Carolivia Herron

Short Fiction

carolivia@carolivia.org

Excerpts from Short Fiction by Carolivia Herron

Also see Jewish Africana for short fiction on Judaic Themes

That Place

After her acquittal she packed her bags in the city of Washington, boarded the plane at National Airport, arrived at Aeropuerto International Benito Juárez in Mexico City, and did nothing. It is difficult to do nothing. I awake before dawn and go down to the garden, and there in the garden, before the servant has come out to sweep, before la señora begins screaming through the house, I collect red-violet petals from the bougainvillea and set them floating in a white porcelain bowl. She fills the electric pot with water. She walks down into the garden with a white paper napkin and collects the white lily-shaped flowers that have fallen from the grapefruit tree. White with yellow-orange tongues.

From Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers 1967 to the Present, edited by Gloria Naylor, Little, Brown Publishers, 1995.

The Old Lady

The Old Lady, the old black lady with the Moses staff and the African hair walks north from the center of Gloucester, across the footbridge to Good Harbor, over the cliff to Long Beach toward Rockport, then back around the summer cabins by the arches, stops at Amelia's for spaghetti, buys a pistachio ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen then walks back down Thatcher Road. Every day the old lady, the old black lady, walks by the sea.

From Afrekete, edited by Catherine E. McKinley & Joyce DeLaney, Doubleday, 1995.