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University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses
Spring 5-15-2015
Garberville: A Collection of Stories
Katharine Kara Breithaupt University of New Orleans, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Breithaupt, Katharine Kara, "Garberville: A Collection of Stories" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2017. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2017
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This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Garberville A Collection of Stories
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
by
Kara Breithaupt
B.A. University of San Francisco, 2008
May, 2015 Table of Contents
The Lovebird...... 1 The Door...... 19 The Watershed...... 30 Scars...... 45 Gone...... 57 The Present...... 69 California...... 79 Vita...... 102 The Lovebird
The day my grandmother showed up with Fucking Bird was the day she told us that my grandfather was dead. I was twelve, and my mother and I were in the kitchen making chocolate- chip cookies when we heard a car rumble into the driveway. My mother pulled aside the old dish towel hanging over the window and said, "Oh my God, it’s my mom. What in the world?" She wiped her hands on her apron and told me to come on then.
I bounced off the step-stool and ran in front of my mother as soon as we got through the front door. When my grandmother emerged from the car, she had a parrot on her shoulder. I rushed towards her, my cheeks aching with the width of my smile, reaching out to hug the grandmother that I hadn’t seen in months. When I was about to embrace her, the parrot shrieked, and I recoiled in tears.
"Kayla, no," my grandmother hissed at me and extended her arm, her open palm a few feet in front of my face. "You can’t run at me like a banshee and throw your arms out. Now you’ve scared him."
"I can’t hug you?" I murmured, backing away. I watched my grandmother coo at the bird, stroking its gray feathers with her fingertips.
My mother put her arms on my shoulders and stood behind me. It felt like some force in her hands held me up while I tried to breathe normally again.
"Mom," she said, "I don’t know where you’ve been, I don’t know what you’ve been—"