Short Stories – Joanne Jagoda

Grandma Stella, Summer 2008

The young woman in jeans ripped at both knees and purple dyed hair tenderly brushed
away strands on the comatose patient’s forehead and didn’t try to hold back her tears.

The Zephyr to Chicago

I’m sitting impatiently in the waiting room at the Emeryville train station on a fine spring day bobbling my leg and nibbling on a candy bar from the vending machine.

Ginny’s Window

Jeremy Pierce squirms on his cardboard “mattress,” pulling up the sleeping bag under his chin. The snores and moans of the other kids in the makeshift camp under the 880 freeway ripple the dark.

Flo Strauss, compact and efficient in her spotless pink uniform, strides briskly to the lone burly policeman sitting in the last booth on the right. She’s in a good mood. It looks like it is going to be a beautiful May day, pink clouds crowding in the sky visible through the plate glass windows inContinue reading “Flo at the Diner”

Angel on the 620 to Phoenix

Catherine scrunches in the seat avoiding the passengers entering the Greyhound. She makes herself small and inconspicuous praying no one will sit next to her. She absently reaches for her hair to lift it off her shoulders realizing with a start that she had chopped it off—her, blonde, perfectly-highlighted, thick gorgeous hair. All that isContinue reading “Angel on the 620 to Phoenix”