When Helen lands in her birth country, nobody is there to greet her. The deathly heat from the Caribbean sun can’t penetrate the chill she feels of being alone. She looks around at the people that walk past her, their eyes gliding
The first time she noticed, it was purely accidental. A quick glance while reaching for a towel on the nearby rack. The pleasant burn from the Listerine lingered in her newly minty mouth when her gaze flickered to the mirror. It was
The winds bouncing off the gulf swaddle Fleur’s bare head as she stands at its fringes, and almost with the same delicacy her brother Jackson used to smooth down the waves of hair rippling along his scalp with his durags. The breeze
SOUP: It is barely dawn, and the village of Layou is swallowed up in sleep and sea breeze. Tessa lays on her living room couch swiping indolently through the gallery on her phone. She lingers for a while on one photo in
“Let me know when it starts to burn,” Aunt Mimi would say, pressing down on the silver release of the styling chair, lowering me to where I wouldn’t have to jump down to go pee. Then she would move on to another
“Mannn, the things I could say about my boy, Romeo.” Chuckles rippled through the great hall; some tinged with nerves, others with anticipation. No one knew where this best man reception speech was going but that was the magic of Michael Camden.
Tierra sits, her hands folded demurely in her lap, as she waits for her father’s Cadillac to turn the corner. Yellow curtains flutter out of an open kitchen window. A stray cat meows from atop a junk car next door. On the
“Go back to Jamaica? You must be crazy! What would I do out there except pick-up bottles off de street and beg fe change?” Disbelief sharpens his Montego Bay accent. “But what about your mom? Your older brothers? Your aunt, even?” “They
“Akinyi, you are such a good girl! Eh! Did you make these mandazi’s yourself?” Akinyi watched as Aunty Ruth grabbed four mandazi’s at a time, and dropped them onto her red plastic plate. Her mouth hastily took a bite that saw half
The summer Aneka’s leg is broken, her big sister Rima has a sleepover with all of her lacrosse friends. Aneka helps her set up the blow-up beds in the basement. She grabs the pink blankets and floral comforters from the closet where
Tamara turned her car into the horseshoe driveway in front of her younger sister Cameron’s college dorm, just managing to wedge her car into a spot at the end of the fire zone. It was Friday before Fall break at Louisiana State
Tisha Kroemer had never felt real fear until that moment. The moment she watched her husband fall off the roof. It was January 9th, already a week past due for the Christmas lights to be down. Tisha walked out of the kitchen
When she hears his car door shut close behind him, Queen has just finished her to-do list. She writes one every day, not because she thinks it’s evidence of her being a good housewife, but because she knows that people who write
On the first night the stars fell, the whole suburb rushed out of their beds and looked out their windows to see what kind of rain had caused a glow on their yards. As their eyes traced the rainfall from the ground
Luz had faked a pregnancy in order to get the attention of her ex-boyfriend Johnny Rivera and kept it going for six months. Not only had other students been whispering that she was full of shit, but now, in her second trimester,
I stood at that door knowing the second I knocked on it I’d be a murderer. I had just limped two miles up the bayou barefoot, the swampy mud still stuck between the cracks in my toes. My husband Eddie was probably
