DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE — JEANNINE A. COOK

My story, Down By The Riverside, was just chosen as a feature in Adelaide Magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

“She was used to the flinching. The fiddling. The mess. The begging. The crying. The blood. These women with their thick thighs and thin thighs and saggy thighs and shriveled thighs came here to spread them. She was as close to God as they could get.

“Miss.”

They’d whisper down her hallway.

They knew to ring the bell, that only they knew existed. They’d come with their differences, but they couldn’t help being the same.

“I changed my mind.”

“They say I will die.”

“This baby is sick.”

“I don’t know the father.”

“I’ve started to show.”

“My father raped me.

“My grandfather.”

“My uncle.”

“My brother.”

“My neighbor.”

“My nephew.”

“My friend. He raped me.”

So she’d do it. Her clear eyes made her feel invisible to them and she couldn’t see them either. As a formality she’d run her fingers across their foreheads, over their eyebrows, down their noses, and around their lips. The only thing she ever remembered were their voices. She could recall the slightest tremors from aisles away in the marketplace. There goes flat face or bumpy face or wrinkled face—-pretending not to know me.”