Fiction

Mainly, she wanted to be left alone. She didn’t want a husband or a wife or a partner or a lover, she didn’t want a companion or a pet or friends, she didn’t want to be closer to her parents or siblings or relatives. She enjoyed her...

Maria and John lost Ned on a Saturday.

The marriage procession turned from Mulund’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Road toward the railway station, wending its way through the main bazaar. Leading the procession were the men of the brass band in their glittering outfits, followed by the...

“I have to do the wee,” announced the child.

“You have to make a wee,” her mother said. “And I asked you before we got in the car, remember? It’s too late for that now. You can go at the gym.”

“I have to do the wee,” the child repeated.

My mother has a beard.

My sister deals drugs.

My brother performs exorcisms.

Reney’s bones can feel a fight long before the rest of her wakes to the rising voices and clattering bottles. She is eight, almost nine. Granny and Lula live in a new rent house across the tracks and down a long hill, not so very far. Over...

There was a period of my life when I saw wombs all around me, and so of course the chandeliers were uteruses.

Margo’s daughter came home from school that Friday with a new friend. From the window in the kitchen, where she was trying and failing to make decent croissants for the third time this week, Margo watched the bus deposit her eight-year-old...

My mistake was in forgetting: Every time I go to Johnson’s, I swear it will be the last time.

The hotel where she had hoped to spend a very happy week was in a small village in Tuscany at the end of two trains and a bus, facing a wheat field.