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Bastard Child from Ragdoll Redeemed, cont..
“Afternoon, Elizabeth,” Lucy says, smiling. “Thought you might like these. We’ve got enough to go around.” As she sees the two over- ripe avocados and six figs that Lucy is offering her, tears of...
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Bastard Child from Ragdoll Redeemed, cont..
Tightening her fists into balls of rage, Veronica keeps her word and begins to scream. “God damn it, mother, shut up!” Elizabeth’s chin quivers as smoke from her cigarette crawls around her sweaty...
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Ragdoll Redeemed: The House with No Paint
My mother—God bless her—couldn’t carry through on many things. She couldn’t hold her temper, a husband, or a job. Maybe it was failing to marry my real father that made her so determined to never...
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When Hugging Feels Creepy (Ragdoll Redeemed)
Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, an elderly couple, lived two doors away from us. Mrs. Kelly was always kind to me. She freely offered fruit from her trees and fresh-baked peanut butter cookies with a glass of...
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Blowing Smoke Rings Before Jesus, Mary & Joseph
WHILE SITTING ON our twin beds, sharing a cigarette beneath Grandma’s beloved statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Grandma and I practiced blowing smoke rings. We had gotten so good at this game...
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Does “half-brother” Mean Less of a Brother?
Lighting another cigarette after handing the first lit one to me, Grandma continued, “But as much as he loved her, her poor grammar got on his nerves real bad. He knowed that he could never bring her...
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Who’s Sorry Now?
Grandma went on, “Both were broken and scarred real bad from their different experiences. Neither of them understood ’bout the lost letters, but in the end it didn’t matter anyway, because Roland had...
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Like a Bundle of Dirty Laundry
ONE AFTERNOON, WHEN I was buying a pair of shoes, I flirted with a cute shoe salesman. Slight of build, with blond hair and deep dimples, he seemed funny and engaging. After he insisted that I try...
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Meeting My Father
“DON’T EVER CALL me again!” my paternal grandmother warned harshly as she hung up the phone. This abrupt conversation, actually just an answer to my greeting of “Hello,” left me bewildered....
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Meeting My Father For the First Time
I had met my grandparents one time, briefly, when I was nineteen. Bill and I had driven up to New England to see his parents, and I persuaded him to make a side trip to “the grandparents’.” While my...
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