Fiction | December 01, 1992
Hema, My Hema
Mathew Chacko
This story is not currently available online.
Hema, my beautiful Hema, is determined tonight. I know it the minute I crawled into our home. I don’t mean “crawled” in a figurative sense. It accurately describes what I did. Our house, you see, is a little on the cozy side; six by six feet to be exact. A perfect little cube it is, made of tin cans that my Hema’s late hubbie took apart and flattened into sheets. The result has been quite colorful–white Amul milk powder sheets next to yellow Dalda tin sheets, next to rose-red and aquamarine-blue Asian Paints sheets. Of course, rust, like a leprosy of tin, has eaten away most of the color, and the Jai Sena have scrawled their fascist slogans in black paint all across our walls.
If you are a student, faculty member, or staff member at an institution whose library subscribes to Project Muse, you can read this piece and the full archives of the Missouri Review for free. Check this list to see if your library is a Project Muse subscriber.
Want to read more?
Subscribe TodaySEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT

Fiction
May 17 2022
Gone
Gone Linda Wastila The late May morning I drove east from Chapel Hill, I didn’t pay much mind to the tracts of yellowed corn and soy or the tobacco-curing… read more

Fiction
May 17 2022
The Cadence of Waves
The Cadence of Waves Trent Hudley Leon showed up the day of the blackout in December of 1998, toward the end of some extreme El Niño weather we’d been having… read more

Fiction
May 17 2022
Palace Rock
Palace Rock by Mason Kiser On Mondays, we ruled the sea. Lightning lashed the whitecaps, and thunder shook the hull, and rain fell so slantwise that it ripped to shreds… read more