Giving Up America

By Pearl Abraham

The first thing Deena and Daniel do in their new house in Brooklyn is take down the smoked mirrors that cover the windows and living room doors. The former owners said they were needed for privacy. The next morning Deena comes down the stairs and sees a triangle of light – sun shining through a leaded glass window.

The next six months shed new light on her seven-year marriage to Daniel. Deena’s father, a Hassidic rebbe said the marriage was doomed by the gematria of their names. Deena recalculated the equations stemming from the numbers linked to the letters of their names to justify why Daniel was just the man for her.

The Tin Horse

by Janice Steinberg

Teenage poetry, children's drawings and wartime letters from her late husband confront attorney Elaine Greenstein Resnick as she packs the contents of her Santa Monica house to move to an assisted-living apartment.

More than the mementos or the professional documents being gathered up for archives at the University of Southern California, Elaine finds herself opening memories of her childhood spent in Jewish Boyle Heights decades earlier.

Every box lid she lifts takes her back to the small apartment with her Zayde, her parents, her fraternal twin sister Barbara and her younger sisters Audrey and Harriet. Nearby were her Uncle Leo, who owned a bookstore in Hollywood; his wife Sonya, and her Aunt Pearl, who scandalized her family by divorcing a two-timing husband and refusing to move back home.