HELEN’S STORIES

1ST PLACE

My grandmother makes steak and onions in the same cast iron frying pan four days a week for her husband of fifty years. He sits at the kitchen table, waiting to be served, reading the sports section of the Herald, sipping ginger ale that replaced his beer decades ago. His wife, fifteen years his junior, barely five feet tall, eats alone when the kitchen is quiet, then washes, feeding scraps to the cats, calling, «Viens, minou minou.» Rinsing the cast iron, she says nonchalantly, «I hit him in the head with this pan once. He never came at me again.»

Name: Rhiannon Varmette, 41 Years old,
Roslindale.

Ilustration: Kelsey Fort.