portrait of my father
In Granta's "Fathers" issue, Maud Newton recalls harboring a prostitute in her home as a child.
Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge. Nowadays time lacks the expansive quality it had when I was eleven years old. But more than three weeks and less than five months elapsed between the day she moved in and the terrible afternoon he noticed her crouching behind the frosted glass shower door in the front bathroom, and kicked her out.
Other contributors to the issue include Siri Hustvedt, Alison Bechdel, Jonathan Lethem, and Ali Smith.