Here's an excerpt from GIRL PRODIGIES published in Prairie Schooner!
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A relative of mine lost her mind one day when someone brought a plate of fish guts to the table. I was fifteen at the time. I never met her because she spent most of her life in an asylum, but I’ve seen her sepia communion photo. She has chubby cheeks and is nearly eyebrowless, her forehead slightly furrowed. It’s the only family photo where I recognize myself even though I’m not in the picture. The resemblance between us is so strong that I lived in fear that one day I might also be overcome by some intense emotion that would carry me away forever. I’d anxiously squeeze my eyes shut when confronted with frightening images, but when confronted with beautiful things, too. Such intense stirrings of the soul spelled danger and were to be avoided at all costs. It could happen anywhere, like in brightly colored stones on the beach, sea glass buffed smooth by the surf. My aunt would pick them up to show me and I’d close my eyes. I thought the glittering blue and amber might inch me closer to the edge of that darkness.

            Sometimes those moments of getting carried away by emotion are so definitive that it’s like your soul has left your body all at once, never to be seen again. Sometimes the moments are less intense. In that case, it’s a matter of accumulation: the sight of Punky Brewster giving two thumbs up, Shirley Temple tap dancing up and down the stairs with a black butler, Christina Ricci sitting in the bathtub in an old swimsuit, a smiling Marisol dressed as a gypsy, Drew Barrymore’s sweet lisp. These thoughts make my hands shake. My mouth hangs open, creating an expression that’s the complete opposite of their ever-smiling faces, the deep dimples in their firm cheeks. I didn’t suffer from some sudden instance of being swept away, but from an incessant drip of moments that bore into me.

            In one episode of Punky Brewster, Punky comes home after having a difficult conversation with her friend, Cherie, on the staircase. Henry, her adoptive father, is serving dinner. Punky nervously confesses:

            “Henry, I’m getting boobs.”

Poor Punky, with her pigtails and girlish charm, was growing boobs. Electricity ran through my body. I hurried over to the TV and shut it off. The next day I noticed a lump in my chest.

            “Her mammary buds are forming,” the pediatrician confirmed.

            Can hormones become activated after a moment of emotionally charged televised drama? It was a warning. That’s how easy it is to let yourself be carried away. Even something small can trigger it.

            Meanwhile, on that unnamed planet, the alien experienced such a shock that he nearly blew the space probe’s fuse. 

            “Lies,” I say.

            All of it, lies. But the alien, trillions of miles away, doesn’t hear me. I throw my gym shoes out the window and then my bodysuit with the splitting seams. I tear open a pillow with my teeth. I throw so much stuff out the window I can’t even remember all of it, and it falls down to the courtyard below, never to be illuminated by any spacecraft’s abducting light beam. My mom knocks on the door and asks what’s going on. I bury my face in the pillow to drown out the sound of my message. I have to tell the aliens. We have to stop sending these transmissions full of lies. This is not the way human beings are. This is not the way little girls are. Only some are like that. Just them. 

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