#115 The American Embassy- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#115 The American Embassy- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We are waiting in a line at the American Embassy. This line is for Visa applicants. The narrator is a woman, injured and distraught. She hurt herself jumping from her balcony to escape two armed government agents. They came to look for her husband , but not finding him ended up shooting her 4-year old son.

Now , she is waiting in this line to leave her home for good. Her husband is a pro-democracy journalist who feld a few weeks before. He writes for the New Nigeria, a progressive paper, who’s anti-government stance has caused his arrest many times.

“He fights repression with his pen, he gives a voice to the voiceless, he makes the world know.” A recent article about General Abacha’s history of abuse seems to have been the last straw, and the next arrest will likely be a permanent situation.

After burying her son, she is waiting on this line, but she doesn’t want to share her sons death with the American Embassy interviewer, afraid that when she does she will be called a liar. She is not ready to face that harsh rejection, she is not ready to leave the place where her son has died.

Notable Passage: “See how the people are pleading with the soldiers…Our people have become too used to pleading with soldiers.”

Rating: 8-8-8-9 Total= 33

#114 Modern Love- T.C. Boyle

#114 Modern Love- T.C. Boyle

A man and a woman go on a first date, Thai food, movie, late drinks. It all seems to go well until she tells him how freaked out she was.

“I can’t tell how much of a strain it was for me the other night…I got drunk from fear…blind panic. I couldn’t help thinking I’d wind up with hepatitis or dysentery or dengue fever or something.”

The woman was a germaphobe of the highest order (and a little agoraphobic as well). But, he liked her so he gave it a shot. For a month they went out to clean places, museums, vegetarian restaurants, etc. And all this without nary a kiss, physical contact was the germs playground.

“There was the look of the mad saint in her eye, the obsessive, the mortifier of the flesh, but I didn’t care. She was lovely, wilting, clear-eyed, and pure, as cool and matchless as if she’d stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, and I was in love.”

Finally, after she professing her love and deems him worthy, he gets an invite to het sterile abode for a macro-biotic dinner and a viewing from the plastic love seat of het favorite movie, Boy in the Bubble. “What a perfect life, Don’t you envy him?”

How far will she take her obsession? Pretty far it turns out, and even as far as he’s willing to follow for love, it still might not be enough, after all he works for a show company…and you know how dirty feet are!

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 33

#113 Eating Dirt- Carolyn Cooke

#113 Eating Dirt- Carolyn Cooke

This story appeared in the 1998 O. Henry Prize Stories collection. This is my first time reading Cooke.

There isn’t much I find in this story to like. We find ourselves at summer family picnic with two distinct sides of the family. They appear to be poor, very poor, dirt eating poor. The visiting family is catty, petty, judgmental, especially the grandma.

Grand has a new grandson, Troy, she hasn’t seen, noticed, or cares to know about. When she finds out about him, she goes into a drunken rage, having to be held back. She even goes so far as threatening to shoot people. Her rant is so convincing people hide the frightened Troy, not sure what kind of damage Grand is actually capable of.

Even to the very end, these characters are superficial and the ones we know the most about become loathsome. There is no redemption or moment of familial warmth. I’m not exactly sure why we needed to read about these people.

Notable Passage: “I think my life was more real to me when I was six than it is now.”

Rating: 6-3-4-3 Total= 16

#112 Emergency- Denis Johnson

#112 Emergency- Denis Johnson

A few years ago somebody left Tree of Smoke at my bar. The book was on the Pulitzer short list. It was never claimed from the lost and found so I took it home and read it, loved it, passed it on to the next person in a fun read-it-forward string of events. I am very happy to be reading one of his short stories.

Just like his book, everything here is completely off kilter, bonkers, fubar. There is a bunch of craziness going on in an Emergency room. The orderly has been mopping up the same blood from the O.R. floor for hours. Its like the blood spot from Macbeth.

A man comes in with a knife sticking out of one eye, the other eye is plastic, but he can still see.

“[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk- that is, me- standing next to the orderly, George, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.

‘What seems to be the problem?’ he said”

When asked by the hospital staff what happened:

“My wife did it, I was asleep”

“Do you want the police?”

“Not unless I die.”

Everyone in the story is messed up, or on drugs, it’s the theatre of the absurd, or something out of the LSD crazed mind of Ken Kesey.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#111 The Harvest- Amy Hempel

#111 The Harvest- Amy Hempel

It took me a minute or two to get into the rhythm of this one, but once I did, the payoff was worth it. This is a kind of bait and switch story. The narrator tell you of her accident and her recovery.  The she tells you she left out some stuff:

“I leave a lot out when I tell the truth. The same when I write a story.”

Writers like to write about their writing a lot. When they do it in the context of a story it can sometimes sound pretty narcissistic or at least come across as gimmicky. Not here, I loved it. Hempel is a meticulous author, and leaves no rough edges to get caught up on.

In the end we’re left not knowing which story is real, or if any of it is real via the fictional narrator or the real-life author.

Notable Passage: “I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because its true—nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.”

Rating: 9-9-10-8 Total= 36