Caribbean & Diaspora Storytelling
A Maroon House Collection
The Crossing
The Crossing is a collection of short stories about leaving — what it cost, who stayed behind, and the arithmetic families did at the kitchen table before anyone boarded anything.
Three of an open collection
The collection
Somebody goes. Somebody stays. Somebody counts.
The Crossing is a collection of short stories about leaving. The fare that had to be assembled rather than saved, the one who went first, the one who waited, and the interval that was supposed to be months.
The passage cost seventy-five pounds and they had forty-one.
Each story stands alone. Together they ask what a family gives up to put one person on a ship, and what it becomes while it waits.
Contents
Stories in the collection
Nos. 01–03
The passage costs seventy-five pounds and they have forty-one. They count it twice on the step — once in hope, once properly — and then decide which of them is going.
Nathaniel goes to Panama in 1907 because a man comes to the square with a paper and reads out a wage. He works out in the first week that there are two payrolls on the Isthmus, and which one he is on.
Six of them in three bedrooms on Halsey Street, with a bathroom system more organized than the hospital. Nobody’s family knows it is six. In the letters it is always my place.
The collection continues
More stories will enter the House.
Future stories appear here as they are published — no empty placeholder cards.
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