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Stories by Laura McNeal

Love and Mariachis in Chula Vista

The Music Leaves No Space for Sadness.

This is a love story. It begins in Guadalajara and is rekindled four times a day in room 1204 of Chula Vista High, a setting that is not romantic. The windows of the band room, ...

Don't Look Down

When I signed my son up for dance and deportment lessons, I didn’t tell him. For one thing, it was called Mr. Benjamin’s Cotillion, and I couldn’t shake the image of Mr. Benjamin Bunny, Peter ...

Want to Be Sent Home in Pieces?

At 3:39 a.m. on January 7, 2007, Columbia Street was almost deserted. Little Italy had been plagued with car burglaries — “It got where you couldn’t drive too many of the streets down there without ...

She Really Was a Fashion Plate

In 1930, the San Diego yellow pages were as yellow as an egg yolk, the white pages listed the occupation of every customer, and the modern Woodmen of America met every Wednesday at Germania Hall. ...

My Life As A Mammal

When I informed by best friend almost nine years ago that I was expecting a male child, she said, after a distinct pause, "I can't even imagine you with boys." I couldn't imagine it either, ...

Let The World See Your Pretty Face

You're pregnant, and the amount of alfafetoprotein in your blood has been measured. You're sitting in the doctor's office waiting your turn. Like everyone, you want a beautiful baby, a smart baby, one whose Halloween ...

Crushed: A Novel

Crushed by Laura and Tom McNeal. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006; $15.95; 308 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: The acclaimed authors of Crooked and Zippedbring their signature suspense and razor-sharp dialogue to this compelling new novel ...

When the Loud Bell Rang

My first day in school was really my second day. It was September 1950, and that first day my brown uniform shirt scratched, the heavy corduroy pants were stiff with newness, my suspenders would not ...

Soundtrack

The Woes Of A Woman In Love My hand paused before the mascara reached my lashes and I inhaled deeply — it was almost time. The mounting passion in her voice, off-key yet somehow harmonizing ...

Mom

As Thin as Butterfly Wings My mother was born in the high desert of northeastern Arizona. Even now it's a hard place to thrive, with rain unlikely and resources few. Her father built their house ...

My Skin is a Museum

Natasha Monahan Papousek is not Iranian. She is not Lebanese, Moroccan, Indian, or Pakistani. She lives in La Mesa, she has the red hair and pale skin of her Irish-Czech-Norwegian-American parents, but she’s a henna ...

The Death of Judy Huscher

The body lies in a position of repose, a 12-year-old girl in pajamas, on her bed, in Fallbrook, California. Her blue eyes, though open, see nothing, and for ten more minutes, no one sees her. ...

Horses and Their Women

It's nine o'clock on the day before the last day of Diane Wilson’s horse-showing career. Outside her window, the pointy hills of Escondido are wet from the rain. Inside, it’s warm because she has just ...

Follow Me

On a hilltop playground in City Heights, a woman in a pink wraparound apron and straw hat is walking. She looks like an American mother of a certain period — before feminism and dual careers ...

Sheep to Sweater in North County

The Shepherdess Rancho Borrego Negro is home to white sheep, black sheep, black fish, a black-and-white sheepdog, and a couple of near-black llamas, but for Kathy Gluesenkamp, the hardest thing to produce on the Ranch ...

Trees of Life

The light in old avocado groves is dim, and when you look up, the highest leaves meet like interlocking panes of green glass. Branches and trunks form Gothic arches, a few limbs stretch out like ...

Faith Healing

That the children may live long, And be beautiful and strong, Tea and coffee and tobacco they despise Drink no liquor, and they eat But a very little meat... - from a 19th-century Mormon song ...

The Moment Leaves Started to Turn

When I was six or seven years old, I wanted to be translated. On Sunday mornings in the Mormon church I'd heard about holy men who were so close to heaven they couldn't stay on ...