Roxana Robinson

Inside the painter’s life in New Mexico

A short story

Part of what I felt was shame -- shame for something I didn't understand, shame for other people's misery, shame that it had lain naked and exposed before us, shame that we'd seen it.

The whole world seemed spread out before Cristina in a series of wild and hilarious adventures, which she chose to see as absurd although she knew exactly how dangerous and serious they really were

Going back to her parents' small house was like entering a foreign force field, where the normal rules of transaction—logic and reason and predictability—seemed suspended.

Though she was only ten, she was expected to make this stranger, who spoke no English, feel at home