Vyslobods nas, Pan, I whisper to myself as the ambulance screams past the house, Slovak words my grandfather spoke whenever a siren or a funeral lifted his head from his soup or the ground he was planting, words that rise in me now, sitting in darkness, watching the passed houses glow for a moment in …
We stared out the kitchen windows at the white lawn. In the garden the sweet basil I intended to turn into pesto had turned dark. Tomatoes slumped over their tall cages, shrunken, their green reaching done. By the time I walked into the sharp air the frost, under the advancing sun, had withdrawn, except for …
In front of the salesman my mother is speaking to me in Slovak, saying the coat I like isn’t warm enough, saying, ye to prilis tesne even as I’m shrinking inside it, with each word from her mouth praying she’ll stop so the whole store will quit staring and we can both disappear into English.
Still days away from the first ripe tomato, I pick another dozen cucumbers to give to the neighbors and see my mother slicing them into a bowl, each layer sprinkled with salt, then setting them aside for a while before squeezing out the bitterness, adding vinegar and sour cream to just the right balance. When …
Louis Prima, Fats Domino, Rosemary Clooney, she piled high the 45s, grabbed the mop she called her honey and began upstairs, singing and swinging it across the floor, dipping low to reach under the beds, shaking it out the window, swiping her dust cloth across the dressers, picking up a stray sock, or underwear, circling …
My grandmother told my brother and me rolling around the floor in front of the snowy black and white screen to sit up straight and behave because they could see us, and she wasn’t joking or trying to fool two kids buzzed on tall Pepsis into the quiet she deserved after another day over the …
Its long, brown wooden case hung on the kitchen wall in the first house, the heavy, brass pendulum moving deliberately above my grandmother standing over the coal stove stuffing pork with garlic and baking trays of halupkies, moving above the three generations elbow to elbow around the table, above the evening penny card games, above …