Even now, I like to think of myself as rational, inured to my father’s oddball collection of superstitions and folksy ideas. I know cats don’t attract lightning, and I almost never toss salt over my shoulder. Still. Here I am. At noon. On St. James Day. In an overgrown field near the apartment I share with my father; I am chest deep in chicory and keeping as silent as if my life depended upon it. Because supposedly it does. Specifically, I am sawing at the hairy stems I’ve gathered in my left hand. Delicate blue chicory flowers shake their little heads at me while I work. In my right hand, a gold plated letter opener, dull, but it’s the gold that matters.
I set the bruised stems aside, shoulder sweat from my face, and reach for several more, careful not to grunt or breathe audibly. Papi’s book was clear on this point. Make a sound of any kind during the gathering, and sure as sunset death will follow. When my father read this part aloud, I guffawed, but he only widened his eyes and wagged a finger. “No, mi’ja. Take it seriously.” So I am trying to take it seriously, just in case.
Muscles burn as I bend over my task, and something about my pants, the way the knees have bagged out, makes me feel dumpy. I am already ludicrous, but ugly’s worse. I should know better than to comply with my father’s schemes. I should move away. Start my own life. But Papi takes such pleasure in any sort of conundrum requiring his unique brand of farm filósofo wisdom. At such moments, a rare tide moves him, and he rushes around the apartment like when my mother was alive. It’s nice to see him happy.
The conundrum at hand involves, of all things, a trunk. Last month from Tía Estrella’s estate came this old wooden affair with a big brass lock and no key. The only thing I know about Tía Estrella is that she was a poet, not world famous but a pretty big deal in Miami. All Papi’s talked about since the trunk arrived is what could be inside and how to get it open without wrecking it. Wrecking a lock is bad luck. Anything gained that way will curse you. Silly. But why take chances? As for calling a locksmith, my family has never liked strangers knowing its business. If we can do the thing ourselves, we will. And if we can’t, we'll keep trying until we’ve made a definite hash.
Papi found the “solution” in one of his dog-eared books on folk remedies. It turns out chicory—cut with a gold blade on St. James Day—magically opens even the most fortified of locked things. Hence my current situation: the field, the wad of plant, the letter opener flashy in the white-hot midday, signaling my absurdity to the world.
Coming out of the weeds, I see her. Of course I do. Our new neighbor one apartment over, out for a walk. Supple vines of honey blonde hair curl around her shoulders, and with each step, her sandaled toes grip as if they would root down into the earth. She is something like a Norse goddess. When she notices me, recognition makes her pause and smile, but I can tell she’s taking it all in: the fist of chicory, the knife, the sweat and filth besmearing my face and clothing. At best, I am a B-movie monster. All I can do is curse silently and hope she doesn’t want to talk, which is ironic because any other day I’d jump at the chance. She’s about my age and looks as if she’d smell of soap. Secretly I’ve hoped we might become friends. After high school, everyone I knew slipped off to college or piled into hipster apartments in gentrified neighborhoods. Papi’s and my apartment is decidedly non-hipster. But our still living together isn’t weird. It’s not “A Rose for Emily.” It’s just a thing that happened.
I smile back, wave the gold letter opener (it’s that or the chicory), and walk faster. I’m practically running. I even point at my wrist, meaning my watch, meaning I’m late, only I don’t own a watch. Must be a gesture I picked up from Papi. She probably thinks I stashed a body in the overgrowth. Confusion—maybe repulsion—registers, but she’s polite. She nods gingerly, does a little wave, and glides away.
Perfect.
I have no idea how long I’m supposed to remain silent, so other than footfalls, I don’t make a sound all the way home. When Papi opens the door (he’s been watching for me through the curtains) even his hushed voice startles.
“You got it?” But he’s looking right at the sheaf of chicory in my arms, and I’m annoyed about seeing our neighbor, so I don’t answer. “No problems?” He pats my cheek.
I shake my head and whisper, “Are you sure we can talk now?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s safe. Already one o’clock. Good job, mi’ja.”
He’s so pleased. I can tell by the way he keeps blinking. While I soap my arms in the kitchen sink, he floats a blanket of paper towels across the dining table and rests the chicory upon it. Then he bends down and inhales, eyes closed, mouth curving into a goofy grin.
