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Childhood
Impetigo
In the summer of 1958, the summer before I started kindergarten, my family — my mother; my father; my sister, Marie; my mother’s mother; and I — took its first and last family vacation.
March 1995On Earth As It Is In Heaven
I knew I was in trouble. It was the way Mama looked at me from across the dining-room table, like I had wandered off and left her, even though I was sitting right there.
March 1995Motels
An aroused Ferris-wheel operator, a guest with a penchant for eavesdropping, a mother with a botched suicide attempt
March 1995Sleepwalking To My Sister
No one knows exactly when my sister disappeared. When I think of her now, a funnel, dark and deep, opens before me, echoing back her name: Victoria.
February 1995Maps
An overwhelmed train traveler, an Interrail passenger using a Third Reich map, a map aficionado
February 1995Dance Lessons
My parents were dancers. Though practical and predictable in all else, they let their passions surface in the rumba, the tango, the dances that conjured up exotic places and smoldering emotions.
February 1995For Dave With Eyes Like Jesus
Dave loved my older sister at a time when a lot of boys loved her. During parties at our house, the boys would get a little drunk and sometimes fight. I would watch from the stairs that overlooked the front room.
January 1995Each Child
Your ten-year-old locks himself in the bathroom with his best friend. Half an hour later, he comes out with his eyebrows shaved off, looking like a child from Planet X or someone undergoing chemotherapy.
January 1995Virginia Remembers The War
She waits tables on the breakfast shift at Honey’s, out by the interstate. Late one night, she gets a phone call from her sister: her father has had a stroke; they don’t know if he’s going to make it.
December 1994
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