Lupita

by Michael McGuire

About the Author: Michael McGuire’s stories have appeared in Ellery Queen (x2), Guernica, J Journal (x3), The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review (#67 & #85), Hudson Review, New Directions in Prose & Poetry (x2), & etc.

Excerpt

Lupita remembers her first day at that place, not who brought her. She remembers looking down at her feet, at the floor, seeing the shadow of one she was certain, even then, she would never see again.

She remembers her first night: going to bed with her shoes on so she’d be ready to leave when, and if, the moment came. She remembers waking up, howling. She remembers the women who came to flash the overheads, wake the other girls, yank her shoes off, pull her covers up and drop the dormitory into darkness, the darkest darkness she had ever seen, one she is sure must be the darkest she will ever know.

But, in childhood’s years, those memories are prehistoric; very nearly, if not quite, lost. Now Lupita has been taken into a house she feels is much too good for her, even if she was chosen over all the others, probably because she was not bad looking for her age and has a certain meek charm the others lack: girls who were there longer and had more time to harden under the light of the overheads, under the touch of all that was rough upon the skin, to steel themselves against the food they had forced down for as long as they can remember.

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