“Mi’ja.” He waves me over. “Smell. What does it remind you of?”
Mostly I smell dirt and summer, but there is something more. “Oregano?”
“Si, y también?”
I shrug.
“Mamá’s perfume. Don't you think?”
I inhale again, dipping lower this time. I do not smell my mother’s perfume, but I nod and smile and say yes, yes until my father laughs and wipes his eyes.
“A good sign,” he says.
#
The candle strikes me as an odd touch. I can’t decide if it’s hokey or spooky and finally settle on mortifying. I keep seeing us—Papi and me—from our neighbor’s perspective: the stacks of weirdo books, our brown eyes gone black in the dim room, Papi’s dark magician hands, the smell of sofrito clinging to everything. What would a girl like that—pink-cheeked with pale gold skin and rain water hair—say if she saw all this? Would she still smile politely? While Papi strikes a match, I hoist the trunk onto a towel and drag it across the floor to the dining room.
“Mi’ja! Mi’ja!” He rushes over. “Don’t do that! Let me help you. It’s heavy!”
Waving him off. “I’ve got it.”
“Mi’ja, I saw you straining.” He’s pushing like Sisyphus, overshoots the mark, then scoots the trunk back and back until the candle’s yellow flicker lights it up. In the background, the TV has Perry Mason, one of his favorite shows, but the sound is off. On the witness stand, a woman’s lipstick mouth dissolves into silent weeping while Perry’s doleful eyes reproach.
Papi takes a deep breath, looks at me, nods, and says, “Okay.” It’s all pretty dramatic, and I’m feeling the effect of this even as I fortify part of my brain against him. My father can be very beguiling. I don’t want to get too drawn into his bizarre world. I feel weird enough as it is, without the chicory: Cuban in a town with no other Cubans, gangly, smart, hairy, socially awkward, and I’m never bored. That makes you the biggest dork of all. Boredom is king of cool. If I were prettier, I could be in one of those movies with the beautiful freaks whose very strangeness turns out to be a sick super power. I’m too old for all that anyway.
The bundle of chicory, flaccid and browning, hardly impresses as a mythic force, so I ask if we should hang it upside down to dry for a few days before trying it on the lock.
“What?” Papi looks stricken. “No, no. Of course not! It doesn’t matter how it looks. Now come on.”
Reverently, he lifts a stem from the table and kneels down in front of the trunk. Tiny knots of faded blue fleck the foliage. From where I’m standing, Papi looks like he’s praying. Maybe he is. He fusses briefly with the leaves then holds the chicory right up to the lock and waits.
Need I say nothing happens?
His shoulders do a little bounce, and he tries again, closer this time. Still nothing.
“Maybe it needs to touch the lock,” I offer.
He tries this, tenderly pressing a bloom against the lock and pulling at the lid. That’s not it either. The candle crackles. Anyone else might be cursing by now, but not my father. He looks up philosophically, smiles, and says, “Not today, mi’ja. Maybe not ever. We’ll see.”
And this is how my father routinely surprises me. Cutting through all his wacky ideas—these bright beams of reason. He is capable of such equanimity. No whining. No railing against matters beyond his control. Only one exception comes to mind: my mother’s death.
#
Papi cooks rice and eggs for breakfast, and all the air is redolent of butter and garlic. The fecund smell makes me envision lounging in the sunshine admiring the smooth olive brown of my skin. Maybe the neighbor is there too, sleepy in the bright day. Maybe we’re laughing.
This being the first Saturday I haven’t had to work in more than a month, I should go out. Make a friend. At least dwell among people my own age. I’ve been around my father so much I’m starting to act old. In fact, I find I’ve carried my plate to the living room to watch Perry Mason. It comes on twice a day. Papi watches both times. Raymond Burr was gay, but my dad doesn’t know that, and I think it might somewhat dampen his enjoyment of the show if I mention it, so I don’t.
From a taut line strung between kitchen cabinets, the chicory hangs. Waits. The day after our failure with the lock, Papi came into my room looking pensive and said, “Maybe you’re right. It did seem sort of impotent.” He whispered the word “impotent” and half covered his mouth as if the chicory might take offense. “We’ll let it dry out, then try again.”
