Joi came out of the kiln after class one afternoon. She struck up a conversation while Danielle was glazing her handmade jug. She appeared several decades behind, with her asymmetrical hair and hoop earrings, and there was a bullet hole surrounded by dried blood on her patchwork sweater.
“Thought you’d be scared or something.” Joi smiled at Danielle. “You cool, though.”
Danielle smiled back. She too was surprised at how well she held it together. Her heart was thunder inside her chest, but she sat still and swallowed her nerves. There was something about Joi that called to her and toggled her core. She was eager to become friends, unlike the people Danielle met during her pottery classes at the Art Center that summer. They seemed plastic, always smiling and waving, but rarely speaking, unless it was to instruct. They told Danielle how to extract clay from underneath topsoil at a nearby construction site and showed her how to turn it into the clay slip she used to bond her work. But, then they tried to designate her as the sole clay slip maker for all the class projects, a role that she refused.
Being cooped up with fake classmates at the Art Center, Danielle quickly came to appreciate the folks in her own neighborhood. Sometimes they annoyed her by being too loud and heavy-handed, but she never felt forced to work for anyone’s approval. Her close friends were warm and real. They were teenagers who, like her, wanted to realize their dreams without the reminder of being a shoo-in from the city’s underbelly, getting by on summer arts grants for at-risk youth.
After the first month of pottery class, Danielle gave up complaining to her parents about her issues with the Art Center. They claimed it all came with the territory of adjusting to an advantaged life and insisted she learn to get along with people. It was the only way to get ahead without being moved around, left behind. Did she think Miles Davis would’ve mastered the trumpet if he hadn’t learned to steel himself against that kind of behavior? Would Ntozake Shange have become a great poet if she cried every time a challenge slapped her down?
The frustration and loneliness poking at Danielle was dampening her love for molding the Earth with her hands. Today, although jarring, it was also refreshing to meet someone so open and different, even if Joi was only a ghost.
“What you making?”
Danielle kept her distance as Joi neared the work table. She tightened the grip around her glaze brush to keep her hand from shaking.
“It’s called a baluster jug.”
“Looks crooked as fuck.”
Danielle sighed and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She stared at the glaze in her container. This was only her third project. Her starter mug and her pot had both turned out better than expected. She figured she was ready for a challenge, one that would impress her classmates. She’d seen a few of the advanced students opting to tackle the jug and, when done right, it was pure beauty. She was a good kneader and took pride in working the clay with her hands, relieving it of air bubbles and shaping it into the perfect ball. But, after failing to center the clay on the wheel twice, Danielle realized she’d never get it aligned correctly. She kept the jug, accepting its warped curves and clumsy spout. She avoided her classmates’ pity by waiting until class was over and everyone was gone to remove it from the kiln and apply the finishing touch.
“You do realize that’s the point, don’t you?” Danielle said defensively. “Balusters aren’t supposed to be balanced. They’re made to be offbeat and antique-like. It adds to their appeal.”
“Sounds stupid to me.”
“You’re a ghost,” said Danielle. “Doesn’t really matter what you think.”
“Not all of us like to be called ghosts.”
“But, that’s what you are.”
“No, I’m a haint.” Joi pointed at her patchwork sweater. The dried blood around the bullet hole seemed brighter and thicker. “You do realize the difference, don’t you?”
Danielle licked her lips, her scalp tingling. She remembered the word ‘haint’ from a story in her freshman AP English course last semester. It was a long, painful 19th century tale. Another slave narrative that was supposed to make her grateful to her ancestors and inspire her to aim high in life.
‘Haint’, Danielle learned, was a term sometimes used to describe phantoms in Antebellum South who couldn’t find their way to the other side because of their violent deaths. They were restless spirits—forever tortured, always scaring.
“You’re not hot in that?” Danielle asked glibly. She studied Joi’s bark-colored skin and the gap between her two front teeth. Her highlighted bangs—large and fluffy—reminded Danielle of old Polaroid photos she’d seen of her parents in their teens. One, of her mom at a Salt ‘n Pepa concert, clad in spandex and herringbone chains. The other, of her dad with his siblings at a family gathering, all of them sporting grins and jheri curls.
“Why would I be?” Joi chuckled. “I’m dead, remember?”
“Are you lost?”
Joi laughed harder. Soil fell out of her ears as she floated closer to the table.
