2021 Reprints: Week 2

Perhaps I am a wicked girl. 
       That is why I never listen to my mother, or my grandmother, or my great-grandmother. Every morning before school my mother packs my lunchbox—peanut butter and strawberry jam on wheat, an apple, and a thermos of grape juice—while my grandmother scrubs my face until my cheeks are rosy—Ivory soap and a cotton facecloth she knitted herself—and my great-grandmother brushes my hair and plaits it into two braids—boar bristle hairbrush and braids so tight it hurts my head. [continue reading]

This week’s story is “For the Love of a Minotaur” by M.S. Gardner, originally published in Strangelet Journal, September 2016.