‘Dogs are Born Hungry’
— Joyce Chong
I can’t remember the first time I noticed Jesse come over, and I don’t think my mother ever knew I had noticed. Seems they’d make a point to only meet up after I’d left the house. But they weren’t ever new, in that awkward sort of way.
This week we have a short story by Julia Dixon Evans containing more moments and conflicts than you might expect in the given word count. Although adolescence and shifting family dynamics are not unheard of plot points in fiction, Evans creates a story that is both parts mundane and real, with a vague tinge of horror set in. Watching the main character navigate her own feeling of isolation against the world and home dynamic that is shifting before her, we find there is still time to stop and fear the unknown.
And I think of my dad, and I think of how he knew to end his marriage, how he knew when a line was worth waiting in and when to get away from maybe-bombs. A dog and a girl learn where the dangers are, somehow, eventually. I only run from one danger into the flameburst of another.
There are multiple threads throughout this story, none that are overtly linear or clear cut. Life is imperfect and unideal, and this is mirrored throughout the story. A new litter of puppies, a slowly dissolving marriage, the persistent oncoming wave of something new, or rather familiar, starting between Caroline’s mother and another man that is not her father. The harshness of being young and friendless and alienated is echoed by her mother’s seeming betrayal of their nuclear family. Growing up can be cruel and unforgiving, but it can also be gradual and mundane in its own way. This story never strays along the lines of melodrama, and Caroline manages to keep clear eyes on the world, even as it sways and shifts before her.