“I have to go.” Danielle rose and put her glaze brush in the sink. Her legs felt rubbery, like boiling noodles. She wished she’d left right after class with everyone else.
“Fine. I’ll go with you,” said Joi.
“Haints can’t leave the place where they died.”
“Who says I died here?” Joi asked. “And, how you know? Are you dead?”
“That’s the rules.”
“Only in movies.”
“But—“
“I go wherever I want.” Joi crossed her arms. “Nobody’s the boss of me.”
Outside, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. Danielle reluctantly went with Joi out to the Art Center’s parking lot and onto the sidewalk. They passed by a pet boutique, yoga studio, coffee shop, and several galleries.
“Bet you believe haints only appear in the South, too,” Joi said to Danielle. “And, that shit about painting the ceilings blue to ward us off.”
She walked through a man jogging with his Yorkie. The dog growled and barked until its owner scooped it into his arms.
“You think we’re tarred and feathered spooks who go around humming Negro spirituals all day, don’t you?”
Danielle ignored the question.
“I’m the only one who can see you,” she said, more to herself than to Joi. This, she should’ve known, but even with the bullet hole and the dried blood, Joi seemed so real and present. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to Danielle that no one else would be aware of the spirit she’d crossed.
Joi popped her tongue and started walking again. They strolled in silence until they reached a cannabis dispensary.
“Wait, so weed is legal now?” Joi’s face lit up. “Like, marijuana? Herb? Mary Jane?!”
“It’s not that simple,” Danielle said. “You need a card.”
“But, still! Never thought I’d see the day when folks could buy dope like they buy gum.”
Joi chuckled, a new thought hitting her. “I guess I didn’t see the day, actually, but you know what I’m saying? Back then, only way Andre’s and Shameka’s got cash for weed was on the corner or in some abandoned crib if they wanted to stay clear of jail. These Josh’s and Amy’s got it easy now.”
“You sold weed?” Danielle’s question wound up sounding more like a statement. She imagined Joi being caught in the crossfire of a drug bust gone wrong.
“No, my boyfriend did. Gutter got dough, but he was a lightweight, compared to some others on the block.”
“Gutter?”
“Oh, excuse me, Ms. Danielle,” Joi said mockingly. “Rick was his government name. He dreamed of making it to the big leagues and dealing coke, but I didn’t want him getting high off his own supply.” She pressed one of her nostrils in and pretended to snort cocaine off her hand.
Danielle turned away, but Joi caught her by the arm.
“Yo, I was joking! You never seen the movie Scarface?”
“My dad wouldn’t let me watch it,” Danielle said to Joi. “He says anyone foolish enough to glorify that type of lifestyle makes it easier for people to write us off as low-lifes.”
“Sounds like your dad didn’t have to grow up poor.”
Danielle wasn’t sure how to respond. There was an urge to push back, to tell Joi how stupid and wrong she was. But, what was the point in arguing with a haint?
She absently stared at the long line of people wrapped around the dispensary and thought about her parents’ heated discussion in the family’s living room a few nights ago. From Danielle’s bedroom upstairs, their voices sounded muffled but taut with anger. She didn’t have to know what was being said to know they were fighting about money.
The daughter of an architect and a professor, Danielle’s mom never let her dad forget they were living beneath her standards. Or, what her life could’ve been like had she not gotten pregnant by a high school dropout who sold newspapers to support his sick grandmother after ruining his chances of being a pro baseball player from a knee injury.
After Danielle’s big brother, Ronald, was born, her mom started working at a grocery store and moved in with her dad at Big Momma’s old row house in the neighborhood he adored despite its decline. They stayed in the home after his grandmother passed, living mortgage-free but paycheck-to-paycheck. Her mom’s relatives criticized her for ‘marrying down’, a point Danielle noticed she let slip when urging her dad to get his GED and buy the auto repair shop he’d worked at since her birth. And, when she talked him into paying half of Ronald’s tuition to a private college across the country that they couldn’t afford. And, when she persuaded him to let Danielle develop some culture with this summer’s pottery class at the Art Center. And, every time her mom complained about them not getting to travel abroad, or collect high-end art, or any of those things that the families of those in Danielle’s pottery class probably did but never shared with her because it was impolite to brag.
“What’s a Farmer’s Market?” Joi pointed to a row of food vendors they approached at the end of the corner. “That used to be a Food-For-Cheap Mart.”
