Excerpt from Memory Woman 
by Melissa Fraterrigo 
The South Dakota Review - Fall 1999 

        We can see her house with the blue silky curtains from the road on our way from school if we bow behind the trunks of the paper birches. But we aren't supposed to go near where she lives. Anissa says that the Memory Woman once made soup from a man's hand because he lied to her. This is what Anissa's older brother has told her. We aren't certain if we believe this. Our parents tell us to leave her alone. Let her be, they say. She is old. She has always lived in that house on that hill. We will be grounded if they find that we have not started our chores, that we dawdle in the woods surrounding the Memory Woman. We bring her yellow apples, wrapped packages of peanut butter and crackers, mini chocolate bars ribboned with caramel that she grabs, tucks into the pockets of her crocheted shawl. We press our small hands to her knotted ones--hope some of her powers will rub off on us.
        She smells of alewives that wash along the shore after piercing whitecaps pound the beach. We believe that she was born in the sea, her mother, a gull, her father a sparkly fish that leaped into the air to greet his wife with a kiss. We are sure the sea granted her the power to read memories.