It’s been on the line ever since, a whole row of it, by solemn degrees commending its juices to the thieving air. Honestly? You can tell it’s ready. I’m sort of afraid to look at it, let alone touch it, and I’ve noticed Papi’s the same. It’s almost like we’re respecting its privacy. But it vibrates with each little disturbance of the atmosphere, and it’s obvious how stiff and strong it’s grown. I’m not raising the issue though. Papi’s all tied up in little strings of hope about it.
Why rush to an inevitable end?
“Going down to the market, mi’ja, get some chicken.” Papi tugs at the waistband of his pants. His clothes look too big, and he needs a better haircut. My mother would be furious at the way clumsy shearing has flattened his natural curl. “I make something special tonight. Then let’s try it, okay?” He glances at the chicory and nods in deference to its temperamental power. If he wore a hat, he’d tip it politely: Good day, Master Chicory!
After he’s gone, I think my usual thought: what it would be like to have a whole apartment to myself. Papi’s not dead in this scenario. We just don’t live together anymore. And the vision is both scary and thrilling. In a silly moment, I spin around and dance my hands through the air only to find I’ve knocked one of the chicory branches off the line. But when I bend down and grasp the desiccated twig, a wave of dizziness stirs my head, and my legs liquefy. I stumble toward the kitchen counter and flatten my cheek against the cool surface, my heaving breaths loud in the silence. When the dizziness passes, I open my eyes, and there in front of me is our toaster, a big chrome affair for crisping thick slices of bread for Papi’s Cuban sandwiches. Something about it strikes me as odd, and at first I can’t work out what it is.
Then I see it. Or rather, I don’t. Where I should be reflected in the chrome, there is nothing, only a swirl of refrigerator and wood cabinets behind me.
I do not see my face.
My hair.
My shirt.
I draw the toaster to the edge of the counter and wave my hand before it, but there is only dead air. No me. The bathroom mirror is the same. There is the wall behind me, there, my blue towel, but I’m nowhere to be found. What the shit? I tap on the glass and hear my nail clicking. I glance down and see my arms just like always. Hips and feet too. “What is this?” I try my voice and hear it fine. My first thought is I’m dead, that I’ve died and become a ghost. My second is I’m a vampire. These are not rational thoughts.
I set the chicory twig on the bathroom counter and clamber in close to the mirror. Just like that, I’m back. Huge brown eyes startle so badly I duck away as if avoiding a punch, but then I’m laughing and crying, relief flooding through me. I turn to the chicory. Couldn’t be a coincidence. Before I can chicken out, I pick it up again. And disappear. Then I set it down and become visible once more. Several repetitions later, I’m so dizzy I have to lie down on the living room sofa.
The room tilt-a-whirls, and I close my eyes, swallow to keep my stomach down, grip the sofa so I don’t fly off. Soon, familiar images march out of the darkness: tiny fairies with glass wings, talking eagles, trees cursed by witches, shadowy things that creep amidst the sugarcane—all the Cuba stories Papi told me when I was a child. Here too come recent ones: the government plots to kill off Cubans with poisoned guava paste, or kill off the poor with tainted vaccinations, or kill off the elderly by paying Communist doctors under the table (my father’s bad guys are invariably Communists).
I’d always rolled my eyes at such nonsense. Even as a kid listening with nervous wonder, I’d draw the line when Papi insisted on the stories’ veracity. I knew better.
Or thought I did.
Now I meet a truth as inexorable as death: the white stucco ceiling, the television, the air-conditioning, the Goya crackers, the refrigerator’s labored hum, the bee outside tapping at the hot window, these all belong to Papi. The laws that bind them, that bind everything, belong to him. So too the crispy wand of vegetation on the coffee table. And me. I am merely a resident of my father’s unaccountable cosmos.
Papi will be home soon, so I rouse myself uneasily from the sofa and rifle through his books, alert to any mention of Chicory. There’s agreement on the plant’s power to open locks, but only one book, in a dense and rambling footnote, mentions invisibility. I can’t decide if finding it in print makes me feel better or worse. If Papi had read this, he would have said so. He’d be over the moon at such news, and ordinarily, I would love to give him that gift, but I already know I won’t tell him. When I hear his keys at the door, I slip the book back into place, hurry to the kitchen, and open the refrigerator.
“Hi, mi’ja,” Papi singsongs, setting a bag on the counter, then pauses. “What’s wrong? What’s happened? You look funny.”
