La Tonya Jordan’s Reviews > Make Your Way Home: Stories > Status Update

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It was getting colder, but the sun shone, still there though they couldn't feel its warmth.

US 90 simmed the brown waters, glided past the tupelo trees sighing as their roots sipped.

Morning by Morning - Kevin and Helene are engaged, but have not had sex. Kevin wants to have sex before they marry. Helene does not want to fall out of favor with God. Sariah is a deaconess at church. She is sacrificing herself from sex to make pence of sin for an abortion she had in her early twenties. Jay wants to be baptized in the church. But, does not know if he is ready. How much is a sacrifice for sin?

"Gather Here Again" Damonia is eighty-four years old. She tells her grandbabies the story of the ghost. When Klanmen came and burned down her home when she was a child.

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"You think the ghost's gonna follow us?" Damonia had asked, shouting, the wind beating her face senseless. Momma breathed in quick. " I don't want to hear that foolishness," she'd said. "That was Mr. Abel, and you know it."

"In the Swirl" When you meet your eighteen self again at thirty-six. Swimming, Art, Your Sister, are the constants.

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You could spook anyone with how close you were willing to get, with how you opened yourself up to the world and opened others too. Now, the hardest thing is getting back. She is waiting, the girl of you, shouting from a distance for your return."

Grace and Dev met in college. They had so much in common. She was a foster child eventually adopted by Olivia on an island off of Georgia's coast. His entire family was killed in a car accident. Grace is a dancer. She loves Dev. She has one problem. It hurts when they have sex. And now, her thighs are hurting when she dance. In her surprise and relief the island starts to give her answers.

Come-heres, Olivia would've called them, in contrast to the Been-heres, people who'd lived on the island for generations.

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Cadence breathed out as if she agreed. Or, as if what she heard took her breath away.

"I didn't know you'd gotten so close to that family," Momma said. She set down the chicken, fresh out of the oven and crisping at the edges.

Nelson brother, Dele, has died in a car accident. He is trying to heal. His mother is in grief. Cadence wants to help. Nelson is lost on how to express himself. He jokes a lot. Until finally his last prank goes to far. Nelson grows up and appears to join Cadence, Brayden, their parents for cake on Cadence and Brayden's father's fiftieth birthday.

The third story "All Skin is Clothing" is about neighborhoods. When moving fifteen minutes away from your old neighborhood means no one is going to die from a stray bullet coming through your window.

Cadence is fifteen and her little brother, Brayden, is six has this experience that left Brayden unable to speak for a while. When he gets his voice back he and Cadence mets Nelson who's brother Dele has died.

Excellent two short stories. "When we Go, We Go Downstream" and "Cottonmouths". The first one is about family cures that are passed down from slavery to the present generation. The second one is about a youth imitating what she saw her parents doing without realizing the consequences. Too young to know.....

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It isn't right how some things get to be lost, and others don't.

"I'm not going," I say.