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My mother worked in a gypsum factory just outside Batavia. The world passed from night to day and back again as she laced electrical wires through drywall boards. The only woman to work in the prefab metal building, she learned to drink coffee in hollow rooms with sawdust-laden floors. Every now and then, she had a day off, and I’d manage to fake sick to gain trips to Carrol’s for burguers, to the downtown diner for grilled cheese, to Ames for stiffly coordinated outfits struck to plastic hangers. Those rare stolen days were such a treat that I had to remind myself to appear sick. Filling up on green glass bottles of ginger ale, I let the bubbles tickle my throat on the way down to a stomach already very much at peace.
Ghostbread, Sonja Livingston