Sibling Circus My brother was addicted to dog biscuits and this might have been how our act started. When our mother arrived, he’d pop one in his mouth, throw one to the real dog and then toss one to…
Our therapist made us go camping. Her suggestion was to sleep outdoors for three nights and then get a hotel room. She said camping would force us to rely on each other for comfort, and the hotel stay would…
Sibling Parenting Ai Ping’s brother said women who habitually declared they found happiness in everyday things were the hardest to please. If a woman required x affirmations of happiness a day, each having an effect which lasted an average…
I think it matters that her husband was older. He owned his own house when they met. He also owned a coffee shop on Lattimore. And Mrs. Haverhill, then—to distinguish herself from the other long-necked, loose-sweatered girls in the…
Esther was sixteen the summer that all the bees in her father’s hives died. Those were the days when she was in love with everything. The curtains in her room, billowing with the morning breeze; the spongy hills leading…
After three gin martinis, my mother-in-law spits out her teeth. “You’re a cannonball with a credit card,” she hisses. Her dentures glisten like pearls in her palm. Never, she likes to remind me, did she foresee her sweet son…
My daughter, Savi, instructs me to wear shoes when I go for my morning walk. She says it’s not considered exercise otherwise. I tell her my toes feel imprisoned in shoes and slide my feet into chappals before I…
after Jenny Offill On the hour-long train ride to New York City, you read a book about a divorce that almost but doesn’t quite happen. Your boyfriend says he’s knocked out from miscellaneous paperwork and allergy headaches and his…
Aboveground I was twelve years old when I last saw Blanca Esperanto. She lived at the end of the road. Their house was a brown, dry affair of rustling wood and dark leaves. She loved sitting on the ledge…
Content Warning—child sexual abuse Tansy My sister, Liberty, tells me I need to exercise, that it cures all ills. Well, I don’t see how swimming cures hers. All it does is dry out her hair. Jolee, my youngest…