American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cardenas

Author:Mauro Javier Cardenas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

Ada’s Father

Dear humans, Ada’s father says, I grew up with a family of roly polys, my parents left me to fight in the anteater war and never came back, I don’t want to hear this right now, Ada says, instructing Leonora to skip the recording of his father reading a story she’d written for a school competition when she was ten years old (when she was a sophomore at Yale her father had sent her the photos he’d taken of that story along with a message explaining why he was sending her this recording of her story — isn’t it amusing that I know you want to talk to me, her father wrote, and of course I want to talk to you, but we end up not talking very often because what is there to say? — you don’t want to tell me about your boring day, Ada wrote, and because I inherited your sparkling introversion I also don’t want to tell you or anyone else about my boring day — right and yet while the day is happening, her father wrote, I’m always either narrating it to you or having a conversation with you in my head — that sounds too melodramatic, Ada wrote — you are correct, her father wrote, these imaginary conversations and / or narrations don’t happen every day, and when they do happen they don’t happen all throughout the day, and so I wonder if I have come to assume you’re one of my omniscient narrators, always watching me, the other narrators being my mother, your mother, the Virgin Mary, my Catholic high school idea of god, in others words perhaps I don’t feel like telling you about my day not only because the telling would be boring but because I assume you already know about my day since you were there, watching it unfold —), my new family is really, um, how do I put this, strange, Ada’s father says, did I imagine I said skip this track or are you low on batteries, Ada says, that’s not a track that’s your father reading a story of yours, Leonora Carrington says, let me just make one thing clear, Ada’s father says, I’m this tall, that’s right, Ada (as her father) says, I’m the shortest one in your grade, maybe in the whole school, maybe in the whole world, and as Ada instructs Leonora to call her sister again, an enforcement patrol approaches her on the Bay Bridge, staying level with her, and as the officer on the passenger side assesses her with what looks like a periscope on his hand and apparently clears her because the patrol car is speeding away, and as her sister in Bogotá continues to not answer her phone, Leonora continues to not skip her roly poly story as read by her father, a story she’d shared with him when she was ten years old and they were driving to City Lights Books and she said can I read you

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.