Later that night, when her parents opened their front door and saw Bianca on the stoop, Bianca’s mother gave an audible gasp. She put her hands over her mouth and shook her head violently.
“Here,” Bianca said, holding out the urn. “I brought you something for your trouble.”
Bianca’s father took the urn. Her mother cried like she had after the twelfth doctor visit, the one where neither Bianca nor the cyst had been deemed problematic.
“We were just going to eat,” her father said. “Won’t you join us for dinner?”
Bianca said she would. She set the urn in the center of the table. They ate in silence while her father stared at his plate and her mother stared at the cyst and Bianca stared at the urn.
When it was time to leave, Bianca put her hand on her forehead and said, “Thank you for dinner, but we really must get going.”
Bianca moved to a new town. She threw out her webcam and thongs and push-up bras and grew out her bangs. She let her skin turn from white to pink to tan. She began a new career as a life coach and told everyone the same thing no matter what their problem was: that they felt guilty about being alive and needed to write letters to the dead.
On dates, over steak and wine, or duck breast and beer, she always told the men the same thing: that she didn’t want children because she’d already lost one. She would describe the seesaw and the accident and the death. She would describe the cremation—how few ashes there were, because the child had been so small—and she would describe the blue-and-white urn, how she’d chosen it, how the girl painted on it pulled the bucket up from the well while the boy just stood there. Men never asked Bianca out again, but she didn’t care. She always sent a crate of Royal Verano pears to thank them for their time. She wasn’t looking for love. She just wanted to tell the story, her story, over and over again. It was a story that grew with each telling, that developed with each new detail. Sentence by sentence, cell by cell, the story emerged and enlarged. Until it was larger than Bianca. Larger than life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to a host of midwives who helped deliver this beast baby of a book. Endless thanks to the brilliant Sarabande team of Sarah Gorham, Jeffrey Skinner, Kristen Renee Miller, Emma Aprile, Joanna Englert, Danika Isdahl, Alban Fischer, Natalie Wollenzien, and Lacey Trautwein; the Spalding MFA gurus Sena Jeter Naslund, Kathleen Driskell, Lynnell Edwards, Karen Mann, Katy Yocom, Ellyn Lichvar, and Jason Hill; my many beloved teachers, particularly Penny Lastinger, Ann Eames, Geoff Marchant, Bill Rosenfeld, Margaret Price, Leslie Daniels, Robin Lippincott, Pete Duval, Neela Vaswani, and Rachel Harper; and the kind people and publications who/that took an early chance on me, notably Michelle Dozois, Kurt Luchs, Lauren Passell, Greg Olear, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New Limestone Review, Grist, and The Pinch.
Above all else, I am grateful for the love and support of my family and friends, especially my parents Ginger and Dan, my sister Liz, my bestie Tori, my literary life raft Donna Gay, my writing buds Amanda Burr Xido, Clint, and Natalie, my indispensable Lexington and Lakeville women, my late loved ones, my gracious God in Her many forms (new plotlines and old trees, to name the top two), and—most of all—Robbie, George, and Mark.
The stories in this collection were previously published by the following literary magazines:
Moon City Review, “The Nest”
The Southeast Review, “Sunday” (originally titled “Disarmed”)
The Gateway Review, “Big Bad,” Editor’s Choice Award
Ninth Letter, “Drawers”
The Pinch, “The Entertainer,” 2020 Pushcart Prize Winner
New Limestone Review, “Daddy-o”
Grist, “The Pupil,” 2020 Pushcart Prize Special Mention
Quarter After Eight, “Stone Fruit”
Solidago Journal, “Three Couches”
Pamplemousse, “Lonelyhearts” (originally titled “Ms. Lonelyhearts”)
Raleigh Review, “Good Guys”
The Laurel Review, “The Horse Lamp”
Shirley Magazine, “Bjorn”
About the Author
WHITNEY COLLINS received a 2020 Pushcart Prize, a 2020 Pushcart Special Mention, and won the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Catapult’s Tiny Nightmares anthology, American Short Fiction, AGNI, Slice, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, The Southeast Review, Grist, The Pinch, and The Chattahoochee Review, among others. She received her MFA from Spalding University and lives in Kentucky with her family.
About the Publisher
SARABANDE BOOKS is a nonprofit literary press located in Louisville, KY. Founded in 1994 to champion poetry, short fiction, and essay, we are committed to creating lasting editions that honor exceptional writing. For more information, please visit sarabandebooks.org.
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by Whitney Collins
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Collins, Whitney, MFA, author.
Title: Big bad : stories / by Whitney Collins.
Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2021
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016783 (print) | LCCN 2020016784 (e-book) ISBN 9781946448729 (paperback) | ISBN 9781946448736 (e-book)
Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.
Classification: LCC PS3603.O45633 B55 2021 (print) LCC PS3603.O45633 (e-book) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016783
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016784
Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer.
Printed in Canada.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.