A mass of people browsed and bought fruits, vegetables, jams, teas, baked goods, frozen meats, and crafts at the stations on the street’s end. The merchants greeted customers, bagged items, and tidied their areas to make room for new crowds flooding their booths.
“Why would anybody buy this pricey shit for it to go bad in a few days?” Joi asked. She frowned at a vegetable display. “You could get a 10-pack of hot dogs for under two bucks and make that last for longer than a week.”
She thumped a kale stand. Several bundles toppled to the ground.
“Stop that.” Danielle picked up some of the fallen kale. “This is healthier.” The vegetable’s leaves felt cool and fresh between her fingers. She turned the bundle over in her hands, resisting an urge to rub it across her forehead and on the back of her neck where sweat pooled under the weight of her braids.
Danielle pictured her mom putting bags of discounted groceries –fruit, vegetables, and packaged meats—into the trunk of her car before they spoiled nearly every night after her shift at the grocery store ended. It was one of the perks Danielle enjoyed and had taken for granted. As much as her parents obsessed over money, she couldn’t see her family eating the way they did if it wasn’t for the benefits of her mom’s job.
One of the farmer’s market vendors, a redhead in an apron with long curved nails, appeared at the other side of the vegetable stand. She smiled at Danielle and fiddled with the merchandise, but Danielle knew she was eyeing her to see what she would do with the bundle of kale in her hands. She hoped none of the people from the pottery class were around. She didn’t want anyone to be burdened with having to defend her if it came down to the vendor accusing her of stealing.
“You worry about the wrong things,” Joi said, rolling her eyes.
Danielle touched her closed mouth. She hadn’t said anything aloud. Joi was reading her thoughts.
“Let’s go before you get caught up.”
Danielle put the kale back on the display and let Joi lead her past the farmer’s market. They rounded a corner where they neared a large plot of land. Danielle recognized it as the area where she’d gone with her pottery classmates to extract the dirt for her clay slip at the beginning of summer. Then, it was only an abandoned property filled with debris. Now, they stood on a construction site that appeared to be in the middle of excavating a piece of ground to make a new foundation.
Joi pointed to the signs secured on top of the property. One of them read ‘Honor Black Experiences’. A few feet away, another sign read ‘Welcome, Future Home of Logan’s Beer Garden and Coworking Space’.
“Your point? I like beer,” Danielle lied.
“I’m no more of a haint than this neighborhood,” Joi said. “Death by violence comes in many forms.”
Danielle kicked at a soiled paper latte cup on the curb. She felt herself growing more irritated with Joi. This spook with her ghetto talk and outdated clothes who’d bounced into her life without warning. A has-been who now wanted to educate Danielle on violence and death.
If Joi was such an expert in that field, why hadn’t she known enough not to get killed? And, why had she waited years to reveal herself in a neighborhood that, with its flaws, was clearly working against the crime infestation which turned her into a statistic?
For the first time, Danielle was glad no one else could see Joi. She couldn’t imagine other people’s reactions to a girl like her, who wasn’t supposed to be here, in this area, at this time.
“The people here don’t see you either, Danielle.” Joi cocked her head. Genuine concern spread over her face. “And, you’re alive.”
“I never told you my name,” Danielle said, backing away.
“You’re stuck wanting a world that pretends to want you.”
“Shut up.”
“The more you want it, the harder you try.”
“Go away.”
“The harder we try, the faster we fade.”
“Just stop it!” A wave of terror, thick and spiraling, struck Danielle. She tried to move, but she was trapped. A block of skin and bones stuck to the ground.
Joi’s eyes blackened. She mashed her forehead against Danielle’s, and their surroundings morphed into someone’s house party. A stereo blasted rap music from a corner in the crowded room. Whiffs of popcorn, hair spritz and marijuana smoke stroked the air. Teenagers with hoop earrings, Kangol hats, leg warmers and Adidas sweat suits sipped from their Solo cups. Bodies were everywhere. Standing against walls. Leaning over plastic-covered couches. Sitting on counters and tables.
Danielle eyed the packed living room, looking for Joi who’d slipped out of sight. She peered out the curtain closest to her and saw more teenagers spilling out of cars onto the snow-covered curb. Churches, liquor stores, check cashing marts, and beauty supply shops lined the same street where she and Joi had walked minutes earlier. Above the buildings, a billboard read ‘Happy 1st Martin Luther King Holiday Weekend – January 1986’ next to the slain leader’s photo.
