Voodoo Love
I am a cliché — the hard-working administrative assistant who is in love with her boss. For months my friend, Celeste Pierre, who works in word processing, and I have been discussing different ways for my boss, Kip Townsend, to notice me beyond my regular role. Celeste feels a preternatural remedy is my only hope. She wants me to meet her Haitian grandmother, Maman, as she is called. Maman is a mambo, a priestess of voodoo. Celeste tells me voodoo is folk religion. I tell her I’m a lapsed Catholic, with few religious convictions left. I don’t believe in voodoo dolls. “Marie,” she...
Read MoreRising Expectations
Marta was vacuuming the living room rug, sucking up dog hair, when her heels left the floor, four or five inches. The sensation took her breath away. She could have easily laughed the moment off as mere fantasy, but Skippy, the family terrier, was prancing wildly, snapping at her elevated soles. “Down, boy,” Marta said. Head cocked, the dog assumed a sitting position. Strange. Skippy was routinely obstinate, rarely following commands. The moment was over as quickly as it began. Marta’s heels returned to the Berber carpet, and Skippy barked and ran in...
Read MoreLearning to Dance
Approaching the intersection of Main and Second Avenue, Elizabeth eyed the elegant dancing couple framed in neon which no longer lit. She’d always thought the sign had faded, aged like the interior of the Merlin Dance Studio itself. But now, poised above a slightly sagging, black canopy in the mid-afternoon drizzle, the dancers seemed vivid and animated. Eyeing them between swipes of the windshield wipers, Elizabeth imagined the man in black tux and the woman in flowing red gown moving to their own rhythm. The dashing couple vanished from sight, replaced by a mental image of Art...
Read MoreNew Crop
An article in The Christian Science Monitor reported that some Burmese peasants believe democracy is something to eat. When the students told us about this plant a few months ago, they were not sure precisely what it was either, but they said it will change our lives. They’d heard it will make hair grow on bald heads. People who eat it must battle to keep from wearing a silly smile, they like it so much. The soil gets better when it grows there. The produce is at chest and stomach level so when you pick, you don’t have to stoop or reach; yet the rest of the plant can be...
Read MoreWhither Zenobia?
1. The antique brass pen holder winked under the cone of lamplight among the ungraded homework papers, pulling Constance’s gaze to the leafy designs etched onto its phallic shaft. Almost reluctantly, she let her fingertip push up the scallop-shaped cap, then peered into the empty inkwell. Memories lurked there. She remembered bargaining for the pen holder in the tiny shop deep within Damascus’s great souk — and Roberta grasping her wrist as they left the store. “Connie, over there — look!” Three women shrouded in tent-like chadors hovered like black...
Read MoreCity Canyons
No matter how closely I press against the window, I can’t see the street below. An enormous skyscraper blocks my view. Nor can I see the sky. All the buildings rise so high, spread so wide, that I can see only the other windows opposite, perhaps ten stories up and ten stories down. On the other three sides it’s the same, the same view of steel and glass. Sometimes when I feel gloomy, I walk around my floor — the thirty-sixth floor in a tower of ninety stories — and try to find a corner where I can see the sky, but I haven’t found one yet. No one else seems to share my desire. When...
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