Bun Man

Posted by Anne Born on August 13, 2024
Posted in: Essay. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Bun Man*

A rabbit showed up one day during the COVID lockdown in 2020. Free to come and go as he pleased, not wearing a mask, not waiting desperately for a vaccine, not even worried about his friends, it was just a solitary gray rabbit in our back yard. 

I was living with my son at the time and we were amusing ourselves at home. We never tried baking sourdough, although I do have an idea I might try it now that it doesn’t matter. Day after day, I was watching hour-long tutorials on how to crochet. I am a diehard knitter though, so crochet, in my view, is for other people.

Then, one day, this cocky rabbit hopped in. He sat stock still in the back yard under my bedroom window for the longest time. To be truthful, tracking a rabbit was an excuse to put down the yarn and do anything else. I was fascinated. I know pretty much zero about rabbits, or any backyard animals, for that matter, having lived in New York City for 40 years. So, I watched him. We called him Bun Man. Calling him Bunny seemed a tad too friendly on our part, same for Peter. And no, Alice in Wonderland lovers, he did not keep checking a pocket watch.

But let’s be honest here too: during those fateful first months of the pandemic, we looked for any distraction: from watching Governor Cuomo give updates from New York, to watching Dr. Fauci and that Scarf Lady squirm on national TV from the podium in the White House press room. We all learned to Zoom and Bun Man made near daily visits to the yard. 

My yard is roughly one-part wild strawberries, one-part chives, one-part green grass – and, to me, that suddenly sounds like a salad for a rabbit. Because I know nothing about rabbits, I couldn’t tell if “it” was a mom or a dad, so I promoted it to Bun Man, which was meant to be like “Look at you! You da man, rabbit!”

The little I do know about rabbits is linked to Easter. We eat chocolate ones. Hollow is easy to eat, but the bunny goes fast. You might find yourself gnawing on the solid ones for a while, but let’s face it, taking the head off can be a bit disconcerting.

Bun Man stopped coming by sometime that June. I would look for he/him, she/her but unless Bun Man wanted me to see him/her, it was a bust. I slipped a brick under the gap in the fence and thought maybe it would keep him out because my friends were telling me scary lawn stories about rogue rabbits chewing up the place, and I fell into line, thinking, “Oh my, that’s sounds bad,” even though my Bun Man seemed rather disinterested in making ungainly inroads in my yard. He just looked hungry. A back yard gourmand.

The pandemic waned, we all got one shot after another, and then went back to spending more time out of the house than in. I’d mostly forgotten about him. Still, when I was in, I was likely looking out the window into the yard to see if there was a rabbit there.

But then, just last month, Bun Man came back. I’m not sure what made me look out – I was making lunch – and there he was, sitting mid-yard snacking on the strawberries, before taking off again, I would guess.

So, what is it about ephemera that makes us want it more than things that stick around? It’s clearly the transitory nature of the thing, like ticket stubs we keep, flowers we dry and flatten in the pages of a book, champagne corks in kitchen drawers. They are memory aids, I guess, reminding us that the event that brought us the stubs, the flowers, or the champagne is gone to our memory now. As you get older, you come to realize that it’s never safe there, so having the object allows us to prompt something that will bring it to the surface. And I guess it’s that for a few months in 2020, we had Bun Man to look out for. Bun Man was actually what Taylor Swift might call “a mythical thing.” 

Of course, I gave up crochet, and the pandemic seems so long ago now. I do not want ever to shelter in place again; so much in those early months was frightening and horrific. But something brought us all together, forgetting to unmute ourselves on Zoom, laughing at Sarah Cooper videos, sympathizing with Dr. Fauci, staying home, swearing at crochet videos, and hoping someone would leave some freshly baked sourdough bread on the front porch. Bun Man was a part of it. He’s my champagne cork to a selective memory now.

You da man, rabbit.

  • Winner, Adult Mini Lit, 2024 Niles District Library Writing Contest

Oh, Carol

Posted by Anne Born on September 16, 2025
Posted in: New York, Short Fiction, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today is Monday, today is Monday
Monday, string beans
Tuesday, spaghetti
Wednesday, soup
Thursday, roast beef
Friday, fresh fish
Saturday, chicken
Sunday, ice cream
All you hungry children, we wish the best to you!

Carol started buying the newspapers the day after her sister Sandra died.  I just wanted to make a scrapbook, she told everyone, a scrapbook with all her write-ups in it.  I don’t know what all the fuss is about.  It’s just a few newspapers, after all.  And Carol kept them in stacks, so one day when she was ready, she’d make Sandra’s scrapbook.

It started innocently enough, didn’t it?  Just stacks of newspapers, sorted by day, then by week, then by month.  Everything neat and tidy. 

