Rumpus Original Fiction: Daughterhouse
When things begin disappearing from the house, I know what is happening. My mother has always been good at taking what she is owed.
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Join NOW!When things begin disappearing from the house, I know what is happening. My mother has always been good at taking what she is owed.
...more“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
...more“No remedy will undo your bad choices, or your addiction to sugar. And you can’t afford my prices anyway.”
...moreThe lasso was a gaping mouth that opened wide enough, we hoped, to swallow the cloud.
...moreThe sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
...moreI used my fingers on the neighbor and he liked it.
...moreMy favorite was usually the smallest, the most alive.
...moreBefore I understood that I was a girl, I understood that I was a body.
...more“Don’t worry,” he says. “Give it time. It’ll grow on you.”
...moreEveryone here is new. Everyone has run away from somewhere.
...moreThis is a carousel that never slows to a point where you can board gracefully.
...more. . . maybe they believe labeling and understanding mean the same thing . . .
...moreWaiting to turn forty-six is like standing in the unrelenting sunshine.
...moreBefore they were married, they met in a photograph.
...moreAt the end of the week, which was long with sleepless nights, Miri picked her heart out of the kitchen sink, put it in a paper lunch bag, and took it to the witch.
...moreThe bloom would not open until we arrived, but it was not waiting for us. It was a matter of timing. Each year in mid-March, the petals uncurled from their fetal sleeping positions, stretched out to face the sun.
...moreThe important thing to remember when climbing a pole, a rope, a mountain is to not look down.
...moreThe benign lipoma floated in a small jar that Abundio had set on his nightstand when he came back from the doctor’s office. At first, when Dr. Reyes had asked him if he would like to bring it home, Abundio had laughed in the belief that this was nothing more than obtuse doctor humor. But Dr. Reyes did not smile and waited for a response to her question. So, Abundio said: “Sure.”
...moreWhen she was seven years old, Lottie killed her first rattlesnake. As long as she could remember, her grandfather had instilled in her that The Good Californian killed the rattlesnake, spared those behind him the danger of snakebite, the venom sapped from their future. She thought it was allegory until she came face-to-Western-face with a Mojave rattlesnake in the scrub out by the foothills.
...moreWith my first blood, a scale appears, hard and iridescent in the soft skin below my arm. In bathroom mirror light, elbow raised, I press and prod, fingertips rusted from menstrual discovery. They trace red, which soaks into the skin and blossoms more scales, reflecting blue and green. I wash my hands. And the scales […]
...moreIf this were the end, May needed to see.
...moreThere’s something about stillness that always comes just before the miracles.
...moreI laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
...moreThe words blur, become meaningless. You need them to be meaningless.
...moreYou are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
...moreShe gave him a small, relieved laugh. In another world, she replied.
...morehe lives in closets, stalks young kids, & takes them in the middle of the night.
...moreI took a deep breath. A long one. And I started rocking again.
...moreYou stood and put your hair up. It made you a different man. You got hard and decided you were why.
...moreMy miraculous children were mine, and mine alone.
...more