Stories tagged family

Vincent

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They were really big, a lot larger and taller and stronger than he was. Sometimes they were holding him, all of him, high up in the air. Sometimes they would have him crawl in front of them. Often they put him into some form of holding cell.

Away Like the Indians

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I was the only one. My mother was the only daughter, and her four brothers each had only girls, making me the lone grandson. Of course no one would ever admit it, but I felt it. I was the favorite. The only boy.As a child I would sit at the kitchen table and we would draw.…

Sunflowers

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On that balcony, on every other day, she practised her other, more worldly religion - gardening, specifically sunflowers.

Tumbalalaika

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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never

Favorite Child

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It was in the early sixties when my mother discovered she was my father’s second wife. Four years before, they were married quickly, by a justice of the peace, because his transfer to the States had come through. He’d charmed her with his dark chocolate e

Pig Girl

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"In the camps we ate whatever garbage they gave us." This according to my mother. "We had no choice." But I had eaten pig with gusto at an anti-Semite's table. Somehow this had to be undone. Burial in soil was all I could imagine.

The Miracle of My Father's Hat

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During the liberation, a Jew in the Russian army, asked him who had been the cruelest. My father gave them the name of the farmer who had murdered his father, and was later told the farmer's son was sent to the front and killed.

Lola

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I know you through the rich dark brown soilcrumbling in my fingers like chocolate cake.I imagine you nurtured bell-shaped papayas,coaxing their smooth, leathery skinfrom green to yellow,while mangoes, the colors of the island sunset,hung with their tantalizing sweet…

Birds of Prayer: 2/8 The Chicken Killer From Brooklyn and his Satchel of Death

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His flat hat, a fur-trimmed streimel, lay on his head like a platter of dead minks, the man's Shirley Temple side-locks dangling like pigtails.

Reading at the Table

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I would like to say that story sent me reeling and nauseated from the table but no, I kept shoveling my soup without missing a beat and reading the TIME magazine folded next to my plate.

Furniture Fights

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It amazes me that with everything this woman has to be depressed about, what really gets her down is an inadequate lounge chair.

Nan - The Complete Novel-In-Stories

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In the wake of a family tragedy, Nan, a pensive young woman from rural Vermont, moves to New York City for college. As she makes her way through her new urban life, with all its dangers and excitements, she is haunted by the home she left behind, remember

The Artist's Conk

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Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.

We're The Atwoods

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I remember a time when Calvin, my husband, was like Winnie the Pooh and I was a jar of fine Provençal honey. No amount of my sweetness could satisfy his craving for me. He would spread me on his toast with butter at breakfast and mix me with peanut butter

The Family Tradition

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Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…