“I’m fine,” I say, pour myself a glass of cold water, and retire to my room.
#
All through dinner Papi watches me, asks if I’m okay. Do I feel sick? Depressed? I try to reassure him, but I’m nervous about him trying the lock again with the chicory. I wish the secret of its power could remain mine.
When the candle is lit and the television silently flickers Kung Fu, Papi lifts a chicory twig from the line and disappears. It is an extraordinary thing to witness, phenomenal, but also—I sense this—ephemeral, the result of forces so precariously aligned they cannot help but finally break apart. I used to have this dream I could fly the way you swim, by laboriously pumping arms and legs, but the moment my faith in the process wavered, I’d plummet to the earth. The chicory seems like that to me. One wrong move, and it all collapses.
I can only assume Papi still sees himself just as I did and doesn’t know he’s invisible. The opportunity for me to gasp and feign all kinds of shock passes quickly, and I find myself guilty of the oddest deceit.
“I feel swimmy,” he says. “Maybe I ate too much.”
“It was so good,” I say, which is true, though I hardly tasted my food.
“Mi’ja, what is it? Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” I force a laugh. “Why?”
“You keep looking at my nose.”
“Do I?” I sound weird, and I’m having a hell of a time calculating the distance from Papi’s voice to his eyes, so I rub my forehead, the heels of my hands obscuring my vision, and claim a mild headache. “Go ahead,” I mumble. “Let’s see if this works.”
Barely three seconds pass before the lock clicks and the lid lifts about an inch. The chicory has indeed grown potent. Papi gasps. I can’t see his face, but I know its expression: the big-eyed wonder, that bit of something held back in case all goes to ruin, one of the lessons disappointment teaches.
“Mi’ja!” he whispers, “can you believe it?” Then there he is, crouching before the chest, both hands on the lid and the chicory lying on the floor beside him. He looks up at me, his dark eyes shining in the low light.
“No. I can’t.” It’s no lie. Invisibility notwithstanding, I am surprised it can open locks too. That’s a lot to absorb. Nearly too much. I shake my head and laugh. “This is crazy.” And I mean it.
Papi smiles. “No. It’s not crazy at all. The book said so. Remember? Ready to see what’s in here?”
I nod.
Warily—like any kind of terror could jump out—Papi lifts the lid until the chest’s wide jaw yawns before us. Except for a single scrap of paper, the compartment is empty. No gold coins or sparkling jewels. No skull. No magic lamp. But for Papi, the paper seems to have enough presence. Without even reaching for it, he stands and takes a step back.
“Aren’t you going to read it?”
“No! Not tonight.” He’s practically panting and pushes a black wave of hair from his forehead. “That’s enough,” he says. “Let’s leave it for a day or two. Notes from the dead . . . I don’t know, mi’ja.” He bends forward, stretches two fingers toward the lid, like it has cooties, and closes it without a sound. In the kitchen he says something about dessert then points at the chicory still on the floor, asks me to return it to the line. Panic twitches through me, but I think fast and tell him I’m going to lie down for a bit, that the headache is worse and I’m sleepy. This will definitely quiet him because there is no malady in the world Papi thinks a nap won’t cure.
“Okay.” He nods. “I bring you some tea and those ginger galletas I made. Poor, mi’ja.” My father clicks his tongue and whispers about the kitchen on soft apothecary feet. Amidst his busyness, he eyes the trunk.
#
In the dark, I rest my hand on the hot plane of my stomach and see myself in the future. The scene is familiar. Decades from now, I’m being interviewed: “You still live with your father, right?”
I nod.
“Why . . . how, after all these years?” The voice is incredulous, accusatory, even revolted. I squirm in my overstuffed chair, squint into the lights. “Fear?” The voice prods. And yes, maybe fear played a role. Maybe fear and time were twin snakes unfurling. Nobody likes feeling freakish. Nobody likes rejection. Maybe I chose safety.
“I guess I kept meaning to get out, but it was always easier to stay home and watch some shows with my father, pop some popcorn.” I can’t hear them, but out there somewhere millions of people gasp. Grotesque, they think. What a wasted life, they think.
Often, I think so too.
