Trash by Souvankham Thammavongsa, 2022
The magic trick:
Setting up a premise ripe with questions, but then seeking a different set of answers
The son of a lawyer has married an orphaned grocery store cashier whom he’d known for only five days.
This premise likely fills you with many questions about their relationship. How did that happen? Is the marriage working out? Was it all a mistake?
This story does not attempt to answer any of your questions.
Instead, it focuses on questions of identity using only the relationship between the cashier and her new mother-in-law (the lawyer) as the lens.
And that’s quite a trick on Thammavongsa’s part.
The selection:
I met Miss Emily not long after marrying her son, on a Friday evening. She took the earliest flight she could get to come see her son. She thought I was pregnant because of how sudden it was. I was not.
She was so eager to meet me. She made her son drive her to the supermarket, and they waited in the parking lot for two hours until I finished my shift. I had been on my feet for eight hours, so I wasn’t looking too hot or feeling that great about myself. But I didn’t think of things like that, impressions—first impressions—what they mean and how people don’t change their feelings about you even years after.
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