17th and Calloway by Jessica Rae Hahn
Before my brother kicked out the rear window of a police car from inside and said, “there, now you have a reason to arrest me,” I was lounging against a fire hydrant, picking at hangnails, watching as he and my mother fought it out, he claiming he had every right, she, bleached hair frazzled and electric in the glow of street lamps, demanding to know where he was getting the stuff, which was a silly question given that we all knew he just slipped some on the sly from her boyfriend, a man who changed daily from the quiet guy who drove me to the grocery store to buy eggs, day-old bread, and powdered milk with food-stamps, to the guy who got me to beg our neighbors for Sudafed for my terribly ill mother, who really was terribly ill, but not with a cold, because if she’d had a cold on the night the police showed up again, maybe she wouldn’t have been able to yell as loud as she did at the officer, who, after arresting my brother, pushed my mother into the back seat of a different cruiser, then looked at me as I stared at my own bewildered reflection, asked if I wanted to end up like that too, and told me if I hiked my skirt up a little higher he’d give me a lift to the corner of 17th and Calloway, where I, an eleven-year-old girl with nothing but a couple of eraser tips under my shirt, would fit in just fine.
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About the Author
Jessica Rae Hahn
Born: Bertha, Minnesota, USA
Now Resides: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Bio: Jessica Rae Hahn is not the “Jessica Hahn” you’ll find on the internet. And she has never met Jim Bakker. Rather, she is a young writer who has just finished a stint as the nonfiction editor of Redivider. She loves David Bowie, Swedish Christmas foods, Gabriel García Márquez, baking French breads, ballet exercises, Tristan & Iseult, winters cold enough to chap your skin, Tivoli Gardens, anise-flavored candies, the Mapparium in Boston, heavy quilts, Maureen Gibbon, and Shaker cookbooks. What really gets her goat is when train conductors close doors on people. If you see her, say hello.
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image by StellarNebula.
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