then I started lining up for the registers he worked. Cao made the extra effort.
January 1993My Study On Stay-Puts
You can do your studies on us migratory types all you want. My sister Rose came home from school last year saying that’s what you stay-puts call us. I told her you’re probably the same guys yelling White trash bastards go home when we drive through Salem. She says, no, you wouldn’t yell at us.
December 1992Disappearances
My father died on a July day in Phoenix. When he was found, his temperature was 108. The medical examiner’s certificate listed the cause of death as hyperthermia.
November 1992The Carrion Heart
He came in on a royal blue 1928 Studebaker, the engine rattling, leaving a dusty cloud billowing into the desert air.
June 1992The Dig
After a day in an archaeological excavation unit, surrounded by a stratigraphic picture two meters deep, you realize the present era, like the prehistoric community you’ve become a part of, will soon be just another layer chronicled in soil.
March 1992Toshi
I hospitalized an obsessive-compulsive depressive who had been trying to kill himself for four years. Fifty times he’d removed his head from the noose to check the lock on the door, change the color of his socks, tie a better knot.
January 1992Guess Who This Is
Guess who this is. I won’t keep you in suspense. I am that tall dark and handsome ha ha jewelry salesman who got on your bus in Harrisburg PA last Tuesday. The one who asked is the seat next to you taken?
December 1991When You Get To A Fork In The Road, You Take It
“Here, take this and get out of my sight already,” he’d yell, pushing money into my shirts and pants. I learned to keep my opinions to myself. I also wore clothes with lots of pockets.
December 1991Loyalties
I was to begin teaching in the creative writing program at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. I had just turned forty. It was my first university teaching position. I approached it with longing, excitement, and fear.
December 1991
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