Clarissa by Maya Jewell Zeller Mean boys teased Clarissa for her smell. At Clarissa’s the potbellied pigs were pets, cradled or ridden by toddlers. A chicken strolled across the counter. Their house hung over the slough, porch mossy as a tree, until you couldn’t tell that tanned planked deck from the slow swell of alder-strewn brown water. When floods came, they packed their stuff upstairs and watched old furniture float past. Clarissa told me she once saw the sofa she’d been born on, trapped between pilings a few feet out, pink begonia print bleeding in the current. A raccoon was sort of stuck on it , she said. It was the strangest thing I ever saw . 30 theMeadow
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