Danielle gasped, dread gripping her. How did she get thrown back a few decades? Was this some type of sick joke? Her mind raced with thoughts of ways to escape this world that Joi had plopped her in.
“Excuse me.” Danielle tried to get the attention of a girl standing next to her in ripped jeans and an oversized leather jacket. The girl bobbed her head to the music and waved to a group of people who’d entered the house.
Danielle realized she was now the invisible one. She chewed on the thought for a moment, confused about why it didn’t feel as terrible as she expected it to. Part of her was determined to find Joi or risk being stuck here, concealed and behind her time, forever. Another part of her felt eerily comfortable around these people. None of them could physically see her, but they still felt close to her. And good, like home.
Someone turned up the stereo’s volume. People moved to the center of the living room and started dancing. Their limber bodies snaked and popped in ways that Danielle had only seen in old movies. Or, heard about from her parents’ teenage memories and stories. None of the people in her neighborhood or her school danced. It wasn’t cool. But, here, the scene was electric, with everyone’s energy, rhythm, and sweat oozing from their pores.
Joi appeared in the middle of the action. She was wearing the same sweater that she wore when Danielle met her, but it looked brand new. No bullet hole or dried blood. The girl commanded the crowd’s attention with her movements. Each time she transitioned into a new dance, she stuck out her tongue for added effect which turned her performance into something magical.
“Ladies and gents!” A boy with a pierced nose and red sneakers came into the center of the room. He slid his arm around Joi’s waist and signaled for the stereo’s volume to be turned down. “It’s cold as hell. But, let me remind you it’s the holiday weekend and we don’t have school tomorrow!”
The crowd erupted in cheers, claps, and stomps.
“Gutter, get out my damn house before you start some trouble!” A boy with a shag in a Cardinals shirt pointed to the front door. The gold tooth in his mouth twinkled when he grinned. He high-fived a guy with a high top fade and tracksuit standing next to him.
The crowd dwindled as people drifted back to different corners of the house. Pierced Nose and High Top Fade followed Cardinals Shirt to a door that led to the basement. Joi hung onto Pierced Nose, grinning as they went downstairs. Danielle followed, maintaining a distance, while taking in every inch of the girl. Her lively eyes. The poofy hair and manicured nails. She was just a normal teenager, so dumb in love with a boy that her skin glowed.
“Your Pops know you fucking with that girl?” Cardinals Shirt asked Pierced Nose. ”He already got you for selling them dime bags. Make him a grandfather before you get to GreatManor and he’ll be up in that ass again.”
“Nah, don’t sweat it.” Pierced Nose pulled Joi close to him on the basement’s tattered couch. She nuzzled her face against his cheek. He didn’t move or smile, displaying an unnatural cool. Danielle decided she didn’t like him.
“He not applying to GreatManor,” Joi said to Cardinals Shirt. “That’s his dad’s alma mater. Gutter got his own dreams.”
“And, what’s that?” Cardinals Shirt asked. “He gonna marry you, work at Burger King, and hustle weed on the side for the rest of his life?”
“It’s more than what your broke ass got going on.” Joi rolled her neck at Cardinals Shirt.
“Yo, get your girl before I snap on her.”
“Relax, man.” Pierced Nose grinned. “I’m just looking at other options. Maybe I’ll stay here after senior year. Go to tech school or community college. Maybe I won’t do school anymore. I don’t see either one of you applying anywhere.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t us,” said High Top Fade. He leaned against a wall across from the couch and played with the zipper of his tracksuit. “We been knowing you since second grade, Rick. Your Pops hard as fuck on you, but he mean well, especially when it’s about planning a future. You got what the rest of us don’t, and that’s a shot at moving up in the world. Getting out this raggedy ass ‘hood. Don’t let Joi, or nobody, get in the way of that. You gonna regret it, plain and simple.”
Emotion swelled inside of Danielle. She slumped on the bottom basement step, letting the word ‘regret’ linger in her mind. She saw her mom bringing in discounted groceries late at night after her shift. The way her purse sagged off her shoulder as she emptied items from the bags. The silence between them as they fell into their quality-time mother-daughter routine: her mom placing food in their fridge and freezer, and Danielle, folding the grocery bags before putting them in the kitchen’s cupboard.
