When Ford made love to Calla, she felt something in him fight. It wasn’t against her ugliness. That matter was settled business, though Calla, in her youth, had held onto the idea that she was a winter-apple sort of…
After the texts fizzled out with the fifth guy in six weeks, Naz finally gave up and changed her app settings to full-on gay. Self-cannibalism would’ve been less painful than having a conversation with these one-neuron fools and she…
Prologue There is a story our parents told us, only once. When they received their immigration papers from America, they considered leaving one of us behind in Pakistan to live with relatives, believing that one child would be…
“It is possible to control Los Angeles by being the one with the most vivid fantasy about it.” —Theresa Duncan, The Wit of the Staircase 1992 My brother joined the world’s smallest cult. There were precisely two members:…
The night before I start treatment at Harrington, Raffi and I go to Foxy Night at the Cock in the East Village. We have to wait in line to get in. It’s eleven, and it’s dark, but it’s lit-up city…
Sacrament Pua shifts in the pew as the water and bread are passed out by the chosen boys, her mu’umu’u scratchy and stiff against her skin. She wonders if it will be white or wheat bread. Her mother pinches…
Mother, this house is full of babies. From the mouth of the kitchen I hear their cooing and from the top of the staircase I hear their cooing. I stand and hear their cooing from the living room. I…
Ifunanya called you ugly, and you answered her with a slap. A slap so charged it was the envy of thunder, and you didn’t even care you were in Chuckies, the school restaurant, teeming with people eating, laughing, coming…
Dau used to live in the apartment below me. He had skin so dry it fell like leaves on a windy day, so much he pixelated his floor with tiny fog-colored flakes, each thin and flappy as a plastic…
John and Lara’s daughter had up and married a perfect stranger. She’d met the fellow at a gallery opening only two weeks before. The nuptials had taken place in a courthouse. On the phone Liza told them sure, of…