Our favorite memory of Baba is one she told us: picking her way through chunks of building, cement and glass to the lone intact storefront. Hungry, she is ready to collapse, but a warm bun quickly replaces money in her fist. Unaccountably, she pauses. He catches her eye: too young, too thin, too alone, pressed up against the window. Instinct? She goes out and passes him the roll, then remains to watch, to be sure he eats and no one grabs. As he gulps, she feels a fullness rise up through her belly, a strength through her limbs.
Maria Jerinic’s short essay “Suddenly” is forthcoming in 9 Lives: Life in Ten Minutes Anthology (Chop Suey Books, Spring 2017). Her creative nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth’s “Beautiful Things,” Mom Egg Review’s “Vox Mom,” Literary Mama, Clickable Poems, Mama Zine.Com and the anthology KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns (Three Rivers Press). Her academic critical work has appeared in Honors in Practice, Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution (SUNY Press), and Remaking Queen Victoria (Cambridge University Press). She teaches in the UNLV Honors College where she offers a class on the “literary essay.”
A Quiet Courage 