#
It’s more dramatic and less shameful to say the idea came to me in the middle of the night, that I threw off the covers, sat up, and there it was: this impulse. But that’s not the case. The truth is, the gist of the plan kindled when I read the footnote in Papi’s book. Maybe I’m late admitting it, but that’s definitely when. All day the idea guttered in the back of my brain, and now, at one in the morning, I’m ready to act. And I can’t deliberate or self-loathing will overwhelm me. I don’t believe I’m a disgusting person, but there is no defending what I’m about to do.
Papi is a light sleeper, so I move silently through my room, into the hall, across the kitchen linoleum, and breathe more easily when I am again clutching the chicory and properly invisible. I check the toaster just to make sure. No dizziness this time. Maybe that’s a good sign.
The hallway in our apartment building always smells of onion . . . and cardboard. The onion is probably our doing, and I wonder if the neighbors despise us for it. Nearly as familiar to me as my own, her door comes into view. It bears a little grapevine wreath with a gold ribbon twined among the brittle tendrils. I think, not for the first time, that only a sweet, friendly girl would decorate her door in this way. Ever since she moved in, I’ve entertained silly fantasies about my neighbor. We’d discover we both loved fried plantain and pickleball. We’d joke about being the only young people at the court. My dad would adore her, and she’d find him charmingly eccentric. Once or twice a week she’d come over for dinner and rave about his roast pork in mojo. She would not be vegan.
Beneath the door, a sliver of light tells me she is either awake or asleep with the light on. I’m glad of this because I want to see her. That’s the point. Stumbling around her apartment in the dark won’t do me any good. I’m only going to stay for a minute. Honestly. I need to be in the company of someone my own age, to see how she lives, how she sits and stands, how she turns the blinds, makes a cup of tea, eats pretzels, lotions her elbows. I’ve got to be sure I haven’t drifted too far afield of normal, that there is still hope for me.
When the lock clinks open, I worry someone will have heard, but her living room is empty and the apartment carpeted in thick, sound-muffling shag. I am completely silent padding toward the kitchen. On the refrigerator, a birthday card. Her name is Astrid. I don’t know why, but I’d expected it to be Megan or Hannah. Astrid seems almost exotic. A small shelf holds a stack of white coffee cups and a jar of Leroux instant chicory beverage. My finger grazes the label. What are the odds? Is it un pajaro de mal aguero? Papi would know if the omen is good or bad. From the kitchen I can see down the hall that a light is on in one of the bedrooms, and when the refrigerator quiets, a tiny clicking sound issues, irregular and metallic, then a sigh.
I won’t belabor the way I feel at this moment—the pounding in my ears, the strangled breathing, the nausea threatening to upend Papi’s ginger cookies. This is wrecking me, and I know I’m going to hate myself afterwards, maybe forever.
Astrid sits on the edge of her bed clipping her toenails. Her belly pleats neatly along three lines, and long hair screens her face as she hunches over her feet. She doesn’t even look up when I peek in. It had not occurred to me that she might be naked, and she isn’t. There is a bra. Underwear too. But I wish she were fully clothed. I just wanted to observe her watching a show or eating a peanut butter sandwich. Nothing private. There is a line to be observed, even here.
I feel my body move more fully into the room, occupying first the doorway, then an open area mere feet from her bed. When she picks up a file and begins smoothing her thumbnail, I notice how long and thin her fingers are. Everything they do looks pretty. But with her face lifted, it’s apparent she’s been crying. Puffy pink skin rings her eyes, and her cheeks are splotchy. When her phone lights up, she slips off her bra, pulls her long hair forward over her shoulders and smiles sweetly. She holds her phone out in front of her. “I’m waiting,” she says, and lowers it so whoever it is can see her breasts. Pale nipples push through a tangled haze of hair. I cover my eyes and with my other hand reach out toward a dresser, gripping the corner for balance, my head a whoosh of shame.
I should leave.
The voice on the phone is difficult to understand. Deep. Male. Not a native English speaker and the accent’s giving me trouble, but that hardly matters as Astrid has jumped to her feet and begun crying again. She stomps her foot and says something in a language that sounds Scandinavian. This must be a thing with her because she does it again and again. Every time she stomps, her breasts shake and she cries harder. An impulse to hug her, to mantle her nakedness, quickens my breathing even as I stand fixed and trembling. Finally she is yelling and crying all at once. Her free hand gestures and wipes, and soon tangles of hair bind to wet knuckles. Long strands come loose. But she only grabs more and more, pulls and pulls until silky threads cocoon her fist and small red weals rise on her scalp.
