The Albino Album by Chavisa Woods

Author:Chavisa Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: chavisa woods, fiction, albino, queer, epic, southern gothic, novel, contemporary, coming-of-age, race, sexuality, LGBT, art, romance
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2013-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Track Three

The Cat Came Back

“How the hell I end up here, I’ll never know,” she told herself as she pedaled her rusty road bike through the curtain of heat that still hung in the air of the late, August afternoon. “How the hell I end up here, I’ll never know.” But that wasn’t really true at all. She did know. When she thought about it, it all made perfect sense, actually. When she put her life in clear order, there was no other option for where she might have ended up.

The house sat back a ways from the small country road that wound its way sleepily through the town populated by its three-hundred tired inhabitants. She giggled when she saw the sign propped up against the junker car, which seemed to be growing from the dirt patch that was the lawn.

Free Kittens For Sale

(Free!!!)

Cindy laughed out loud as she read it, a cloud of dust trailing behind her thin wheels, the grocery basket jiggling on the handlebars. Earlier that morning, she’d stopped at this house on her way out of town. There were almost as many dirty kids as there were flea-ridden kittens then. Four of them, breathing through their eyes, every one, she thought. But it wasn’t just kittens they’d been selling that morning. A man was there, a beanpole-looking sort, in overalls and covered in dirt as well. He had brought some produce and was selling tomatoes and things as part of the yard sale the four eye-breathing kids and their disabled old grandma were holding. The grandmother sat up by the porch, a mound of a creature seated in an electronic wheelchair, hooked up to a breathing machine. Her white dress was slightly yellowed matching the color of little flowers that patterned it. On a table in front of her sat a spread of whatnots, angel and Indian figurines, an old purse, a top hat, and some romance novels, all marked fifty cents. Cindy bought two tomatoes and an apple from the young man, but did not stop to look at the old woman’s spread, cause ever since she could remember, handicappeds gave her the creeps. She stopped by the where the kids were sitting and took a gander at the kittens. A cardboard box bedded with torn towels held six kittens looked over by the dirt-crusted children, three boys and a girl. She reached down and tapped one on the nose, a kitten that is.

“You gonna buy one?” the youngest boy asked. He looked to be about six years old. He wore a dirty pair of swimming trunks and a stretched jersey too big for his size, bearing the number 69. But he was smiling and bright, unlike the three other children. She could see how they had come out, one little miracle right after another. Plop. Plop. Plop. Like apples from an overripe tree. The two other boys were identical twins, somewhere near nine, and the girl couldn’t be a day over ten. The twin boys wore matching blue-jean overalls.

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.