I told my dad it would be good for my career. I told my mom the truth. "I want to go where everything is my choice, where I can't blame you or dad or give you the credit." So it was I found myself at 17 on an airplane flying from Orlando, Florida to Terre …
Best Selling Books and Crimped Hair
You can try to write to the latest fashions, but what is the story going to look like 20 years later? What is it that makes a best-seller anyway?
What to Wear to Dinner
Her mother said to us, "I want you to dress formal. It's Thanksgiving. No jeans." M. and I exchanged looks. Formal? Up in her bedroom, M. dragged out old prom dresses. "If she wants formal, we'll do formal." The beautiful expressions on her parents' faces! They made us go upstairs and change. Pity. I didn't …
Stripping Outdoors
The sun was setting when, after dancing around the lawn and stripping off my clothes, I fell in the fire ant bed. I was two. Because of the angle of light, my mom said she couldn't see what was wrong. She could only hear me screaming. She saw a shadow moving up my body and …
How to Scare People
The bank teller's eyes widened and she stopped speaking in mid-sentence. "What is it?" I asked. I'd just come home from getting four wisdom teeth pulled and couldn't feel my mouth. The teller was looking down at the counter, and so I looked down too. Blood was dripping onto the green-black marble. My stitches had …
Furniture Polish Kills the Soul
My son draws on the dining room table. We brought it home a few years ago and I handed my son markers and said, "Have at it." Squiggles and dots decorate the legs, color splotches the sides, random marks and doodles cover the top. When guests come over for dinner, this is the table we …
Hate Your Choices?
This may explain why you can't decide. Listen.
Girls Before and After
"Cheer up," S. said. "Dance with me." About three months had passed since my mother had died. My cancer-riddled grandmother would be gone a month later. Perhaps I was prone to sudden silences and fits of restlessness. S. and I were in his room. We worked together in the dorm and we were friends. S. …
a lot of nothing
Some nights the brain will not make anything.
Lie Detectors and Teenage Girls
"Do you like girls?" the officer asked my classmate. Everyone laughed. The officer watched the lines whir over the paper of the lie detector. Yes, the machine concluded that the boy did indeed like girls. We were in the 11th grade and the lie detector lesson was the social studies teacher's idea. Sitting in my …
Marta Bacon 