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Keeping my screams pressed down, I hold my hand over my mouth and watch when he takes the back of Jenise’s head and shoves her face hard into the bowl of creamed corn.
She lifts her head slowly and turns to the side after he takes his hand away. I’m frozen as I watch her look at me, her shock mixed with the corn that drips off her nose, hidden in her burning eyes as she wipes them, and within her ...
Continue Reading →Jenise and I make faces when our dad opens a can of creamed corn to serve us for dinner. He doesn’t care that this is the one food my sister and I hate more than anything.
I can see leftovers in the refrigerator and other cans of food stacked in the cupboard we like, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like we could’ve been given garbage to eat if that was the ...
Continue Reading →The story opens when Nicky Young, a woman coming of age, reflects on why relationships are so difficult for her. Shadow Heart is her story, created from the journals she’s kept all her life. We open as she reflects back to eight years old, as she and her sister are waiting for their father, an alcoholic, to prepare dinner for them.
EARLY LESSONS: NICKY YOUNG
I always prayed the same way at night: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I ...
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