I find her words inscrutable but recognize the heaving sound she makes between sobs, the tilt of shoulders and pelvis. She’s begging. This tall, muscled girl who looks as if she could Viking her way through anything is pleading like a child. And in the background, behind Astrid, framed family photographs and gold embossed books burden pale wood shelves. On the bed, a clutch of floppy stuffed animals huddles near the pillow.
When she finally launches her phone against the wall and sinks to her knees, I rush out of the room, out of Astrid’s apartment, out of the building. In the courtyard, I throw up in a laurel bush. The wide night sky, its blue black beset by stars, seems the ultimate reproach. All that clear, pure, simple beauty gazing down upon my secret corruption. I am laid bare, and all I can do is throw up a second time, wipe my mouth on my shirt, and lie down in the grass. At this silent hour, solitude settles like dew. Soon, I am cold and drenched.
#
It’s nearly dawn when I realize—standing at our apartment door—that I’ve left the chicory outside. I’m not going back for it, so I knock. Papi’s definitely up because I hear the TV. It’s Leave It to Beaver, one of the few shows that makes him laugh. His eyes are just as big and round and worried as I expect them to be when he opens the door and finds me standing there.
“Mi’ja! Por Dios, what’s happened? What are you doing out there?” He reaches for me.
“Nothing, Papi. I’m fine. I went down to put a bill in the mail and forgot my key.” I brush right past him so that his eyes will not fully absorb me. Because one day that’s going to happen. He’ll look at me so hard, there’ll be nothing left.
“But when did you go out?” He sounds horror-stricken.
“Everything’s fine, Papi. Tumba eso.”
He goes to the kitchen and begins taking things out of the refrigerator and smacking them down on the counter. He’s not having my story, and that’s okay. He’ll get nothing more from me.
After breakfast, I shower. Then I head for the living room to comb my hair. No mirrors today. It’s time for Perry Mason, but the television is quiet. “Papi?” I say.
He sits at the dining table, the paper from the trunk smooth and flat before him. I see now that it’s a page torn from a book. He sniffles and stares out the window.
“What is it?” I ask, afraid.
“A poem,” he says. “It’s that damned Communist, Neruda.” He slides the paper my way. Four stanzas have been underlined in faded pencil. I read:
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
Two, three more times I read Neruda’s words, and I finally glance at my father. His head droops limply, the loosening skin of his face angling for the earth. “No,” he says so softly I turn my right ear toward him. He looks up at me. He looks old. “Mi’ja, why would a man belabor such things?” He lays his forehead on the table. “It was a curse after all.”
“Papi, Neruda is nothing to us. Look . . .” And I squeeze the poem into a tight ball, so tight that the words will never again align, never mean anything. Papi lifts his head to watch as I throw the paper away. Then I unhook the cord holding up the rest of the chicory and let it all cascade to the floor. I am surprised to find myself stomping and mashing the last of it into the linoleum. Whether or not it renders me invisible as I kick and grind, I don’t know or care.
“Mi’ja, be careful,” Papi musters. “Don’t strain.”
Puffing a little, I walk over and place my hand on my father’s shoulder. It feels small. “That’s done,” I say. “Let’s not think about it anymore—not Neruda, or loss, or loneliness, or any of it. What good does it do? That kind of thinking can only make us crazy.”
Papi nods, and I ruffle his hair.
On the television, Raymond Burr beckons, so we go to the living room, turn up the volume, and take our seats.
Pascha Sotolongo is a Latinx fiction writer, editorial assistant at Prairie Schooner, and English Lecturer with a PhD in literature and postcolonial theory.
Writing primarily in a magical realist style, Pascha has published or has fiction forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Pleiades, The Chattahoochee Review, Ninth Letter, The Pinch Journal, The Florida Review Latinx Special Feature, and The New Guard. Her nonfiction has appeared in 1966, Saw Palm, Women’s Studies, Frontiers, and the Journal of Florida Literature, among others. Her writing has won or been a finalist for numerous prizes.
Currently, Pascha is hard at work on a novel about a couple of Cuban girls whose Florida town is visited by strange lights during the winter of 1983.
Photo by bobandcarol71661 on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND