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A young white officer asks her in heavily accented Bengali, “What’s the purpose of your visit?”

“Cancer,” Ameena replies in English, standing in front of a glass window. “My husband cancer.”

The officer at the American embassy, Dhaka, gives her a sharp look, checks her papers, then abruptly disappears through the side door. When he returns, he types on his computer, and says her visa application has been approved.

Ameena thanks Allah that the man hasn’t asked her any complicated questions about her husband. Twenty years ago, when Selim left for America, she was thirty-one, her son was five, and her daughter three.

Selim never returned.

The first few years he called every week and sent enough money that she was contemplating buying a small apartment. Then came the attack on the Twin Towers, and he lost his job at the store in Manhattan. That was when all the trouble began.

Outside the embassy, Ameena catches her son smoking on the street. He drops the cigarette and crushes it underfoot. “Did you get the visa?” he asks.

Ameena nods.

Beside her son in an autorickshaw, her mind wanders back to the early days of her marriage. Selim smoked a pack of Benson & Hedges every day. He loved spending time with friends and talking politics at the neighborhood cafés. He worked buying stock from garment factories and selling them to the local clothing stores.

She thinks of the day Selim took her to a char island. He had heard about this newly deposited expanse of land in the River Meghna. One Friday, they had an early breakfast and took a bus to Narayanganj. From there they had a long but refreshing rickshaw ride on dirt roads through farmlands—mile after mile of mustard fields. The scent of mustard flowers in the spring breeze was intense, intoxicating.

It was a beautiful day. After the boat dropped them off on the island, they wandered about for a few minutes and spotted no sign of human presence anywhere—only a vast, sandy land surrounded by water. Selim pulled her hand and they ran like children. He stopped and gave a Tarzan’s jungle call, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Ameena,” he shouted, “how about we never go back, and just live here? We’ll be the king and queen of this island.”

“Yeah, that’d be fantastic!” she said.

They walked side by side, his arm draped over her shoulder. They dipped their feet into the water of the Meghna. Then without warning he picked her up in his arms. She found herself dangling above the water. He rocked her body, saying, “I’m dropping you.”

“No!” she screamed.

He laughed and kissed her.

**

After Selim lost his job in Manhattan, Ameena heard from him less and less. Whenever he phoned, he talked about uncertainties. Illegal immigrants were being detained. He didn’t go out much fearing deportation. The other day, he said, a fat white man spat on him in the street, calling him a terrorist, telling him to go back where he came from. That same day, after getting home, Selim shaved off his short black beard.

When he had said this, Ameena had trembled and tears raced down her cheeks. She didn’t mention she was having bad dreams about him. Just the night before, she had screamed for help as Selim was dragged into the street and beaten. She woke up panting, soaked in perspiration. When she came to her senses, she clasped her shaking hands together hard and asked Allah to keep her husband safe. Later, in her dawn prayer, she also prayed for the recovery of the Bangladeshi man she’d heard on the news had been shot in the face at a Dallas gas station.

“Please, come back home,” she implored Selim. “We don’t need American dollars. We will be happy here together.”

Selim said he was moving to another state soon. “You know, Ameena, it’s a great country to live in, but you need the legal status.”

Months after he settled in New Jersey, his friend in New York called to tell her that Selim was living with a Mexican woman.

In April, when Ameena finally received a call from Selim, she exploded. He tried to explain that he just rented a room in her apartment in preparation for entering into a contract marriage. “Ameena, don’t be mad. Some people do it here to get papers. It’s not real.”

She cried and begged him to return home immediately. “You have to choose either me or your America.”

“Ameena, listen—”

She wouldn’t listen. She yelled and cursed him. She asked him not to contact her anymore. “Many wives become widows at a young age,” she said. “I’ll consider my husband dead.”

Ameena moved in with her mother. She loved to sew. She became a seamstress for neighbors, friends, and relatives. They paid her well, but she could meet only half of her expenses. Her twin brother, who had a thriving import business, started giving her a monthly allowance.

When anyone asked Ameena about her husband, she faked a smile and said, “He lives in America.” Selim phoned occasionally to speak with the children and wired money prior to festivals. Then news reached Ameena that her husband had moved out of the home of the Mexican woman; his plan didn’t work out, and now he was sleeping with a white woman. Five years later she heard from someone that his asylum application had been granted. But his new status wouldn’t allow him to travel back to Bangladesh. She didn’t understand.

Not long after, her son made her tea in the evening and said, “Daddy wants me to study in the U.S.”

For half a minute, without a word, Ameena observed her nineteen-year-old son. Her face slowly tightened. “Never,” she said. “You want to be like your father?” She pushed the cup away, spilling tea on the table.

**

In September 2016, Ameena learned from Selim’s sister that he had lung cancer. At the end of the year his health deteriorated, and he had surgery. Could she fly to America to take care of her husband, his sister had asked. Ameena said no, and again she was asked in December. Then, in January, Selim called. She heard a forgotten yet familiar voice, now scratchy and strained. She pursed her lips but couldn’t form any words. After a moment she managed to speak. Her words and his words were punctuated by long pauses. He told her that he would send the necessary papers. She would need to get a passport.

Her interview at the embassy was scheduled in early April.

 

**

 

Ameena has never felt so distinguished in her life. For the last three months, no matter who she met, she has heard the same question: When are you going to America?

Her flight is at one in the morning. A day’s journey from Dhaka to New York, with a four-hour layover in Dubai. A bus is hired to carry her relatives, who insisted on coming to the airport to give her a send-off. They all hug her, and some cry at the immigration checkpoint.

She starts sweating when boarding begins. It’s her first time flying. She is given a window seat, and a flight attendant helps her fasten the seatbelt. She stiffens and holds her breath as the plane takes off. She says a prayer, and for a moment thinks she will never see her husband or her children again. But before long she realizes that the aircraft is in midair, and she gazes in wonder at the glittering skyline of Dhaka.

**

In the arrivals lounge at JFK, Ameena catches a stranger waving his hand at her. She does not recognize him until she hears her name. Selim is shockingly thin, his face so red, Adam’s apple sticking out. His head is shaved. Back home on her bedroom wall there is a family picture in which their children are standing on either side of Selim and her. Twenty years later, he matches so little of his earlier self, scarcely resembling that image of him anchored deep in her memory. It must be the cancer, she decides.

“You haven’t changed much,” Selim says in the car. He peppers her with questions. How was the flight? Did she face any problems anywhere? In Dubai? At immigration? He breathes heavily between sentences.

From the driver’s seat his friend, Rafiq Bhai, glances at her in the rearview mirror. He says it was his idea to get her assistance at Dubai Airport, so she wouldn’t have to struggle with her limited English.

“You’ve come at the right time,” he says to her, stopping the car before a condo. “It’s almost summer here.”

When Selim reaches for the luggage, Rafiq Bhai says, “You’re not supposed to lift anything heavy.”

In the elevator, Selim stands close to Ameena, his body brushing against hers. His breathing is labored and rapid.

Selim opens an apartment door numbered 17 and guides her into a sizable living room. His friend leaves, saying to call him whenever they need him.

“You can freshen up,” Selim says, pointing to another room. “I’ll warm up some food.”

Ameena takes one of her suitcases into the bedroom and shuts the door. She hears laughing and loud conversation emanating from outside. Through the window she peers down at the balcony of the apartment opposite. Wine glasses in hand, a couple of men with women in skimpy outfits are sitting in the late afternoon sun. She checks the window, but it has no curtain like back home. She moves into the corner of the room and changes into salwar kameez.

At the kitchen table, there is rice, mashed eggplant, chicken curry and dal.

“Eggplant?” She eyes him. “You don’t eat eggplant.”

“But you like it,” he says, serving her rice.

“You cooked these yourself?”

He nods, asks how the kids are doing.

“Oh, I need to call them!” she says.

“I messaged them already.”

She looks at his plate. He has taken a small portion of rice. He meets her eyes and says, “I can’t eat much.”

A small sigh escapes her lips.

He coughs. “It’s the chemo. It kills the appetite.”

She eats in silence. He eats in small bites.

“You’re a good cook,” she says.

After dinner, while Ameena does the washing-up, Selim makes her milk tea.

“Do you still take two spoons in your tea?” he asks.

She smiles. “No, one spoon now.”

He hands her the tea mug. Her fingers touch his for a second.

An hour later, as she yawns, Selim tells her to get some sleep. Ameena goes to the bedroom. When she wakes up, everything is quiet and dark. She peers out the half-open window; the night sky is clear, with a crescent moon. She slips out of the bedroom to use the bathroom and finds Selim asleep on the living room sofa.

**

The following day he takes her to an Indian grocery store, just around the corner. On the streets she spots Bangladeshi faces, hears them talking aloud, and makes out a Bengali song blaring from a jewelry shop. “It doesn’t feel like America here,” she tells him on their way home.

“It’s Jackson Heights,” he says, laughing. “A little Bangladesh.”

Ameena looks for spices in the kitchen cupboard and sets to cooking. Selim wants to help, but he starts coughing.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes, just tired.”

“Why don’t you lie down?”

“That’s what I do most of the time. Let me sit at the table and talk to you.”

He grabs a chair and inhales. He tells her that he drove a taxi for years, until last August, when he got the diagnosis. That was when he quit smoking.

That night Ameena settles in the sofa bed and says Selim should use the bedroom.

“You have health issues,” she says. “You need a bigger bed.”

“Why don’t we share the bed instead?” he says.

She holds his gaze. He lowers his eyes and enters the bedroom. Rubbing lotion on her hands, Ameena stretches out on the sofa. The rooms are still; the only sound she hears now is Selim’s wheeze, rhythmic and loud as the ticking of a clock at night. His words echo in her head. Why don’t we share the bed instead?

She slides off the sofa and tiptoes into his room. In the semidarkness, she makes out his eyes, looking at her. He moves over and makes room in the bed. For a long while, lying side by side on their backs, they stay silent. Then he places his hand on hers. She trembles. His hand is cold.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She doesn’t answer. Eyes closed; she sees Dhaka: The small one-bedroom apartment they rented after their marriage. Their Saturday nights at the movies. Their first vacation in the mountains of Chittagong. The birth of their first child.

In the first few months, after Selim left for America, she hardly slept at night, staring at his empty side of the bed. She missed his touch. His smell. His cigarette breath. His occasional snoring.

“Forgive me, Ameena,” he murmurs and rubs the back of her hand. “I’m happy you came.”

She sighs, staring up at the ceiling. She imagines unknown figures—the women her husband slept with—filling in the two-inch gap between her and him in the bed, pushing them apart. Hispanic, white…were there more? She feels small. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes.

**

Ameena gets up early, says her morning prayer, makes herself milk tea, and watches the day breaking from the balcony. Then she reads the Quran while sitting at the kitchen table. At eight, she wakes Selim for breakfast.

Every other day she visits the grocery store by herself to buy vegetables. Often Selim asks her to check the mailbox on her way back. She doesn’t understand the washing machines in the building’s basement. She prefers to hand-wash their laundry in the bathtub.

Twice, morning and afternoon, she and Selim sit on the balcony. She sips tea, and he coffee.

“Do you remember the char island in Narayanganj?” she asks him one day.

He squints for a moment and then a slow smile brightens his face. “How can I forget? We spent some beautiful hours there, didn’t we?

Ameena grins.

“I enjoyed the boatman’s song too,” he laughs.

It was already afternoon on the char island, Ameena recalls. She asked him how they would get back to the other side of the river. They’d hired a boat to get here, but no boats were seen anchored at the island. They stood at the shore waving to the passing rowboats in the distance until a man in a canoe noticed them and came to their assistance.

The boatman agreed to ferry them across the river. On board, Selim asked him to sing a song, if he could. The man was in his twenties and chatty. He belted out a Bengali folk song. The world will remain forever as it is. And someday we’ll leave this beautiful world behind…  

**

One warm Monday, Selim says, “I’m feeling good today. Let’s go out.”

He orders an Uber and ten minutes later they are in front of a Bengali clothing store.

“Don’t waste money,” she tells him. “I’ve brought enough dresses from Dhaka.”

He doesn’t listen. He buys her salwar-kameez, a sari, and a pair of sandals. Afterward, he takes her to Hudson River Park. The park is swarming with people. Ameena feels uncomfortable seeing the women everywhere wearing so little clothing.

“Why are they lying like this under this hot sun?” she asks.

“It’s called sunbathing. As we love winter in Bangladesh, Americans love summer. So when it’s a nice sunny day like this, people come out in the park to enjoy the sun.”

They have ice cream. Ameena wonders if Selim remembers that last week was their wedding anniversary.

Later that month, Selim invites his friend to dinner. Ameena cooks all afternoon, then has a shower, and puts on the new sari.

Rafiq Bhai visits with his wife. After the meal, the two men talk about Bangladeshi politics on the balcony. Rafiq Bhai’s wife is fairly young. Ameena learns from the woman that she is his second wife. The first wife, in Dhaka, divorced him and married his cousin while Rafiq Bhai was in the U.S. The young woman has been in America two years now. No, her parents didn’t force her into this marriage. She herself consented to it because Rafiq Bhai had a green card.

**

On a drizzly day in August, Ameena passes Selim his morning medicines and a glass of water. “Your hair has grown long,” she says. “You need a cut.”

He returns the empty tumbler. “Do you want to do it? You once gave me a haircut, remember?”

She does remember. It was in the first year of their marriage. On a rainy day in Dhaka, when he was about to set off for a salon with a tattered umbrella, she suggested giving him a trim.

“It turned out not bad,” he says.

She smiles demurely. “Do you have good scissors?”

Selim finds her scissors. In the living room, Ameena spreads outdated newspapers on the floor and places a chair on them. With another sheet of newspaper, she makes a hole in the center and slides it over Selim’s head to catch the falling hair.

An hour later Selim stands before the bathroom mirror. “It’s almost perfect.” He looks at her and adds quickly, “That’s my fault, of course. I couldn’t provide all of the haircutting kit that barbers need.”

“See, I have many skills.” She leans on the bathroom doorway.

“I know. I’m amazed by your dexterous hands. Maybe we should open a salon.”

They both laugh.

Before going for a shower, Selim says, “Ameena, I didn’t tell, I applied for you and our kids to come over. It’s a lengthy process. The problem is, to sponsor and bring you all here permanently, I need to be employed. But in my current condition—” he pauses and sighs.

She touches his shoulder. “Don’t worry about these things now.”

**

Over the weekend, they attend a small wedding. The groom is Bangladeshi and the bride, Pakistani, Selim informs her. Some women come to chat with Ameena. “So glad that you made it to the US at last,” they say. One short woman about her age sits beside her during dinner. She tells her some of the latest community gossip. A fifteen-year-old girl invited her white boyfriend home when the parents were out, only to get caught by her father who is a devout Muslim and came to the States on DV Lottery. He gave her a good beating. She called the police and had him arrested.

“The child had her father arrested?” Ameena asks. “What kind of daughter is she?”

“Well, this is America.”

She tells Ameena she was a high school teacher in Dhaka. Her early days in New York were full of struggles. She started with a cleaning job. “Think of my situation,” she says. “I was a respected teacher back home. In America, I had to clean shit in toilets. They call it living the American dream.” She laughs and says she now works at a nursing home and earns more than her husband.

**

In early September, Selim has increasing breathing difficulties and coughs up blood. At night, he sleeps with his head and chest elevated with three pillows. Ameena rubs lukewarm mustard oil on his chest. He stays in bed all day now, wearing a beanie she knitted for him.

In October, after two visits to the hospital, a nurse comes to the apartment to set up an oxygen machine beside the bed. She shows Ameena how to use it and tells her to call 911 in case of emergency.

Some weeks after, on a cold and windy evening, Selim is moved to the hospital. Ameena is allowed to stay overnight with him. Rafiq Bhai chauffeurs her back and forth to the apartment. A few days later, she learns how to take a bus. It’s only five stops to the hospital. She cooks and brings meals for him, but he cannot eat. He drinks very little.

