In Bulgaria people are not afraid to remember the dead. When someone dies, they make a flier with that person's name, birthday and day of death, a poem or quote, and--if they have the money--a photograph. They then post these fliers around town. One year later, they post the flier again. And five years after …
Don’t tell me what really happened.
When her son died, my grandmother called my mom and invited her to lunch. "Is something wrong?" my mom asked. "I just wanted to see you. Is that all right?" It was a Sunday afternoon. This was a year before I was born, but mom repeated the story often--always while staring off into space. So …
Look who you find when you’re drunk and locked inside!
We were drunk, the lights were off, and the doors were locked. You see that large white building on the left side of Vitosha Boulevard? We were in that building. The communist bosses from Moscow would stand on the roof of that building to deliver their speeches to the masses below. (I could post a …
Continue reading Look who you find when you’re drunk and locked inside!
Dead Cows and Trains (don’t look)
I was on a train in Bulgaria going to the Black Sea with someone I'd like to forget. We'd been traveling since around sunrise, and it was late in the afternoon. "Could that cow get any closer?" I asked about, well, a cow in the field we were passing through. Like magic, the train then …
Girl in the Wrong Bedroom
The second wife wanted to redecorate. "What colors would you like?" she asked her daughter and me. "Purple and black," said N. "Yellow. Or cream. Gold. And white," I said. I got everything I wanted. N. didn't get black. Instead, she got pale blue walls, curtains with blue birds, and fire engine red carpet. I …
They thought God had killed me.
Now that Dad was free from my mother, he decided to have me baptized. That event's photograph didn't survive the first photograph massacre--there were two. My Communion picture must've wandered off, hidden between pages perhaps, because it survived. I confess to still being a photograph thief--smuggler--ever since, sending pictures into hiding where I know they …
Do you mean to tell me they love each other?
I do not know these people. The young man is going to marry the girl soon, and they are sitting in his future mother-in-law's living room. They want to have four children. He already has a house on a lake and a good job. She thinks marriage will make everything all right. These two people …
Continue reading Do you mean to tell me they love each other?
Everything is in a name.
My mother and I share the same first name because of an argument my father won. One evening my step-mother shouted down the hall for me to come to the kitchen. She used a name she thought I should have. I turned to my step-sister. "What is she doing?" I asked. "She doesn't like your …
Stealing the Silverware
She left my dad and me one fork. Maybe it was the third time she moved out. I can't remember exactly. I was in the 5th grade, and she took all of the silverware except for the one fork. She took the pillows, too. She took Christmas presents. Another time she took the dining room …
You’d Never Know
Those thousand words could be any words at all. They could be lies. Wishes. A dead language. What words do you think are in this photograph? Quick--before I tell you and ruin the surprise. This is my mother in 1965 at the lake in front of my father's house--the year she got married and three …
Marta Bacon 