The Best American Short Stories 2018 by Roxane Gay

Author:Roxane Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She loses track of the dots. She loses track of herself.

Alicia and her daughter are released. Marta is sent back. She doesn’t see Esme again.

And yet. Every day she waits for him by the front door. She sits on the floor, knitting her fingers in her lap.

And then—

“Gabriel!”

She scrambles to her feet. Mixed up in a tangle of people, there he is. His dark, combed hair, the freckle beneath his eye. God in Heaven! It’s him! She lunges forward and wrests him from the crowd. She falls to her knees and pulls him into her arms. She’s so flooded with shock and gratitude that she can hardly breathe. Her nose in his hair, the smell of him almost unbearably sweet. Her hands cupping his shoulders, those same slight shoulders, as small and breakable as eggs. “Gabriel,” she whispers again and again. She can feel him shuddering. “It’s O.K.,” she tells him through tears.

Around her there is cheering. Or is it shouting? Why is everyone shouting? A woman’s voice saying, “Don’t touch my boy! Mateo!” And why does she feel hands on her now, prying her away, tugging her back as she reaches for him—isn’t it him? isn’t it? but it looked so much like him!—hands that carry her down the hall, hands that shove her into a room, hands that turn the key in the lock.

She crumples to the floor and blinks in the dark. From inside the box, she screams.

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