humanity
Humanity begins at home.
The Day I Will Never Forget
A world-wide pandemic had hit and turned our lives upside down in the year 2020. I owned a little bakery in Harlem called Johnson’s Buns that was passed down from my grandfather to my father and then to me. With New York being in lockdown we were losing income rapidly, yet our bills were pilling up. For the first time I felt like I was failing my father and grandfather. I was now officially a failure with a giant debt. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing the shop. I grew up in this bakery and have so many fond memories.
By Jocelyn Jayasooria6 years ago in Families
The small black notebook
The small black book fell on the floor and disappeared. I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere - under that ridiculous plush couch that converts into impossible-to-sleep-on bed. I looked under a desk that my son covered with a blue masking tape (long story). I looked under a rebounder (our neighbor downstairs has patience of a saint). “Well…” I exhaled, “it seems to be gone. But where on Earth did it go?”
By Anastasia Fazal6 years ago in Families
A Puzzling Reward
Ruby worked her way effortlessly through puzzles of all different types for all different ages despite only being ten years old herself; killing time and distracting herself from her rumbling stomach. Her mother, Jocelyn, had been designing them as a hobby for as long as Ruby could remember, but she now spent most of her time trying to find jobs to get them out of the women’s shelter and into a place of their own. Jocelyn had taught her everything she knew about puzzles and recounted often that ‘solving puzzles will lead us to the treasures of life.’ When Ruby had seen the light in her mother’s eyes the first time she had said this, she fell in love with them too and they’d done puzzles together ever since. She moved onto the next one, a word game of her mother’s invention consisting of solving anagrams inside multiple bubbles. The idea was to get the first and last letter from each unscrambled word to add to a final bubble to solve a conundrum, one letter was given to help you place the rest. She was deciding if ‘Bury Slime’ was the sensible answer to her mom’s conundrum clue of ‘What I’d most like to see you do…’ when the answer hit her and she smiled, rolling onto her back on the bed. Satisfied, she looked around the room for another to devour but found none left uncompleted. She shook out all the pockets of jeans and coats and managed to salvage a dollar fifty, which she knew she could easily spend in her favorite thrift store across the street. She flung a rucksack filled with a few puzzle books and some snacks onto her back and left a note for her mum in case she came back from her interviews and wondered where she was, and off she went.
By H.H. Callaghan6 years ago in Families
The Journey
The rain was pounding on the window as she struggled to get everyone out of the bar; last call was always challenging on a Friday night and tonight proved no different. Finally the last customer left and she locked the front door. Normally she would start washing the tables but instead she fell into a chair and began to sob. The night had really taken it out of her, the past year had really been a shit show and she could hold her fraught no more.
By Rosemary Lewis6 years ago in Families
Project Evolve
Karissa Halowins was born Christmas of '77 in a small hospital just outside of Salt Lake City. She was one of the last babies born at that hospital before it went bankrupt and shut down from lawsuits due to negligence - one of which was filed by Karissa's father for the loss of her mother while giving birth to her. Karissa was their first and only child.
By Courtney E 6 years ago in Families
Pit
“Money makes people rotten.” Grandma would tell me repeatedly. She’d let out a whistle through the gap in her teeth and say with a subtle satisfaction after the noise, “You promise me here, you better never get rich. Money dirties souls.” I’d nod my head vehemently so she couldn’t look into my eyes. I didn’t want her to peer in and see my excitement. Nothing was more enticing than the thought of being rich enough to move out of our prefabricated house surrounded by lumped dirt and dying weeds steeped in fracking slurry. I knew she’d be able to see it, because I had seen it once. The look. It was probably when I was ten or eleven when my mother had just been let out of rehab or prison, by then I’d lost track. She had come home and ruffled my hair between yellowed fingers, leaving my hair smelling like cigarettes. She told me that she was going to be a better mom; that this time was different. I knew it was a lie but like most children, I chose to believe it. Three days later, I came back from school to a broke piggy bank and a note. What I missed more, I’d tell myself, was the piggy bank. I’d been saving up by pocketing some of the lunch money Grandma would give me. I’d gone hungry every Monday planning to buy a sewing machine, my ticket out of this town. But one heroine dose later and my dreams were in shards.
By Troy Stone6 years ago in Families
The Book of Answers
I open my eyes to my cold, gray existence and stare at the alarm clock. 5:59am. I wait for it to do its job before turning it off. I sigh. I don’t remember when the world became so gray, only that it is now a shadow of what it once was. I blink. I open my eyes to find myself at the kitchen table. My cereal is mush. I grunt as I shovel it into my mouth. I blink to open my eyes and find myself in class. Math? English? Who cares? I don’t. I do a lot of blinking to get through classes. I find myself at my locker. I open it. I realize I have nothing to put in or take out. I shut it. Janine walks by and just for a second the world looks a bit warmer, almost yellow. But then it’s gone. I blink to find myself at the dinner table. I eat, I blink… and I’m doing homework. I turn off the lamp. In mid blink I roll over to the cool side of my bed. I look at the ceiling before doing one more really long blink. This cycle continues day after day, week after week. The blinking makes it easier, I hit my checkpoints throughout the day without bothering with the in betweens. Simple. Calm. Predictable. Until one day at dinner I hear something. It’s out of place but familiar.
By Kamau Nosakhere6 years ago in Families