For Danielle, it felt good to have her mom all to herself in those moments. It was one of the few times she saw her look less irritated by the world. She seemed light. Free.
“I bet your ol’ man don’t even know you go by Gutter now.” Cardinals Shirt said to Pierced Nose. “Probably put a bullet in you if he found out.”
Pierced Nose rose and pulled a handgun from the waist of his pants.
“Not without his gun, he won’t.”
“Whoa!” Cardinals Shirt said, bucking his eyes. “You crazy? What you doing with that?”
“Protection. What else?” Pierced Nose poked the air with his gun. “I get pressed every time I’m in your ‘hood. A month ago, it was the cops. Last week, it was those fools around the corner. Yesterday, it was the cops again, and I didn’t even have dope on me. Shit has to change.”
Joi rubbed Pierced Nose’s arm and stuck her chest out like she’d just won the lottery. Watching them, Danielle clutched her hands together as sweat gathered between her fingers. The saliva in her mouth thickened and worry bubbled in her chest. She wished she could be visible long enough to grab Joi and shake her. It was like watching a movie from the inside. Existing in a story that had been carefully scripted and was being played out by characters who fit the roles but didn’t realize they were part of the plot.
“Let me see that.” Cardinals Shirt snatched the gun from Pierced Nose and inspected it. “Your square ass don’t even know how to use this. Let me hold it for a while.
“Nah, give it back.”
Pierced Nose grabbed for his gun, but Cardinals Shirt was faster.
“Why not, homie? I’m the one living in the ghetto, right? That means I need some defense.”
“Get your own defense. Give me the—“
A loud pop filled the room. Danielle screamed and covered her mouth with her hands. She saw the handgun drop. High Top Fade’s face twisting in fear. Cardinals Shirt backing away. Pierced Nose kneeling over Joi’s body lying motionless on the floor in a growing pool of blood.
“Shit!” Cardinals Shirt kicked the handgun across the floor. “What the fuck you do?”
“Me?!” Pierced Nose held up his hands. “I didn’t do shit! You’re the one who took the gun.”
“You the one who pulled the trigger, dumb ass.”
Pierced Nose ran up the basement stairs through Danielle to lock the basement door. On his way back down, she grabbed at him, squeezing nothing but air.
High Top Fade let out a deep, low groan as he slid his back down the wall.
“Get your punk ass up, Marcus!” Cardinals Shirt picked up a cordless phone near the couch.
“What are you doing?” Pierced Nose asked.
“Calling 911, fool.”
“Are you crazy? You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
Pierced Nose grabbed Cardinals Shirt by the collar. The two of them scuffled on the floor, banging into walls and furniture.
“Wait a minute,” Pierced Nose said after he seized the phone. “Let’s think about this.”
“What the fuck we need to think about?” Cardinals Shirt pointed at Joi. “Your girl got shot. She need help.”
“She look dead,” High Top Fade said.
“Shut up, man!” shouted Pierced Nose. “If she’s, you know, dead, we can’t just go to the police. They’ll crucify us.”
“Man, fuck that.” Cardinals Shirt reached for the phone and missed. “You think they’re gonna care about framing somebody over a dead Black bitch in the ‘hood? This ain’t your neck of the woods, Rick. It was an accident, so we’ll be alright. And, if we ain’t, you shouldna brought that fucking gun!”
Pierced Nose covered his face and for a second, Danielle thought he was breaking down. When he removed his hand, there was a wildness in his eyes.
“Say you call.” He pointed the phone’s antenna toward the basement ceiling. “What about everyone upstairs? You think all of them will keep their mouths shut when the cops knock on your door?”
“Yeah,” Cardinals Shirt said. “Even if they didn’t, none of them fools was even down here to see what happened. You just wanna save yourself. Scared of what folks gonna say about your square ass. Stop being a bitch and give me the damn phone.”
“Tim, when’s the last time the cops just peacefully entered your house?” Pierced Nose raised his eyebrows. “Is your brother still slanging rock? What if the cops decide they want to make a deal with us? Like, we give up his stash in exchange for them keeping quiet about Joi. Weed might get him a couple months in the pen. But, there’s no telling how long he’d get with a crack possession charge. You ready to risk that?”
“Fuck!” Cardinals Shirt punched the air with his fist. “You got a better plan then? We can’t just leave her here.”
