A projector screen lit up in the front of the cavernous room, and the teacher told us to pay attention. There was a white tower in the center of the screen. An announcer’s voice droned, counting down by seconds.
Sitting up, I reach down into my slick, green flight bag and pick up my English to Arabic dictionary. Thumbing through the well-worn pages, I search for the words I will need today. Hospital. Doctor. Medicine.
We dug into the ground, uprooting the shrubs and tossing them aside. We dug out stones and roots, de-housed spiders the size of plump ravioli and worms like fleshy shoelaces. Three feet into the ground we found an arrowhead…
I slouched at the end of the exam table in the crepe-paper robe, and to avoid crying uncontrollably, I spoke ill of my sister-in-law: “She’s an 18-year old dropout and just had a baby.”
He was six feet tall, unyielding yet benevolent (plush stuffed with foam pellets), the clean eternal green of AstroTurf, a gorgeous anomaly at a depressing little tag sale