The next Saturday it is bitterly cold. That afternoon is the last time Selim can breathe without the ventilator.

“I wish I never came to America,” he says, his hoarse voice almost a whisper. “Wish I could turn back the time.”

“You really think so?”

“I regret what I’ve done to you, to our children.” He pauses and coughs. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I’ve forgiven you already. That’s why I agreed to come.”

“You have a great heart, Ameena. I am—I’ve been terrible.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You’ll get better soon.” She interlocks her fingers with his. “After you get well, we can visit Dhaka and I will take you to the char island.”

His face beams, then darkens, and then his eyes get misty.

He goes into a deep sleep. He stops responding. Tubes crisscross his body.

**

Rafiq Bhai manages everything. Hospital, burial, certificates. She has to sign a lot of papers.

It starts snowing on the day of her flight. She stands motionless by the bedroom window, watching the silent snow whitening the earth. Everything is so gray, so barren. Ameena thinks of Selim’s phone call the first time he saw snow. She asked him what it looks like. “It’s like cotton floating in the air,” he said. Ameena slides the sash open. She extends her hand through the window to feel the falling flakes on her palm.

---

Rahad Abir is a writer from Bangladesh. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Himal Southasian, Courrier International, The Wire, BRICK LANE TALES anthology, and elsewhere. He has an MFA in fiction from Boston University. He received the 2017-18 Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. Currently he is working on a short story collection, which was a finalist for the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship.

 

Uncle always lived in the other house. By himself. When he was younger, before I was born, he was a truck driver. Then he was a drummer for a while with a band called Texas Red. Then he got married but his wife left him after three years. Then he got sick and had to stay in a looney bin for a while. When he got out, he moved into the other house on Mama’s property. Ten miles outside of Glenville, in southern Indiana. He stayed holed up in the other house, most of the time, in his bedroom that smelled like a man’s armpit.

When I was in sixth grade, Uncle took me to the pasture where the cows grazed when my Grandpa was still alive and showed me how to shoot his rifle. He taught me how to load in the cartridges and aim and shoot. I pulled the trigger four times before I hit a beer can off the fence post. Uncle whooped and kicked the toe of his boot in the dirt when I did that. He took the gun from me, reloaded it, and handed it back to me.

Smiling he said, “Now shoot me, Stacy.”

He thumped himself on the chest and said, “Aim right here baby girl. Shoot me out of my misery.”

I laughed at him and I heard Mama calling for me, so I handed him back the gun. I thought he was teasing me. I was sure that first time, he was just teasing. He told me we’d do target practice again sometime, but when I told Mama about it, she said no, no more target practice because she wasn’t sure if he was still taking his meds, so we never did.

Sometimes, at night, Uncle would put on his clodhopper boots and light a kerosene lantern and leash up Porter, Mama’s hound dog, and take his gun and Porter up into the thirty-seven-acre woods that grew behind Mama’s house and partly behind his. Sometimes in the morning, there’d be a raccoon, skinned and cleaned and floating headless, in a big pot of cold salt water on Mama’s covered porch. Sometimes he left Porter behind and went up alone. On those times, I could hear him shooting in the woods so late at night that the moon was already to the other side of the sky.

Uncle drank Johnny Walker sometimes and when he was drunk, he didn’t want nobody to come to his house. I’m the one who brought him his breakfast. I’d walk it over, set it on the kitchen counter and yell at him to come down for his breakfast. I’d collect the dishes from the morning before, but when he was heavy drinking, he called Mama on the phone and told her not to send no motherfucking eggs and bacon over because he’s sick of being poisoned by her cooking and she was just a half-sister know nothing bitch.

Mama took the breakfast over herself on those days and made him get out of bed and clean his stinky, drunk ass up. I would go with her, trailing behind like a puppy dog, as she marched the loaded tray over to his door. Mama would get his pills out of the bathroom, shake them into her hand and run him a glass of tap water. While he was taking the pills, Mama took the cartridges from his rifle that sat catty-corner by his refrigerator on those days too, because she said she don’t want to have to clean Uncle’s brains off the greasy walls.

That way of living, that breakfast routine, that coon hunting, went on for a while. From the time I was nine years old until I was thirteen.

One day, Uncle yelled down at me to bring the breakfast up to him and not leave it on the kitchen counter. I never did that before and was a little nervous of what I might find up there in the dark dust at the top of the stairs. I walked it up and left it at the door of his bedroom, then ran down. I feared Uncle because sometimes he yelled cusswords and he had that gun that Mama said she wish he didn’t have but if she took it from him, he’d just call his old drinking buddy, Curtis, to drive him to Junior’s to buy another one. Uncle got a disability check, and he didn’t use it for nothing but to call Curtis to give him a ride to town to buy whiskey and sometimes gave the check to Mama for his groceries or when she needed to pay his phone bill or the property taxes.

Next morning, Uncle told me to bring the breakfast up to him again. I did, and I was fixing to leave it at the bedroom door when Uncle jerked open the bedroom door and stood there with no shirt on, wearing a pair of old jeans, cut off at the knee. Uncle was pale and skinny, and his chest was curved in a little. Uncle smelled terrible, like he just burped up whiskey and blew his breath into the air.

“Bring that tray on in here Stacy and set it down on the nightstand there.”

I wasn’t sure if I should, but he was smiling a little and he seemed normal acting.  I went on in and set the tray down. I tried not to crinkle up my nose at the stinky smell coming from the bed.

“Look what I did to that microwave, Stacy,” Uncle said. He pointed to his broken up dented microwave that was on top of his clothes dresser.  I looked at it, nodded and fast-walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I yelled up to Uncle. “Mama wants you to take your meds.”

He shouted down at me. “Tell your Mama I don’t need no meds. I ain’t crazy. And I taught that coon dog to fly. He can fly now, Stacy. Porter can fly. I’m not dreaming, I taught him. High enough to get in them trees and catch a raccoon. Tell your mom she’s got a special dog.”

I went to the kitchen and picked up the tray of dishes from the morning before and high tailed it back to Mama’s house. I turned to look at Uncle’s house just once. Uncle was watching me from out the bedroom window.

Next day, when I brought over his breakfast, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t yell down the stairs, didn’t look out the window when I walked back to Mama’s.

The day after that was the same and then the same again. Uncle went hunting that second night and, in the morning, Mama found a raccoon floating in water on the covered porch.

On my thirteenth birthday, Mama called Uncle and asked if he wanted us to bring over a slice of birthday cake. After a long quiet conversation, Uncle must have said yes, because Mama hung up the phone, cut a big slice of chocolate cake and put it on a paper plate. Mama was crying while she did this. It was a silent cry. Tears but no sobbing.

“Mama,” I said. “It’s okay. You ain’t seen Uncle for a long time now, he’ll be happy to see you.”

“Yeah, I know. He just makes me sad, though. When I go over there, he always has to argue with me. He’s run out of his meds and won’t let me take him to the doctor for the refills.”

She ran her hand over the top of her head like she was checking to see if it was still there.

“I’ll just put the cake in the kitchen and leave.”

This was different to me, not the routine. Not different in a good way but I can’t figure out why it seemed wrong. It wasn’t usually what happened. I usually carried eggs and toast and bacon and coffee in the early morning. Now Mama was carrying birthday cake in the afternoon.

She took the plate of cake and walked on to Uncle’s house. I went behind her. I saw a movement at Uncle’s window, when I looked up directly, the curtains waved a little like Uncle had been looking and just dropped them back down.

When we got close to the house, Uncle came out naked, with his man stuff hanging out for us to see. He had his gun.

“Happy Birthday, Stacy,” Uncle said, and he grabbed the cake from Mama at the same time he handed me his rifle.

“Reckon you’re old enough now. I don’t have any presents for you so I’m giving you my rifle. Okay?”

I didn’t want his rifle, but I didn’t know how to say no to Uncle, so I took it.

Back to Mama he said, “I’m tired of you using your microwave oven to read my thoughts. And… and I know what goes on in them microwaves. You’re just trying to get proof to send me back to the looney bin, so you can have all the land and my house. I’m not crazy. And I lost your dog. I’m sorry about that. He just flew away, and I can’t find him nowhere.”