“First,” Pierced Nose tossed the cordless phone on the couch and picked the handgun off the floor, “we need to wipe off any prints.”
“Okay. Then, what?”
Pierced Nose looked down at the floor and closed his eyes. He seemed absorbed in a long prayer. The waiting tangled Danielle. In the time it took for him to respond, a knot had ballooned inside her belly, twisting itself around her ribs. It traveled up her chest and moved through her windpipe. She inhaled, hungry for air.
“We move the body behind the mill,” Pierced Nose finally said.
High Top Fade let out a nervous laugh. His eyes skittered from Pierced Nose to Cardinals Shirt and back to Pierced Nose as he bit his fingernails.
“That mill down the street?” Cardinals Shirt shook his head. “You crazier than I thought if you think we helping you bury this bitch.”
“What choice do we have?” Pierced Nose pleaded. “We have to get her out of your house, don’t we? Where else are we going to take her?”
“What happens when her family start looking for her?”
“I was her family.”
“Come on, man. Her folks are gonna see she ain’t around sooner or later.”
“Are you not hearing me? She doesn’t have family – I was her family!” Pierce Nose repeated. “She’s been staying with me since June. In our basement. My Pops never goes downstairs.”
“And, you didn’t tell us?”
“It wasn’t your business. Anyway, like I said, no one’s going to look for her.”
Danielle got up the courage to walk through the boys. Her feet felt heavy like dumbbells attached to her legs. She sat next to Joi’s body and touched the girl’s lifeless hand. The bitter taste of bile rose in the back of her throat. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She had to make it stop. But, how?
“Marcus.” Pierced Nose snapped his fingers in front of High Top Fade’s face. The boy looked up, his bottom lip shaking. “I need you to get everyone out. Me and Tim will handle the rest.”
While High Top Fade was upstairs clearing the house, Pierced Nose talked Cardinals Shirt into wrapping Joi’s body in an old rug from the basement’s storage closet. Together, they worked to cover their tracks. Danielle watched helplessly as the moon’s ghastly glow spilled through the basement’s sliding door and turned their figures into crooked shadows on the walls. She held onto Joi until the rug folded over the girl’s body and was secured with rope.
“Do you have tools?” Pierced Nose asked Cardinals Shirt.
“Tools?”
“To bury the body.”
They opened the sliding door and walked to the shed in the backyard, their sweaty shirts clinging to their backs. Danielle waited, afraid to move. She shivered uncontrollably from the freezing wind that rushed in through the open door. Her bottom went numb on the hard floor. Through her tears, she dared to look at the rug that swallowed Joi.
Would the boys ever be found out, she wondered. Where were they now, during her time? Had what they done ever come back to haunt them? Did the horror of this night live somewhere deep inside them where they never allowed themselves to reach?
Danielle pictured Pierced Nose becoming a GreatManor man, possibly dating an Elite Hills woman at the university down the street from his, possibly graduating at the top of his class in front of his father beaming at the ceremony, possibly starting his high-paying career and settling somewhere near other GreatManor men and EliteHills women, where he possibly married and started a family. He and his wife, possibly sending their kids to a private summer arts academy that they could afford without financial aid.
Disgust and sadness whirred inside Danielle, clenching her until she felt lightheaded. She stared out the basement’s open door as the boys emerged from the shed carrying shovels. Pierced Nose, one step ahead of Cardinals Shirt. Both of them, mum and determined under the sky’s blanket of stars.
“Please, Joi,” she whispered. “Come back.”
The shrill beeps of a reversing bulldozer pulled her into the present. She sat on her knees and took in the soil—bitter in her nostrils and heavy between her fingers—back on the large plot of land. She studied the construction site. No house party or handguns. Joi, nowhere in sight.
A heaviness rippled through Danielle when she tried to stand up and pulled at her from her middle, like a magnet that threatened to suck out her insides. Her knees landed in the soil again, a quiet rage filling her throat. Her tongue felt stained with the salt from her tears. She listened to the tractor’s roar as it switched gears and trekked forward, threatening to dig the day wide open.
Contributor’s Notes
Lyndsey Ellis is a fiction writer, essayist, and author of Bone Broth (Hidden Timber Books, June 2021). She was a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for her fiction. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Electric Literature, Joyland, Entropy, The Offing, Shondaland, and several anthologies. Ellis is a prose editor for great weather for MEDIA and The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose & Thought. She currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
