When our mother’s back was turned, my sister and I dug our fingers into the warm pie. We felt for stones inside the mushy fruit—feeling for a hardness, sharp at its edges. We were seven and nine. If my father didn’t come home, my mother retreated to her bedroom at the far end of the house, drew the curtains, and closed the door.

I can remember each and every sting. And how even a dead bee can sting. “Hm, look at that,” my father said. And to my five-year-old eyes, the gold-and-black stripes on the hallway mat looked like a key—a shiny key that would unlock who knew what magical adventure. So I picked it up. I don’t remember much else except that I went to kindergarten late that day, my thumb still swollen and red.

Sort the pieces:
Spread out all the pieces and flip them face up so you can easily see the image; look for similar colors, patterns, and shapes to group pieces together.
* * *
Late one winter afternoon, the department business manager steps into my office, wagging her cell phone in my direction. “Kendra Kimball?” she says.
“Pardon me,” I say to the student sitting across from me. “Who?”

My big brother, the eldest among us siblings, had to take the final highly competitive middle school entrance exam—a nightmare for 10- to 12-year-old kids aiming for the best schools. Determined to give him the best chance, Dad transferred him to a class taught by his friend…

I squeeze past a bedraggled goat and other passengers as I snag a stained seat by the window. My foot gently scooches a live chicken to the side while I stuff my belongings below me on the floor. The scented mixture of sweat and damp livestock permeates the air. Outside the bus window where I sit in Nchelenge, young boys shout at riders to buy food. I open a book, attempting to tune out all the chaos around me.

There’s no proper reaction when your mother tells you over the phone, “Your father is dead.”
And how words hang in your throat as she explains, through sobs, he died in a tractor accident, when the vehicle flipped, and the rear tire ran over his head—he took his last breath in your mother’s arms.
So you book the fastest flight from San Diego to Pittsburgh.

Malignant neoplasm of the kidney.
Forest Hill Memorial Gardens.
October 3, 2020.
A rumbling danced under my feet. A hearse violently reversed towards your tombstone. A myriad of cars flooded into the cemetery. Standing under the tent, my hair growing back thick locs falling over my face again. Clods of dirt lifted themselves, peeling away from your body as if the earth were inhaling backward.