“Thank you,” I said loudly, interrupting his rant. I ran the rifle back to the house, while Mama stood and argued with him.

When she came back, I handed her the rifle and she took out the cartridges and put them in the kitchen drawer, then carried the gun down to the basement. Mama hid it behind a rolled-up carpet in the corner by the meat freezer.

Next thing I know, Mama is calling Uncle and continuing the argument about coming outside with no clothes on and giving a loaded rifle to her daughter. Mama told him there is no way to use a microwave oven to get into his brain and that he needs to get back on his meds. Mama said if he ever does anything crazy like that again, she’ll call the sheriff to take him back to the psycho hospital, where he belongs.

In the morning, Mama made him scrambled eggs and biscuits and she took them over herself. Mama said she wanted to apologize for her angry conversation the night before and talk Uncle into letting her take him back to the doctor. Mama only stayed a short time and when she came back, her face was red, and her mouth was in a frown.

Uncle was gone from the house. And Porter was gone too. Mama walked up to the edge of the trees, hoping to see Uncle coming out from the woods. When evening came, Mama waited inside her house, listening all night for a holler from Uncle or a coon dog howl from Porter, and watching out the kitchen window for any sign of Uncle or Porter. When morning came, Mama called the sheriff.

After an hour or so, a brown and tan sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway. Sheriff got out and walked around with Mama looking for clues, I guess, or something. Mama walked the sheriff up to Uncle’s house. They went inside, and I heard Mama yelling then she screamed, and I heard two shots.

Uncle ran outside naked and came running toward Mama’s house. I went quick down to the basement and got my birthday rifle. I ran back up to the kitchen and opened the drawer where Mama hid the cartridges.

By that time, Uncle was on the front porch, with his hand on the door handle. When he opened the door, I raised the rifle. I pointed it straight at his face. Uncle just froze, stood there looking at the end of the rifle, then back at me.

“Shoot me, Stacy, because I just killed your mama and that fat ass sheriff with his own gun.”

My hands went weak when I heard that and I wavered for a moment, but I brought the rifle back up and held it firm.

“Come on, do it, baby girl. Shoot me out of my misery.”

“Why’d you kill Mama?” I screamed.

“It’s your birthday and I wanted to give you something to remember.”

He cried then, tears running down his cheeks, face turning red. I was crying too, but I held the rifle aimed steady at his face.

“That’s a lie, Stacy. I didn’t want to kill nobody, but I don’t want to go back to the looney bin. Microwaves are puttin my thoughts out there so everybody can say I’m crazy.”

Uncle backed away, ran out the front door. Ran back into his house and came out with a set of keys. Uncle got into the sheriff’s brown and tan and backed out of the driveway, squealing tires, and kicking up gravel. I called 911 and soon I see one state police car pull into Mama’s driveway and two other police cars speeding on. A helicopter passed above, and I knew they were chasing Uncle.

A moment later, I saw Porter. He was flying behind the helicopter. His long hound ears were flapping like hummingbird wings. He dipped and bumped through the air but stayed dangerously close to the helicopter. I was scared for him. I called for him to come down, but he didn’t hear me.

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I am an African American writer who started seriously focusing on writing fiction in the late twentieth century. I was published in literary magazines such as North Atlantic Review, The Crucible, Buffalo Spree, and Punchnel’s. In 2000, I won second place in the Ohio Valley Fiction Contest. I became interested in other things and didn’t start writing again until 2013. Since then, I’ve had some success. In 2017, I won the grand prize in a one-act play contest, presented by the 30XNinety theatre in Mandeville, a suburb of New Orleans. In March 2019, I won the Etchings Press annual competition for novellas. I was second runner-up in the Daisy Pettles writer-in-residence competition in May 2020. I was named as an honoree in the Emerging Author category for the Indiana Author’s Awards in September 2020. This year in April, I was named as one of ten finalists for the SAG/INDIE Screenwriting Fellowship. I did not win. Durn it.  In May, my story, “Savonne, Not Vonny,” was named as a semi-finalist for the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA) program for short stories and novelettes.