“I’ll just be going out now,” she announced, “to get some oranges for snacks and to see the newsman on the corner.  Be right back!”  And the papers piled up, very neat and tidy.

But now that Sandra wasn’t living there anymore, Carol bought the magazines too.  Not the sports ones or the ones that the kids looked at.  I’ll just be picking up those fan magazines.  You know, the ones about the Hollywood stars?  It’s my collection.  I need Tuesday to be complete, after all.  And the newsman is very kind.  It’s like he knows what I want before I ask him for it. 

“Hello?”  Carol picked up the phone that sat on top of Tuesday. 

“Hello? Is anybody there?” she asked the phone that never rang anymore.  Now that Sandra was gone, who would call? 

“Hello?  Hello?”

And it became a routine.  Everyone finds comfort in a routine, she told everyone.  I like things neat and tidy.  So, next to Tuesday, sat Wednesday.  Thursday’s pile stacked up next, neatly. Along with a few oranges for snacks.

And there were codes too.  “All you hungry children, I wish the best to you!”  On Monday, Carol shopped for string beans.  Monday’s paper, Monday’s Hollywood stars, Monday’s string beans and can after can of beans came into the house to take its place.  Just in case, there were cans of string beans.  Carol wouldn’t want to go hungry.  On Tuesday, spaghetti.  Cans of spaghetti, all alike, stacked in piles next to the Tuesday papers, and so on to make the week.  The Sunday ice cream piled up in the freezer so Carol phoned in another freezer, just in case, and she filled it up too, piling the Sunday papers and the Sunday magazines right next to it.

Then Carol started getting confused.  Once the week was done, where could she put the next Monday if not in the pile of last Monday’s things?  Everything neat and tidy, Monday must go with Monday.  After a few months, Carol’s neat day piles stacked up to the top of her couch and slowly, so slowly she barely noticed, everything she had when Sandy was still there was consumed, swallowed up, just gone now under the piles of the days of the week.  So she made a path and the path was neat and tidy too.  It was wide at first, then smaller and smaller as it snaked down the hall, through the kitchen, into the dining room, and ended in the double parlor next to the new freezer. 

But it didn’t stop there.  The path was leading Carol now, pulling her along, so she used the extra sections in her Sunday papers to cover up the windows.  This was a comfort to her.  They were starting to watch.  They were always looking in, judging her.  But once the papers were up and the lights were on, they all went away.

The money held out, the newsman had every day’s purchases ready for her, the paper hung neatly against the windows, Monday stacked on Monday, and she couldn’t see them looking in anymore.  But Carol wasn’t feeling well and she worried she might be dying like Sandra.  So, on Thursday, she decided to stop by the drugstore on her way to the newsman.  She looked both ways and crossed the street at the corner.  But something tugged at her arm suddenly and wouldn’t let go.  Carol argued, please let me go, I have to get drugs, or I’ll die. 

And it was too late.  Sandra pulled her away and Carol was gone.

For the next three weeks, the building people pulled apart Carol’s neat and tidy piles of days.  They didn’t know to start with Monday and they pulled and dragged willy-nilly until all her days were gone from her hall and her kitchen and her dining room, all the way into her double parlor where they found her freezer. 

When they were done, the real estate people moved in to stage it for the sale.  Someone said it was a mysterious apartment, but it wasn’t really. 

Now, it was just neat and tidy.

NEW Book by Aida Zilelian

Posted by Anne Born on September 18, 2023
Posted in: New York, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

All the Ways They Lied, Aida Zilelian, Keylight Books (January 9, 2024)

Imagine being a member of a quartet that could never play in tune. In Aida Zilelian’s insightful novel set in Queens, New York, we come to know a volatile, tradition-bound, and controlling mother and her three adult daughters, each of them trying to establish their individual needs while trying to find a place at the family table together. That will give you an idea of what it is like in the Manoukian family. There are only fleeting glimpses of these four ever playing in tune.

The novel describes a real family so beautifully that you can easily feel like a member of the family. Even though each episode seems superficially to be about nothing at all, these stories will hold most everything in them. Families like the Manoukians are quickly identified as “dysfunctional,” but their worries, their miscommunications, and the ever-fraying relationships are all too recognizable, all too common. And all too familiar.

In each instance, the daughters will confront some roadblock in their lives and blame the husband, or fate, or the mother, Takouhi. Whatever the reasons, each of them comes to the table with emotional baggage they are both eager and ready to unload and yet not at all ready to unload. Add to the mix a thoughtful but absent father to the two older girls, and a thoughtful but ailing father to the youngest of the three, and it would be hard to imagine a dinner table without conflict on some level.

These are kitchen stories. They are living room stories. The daughters call up memories of their childhood while setting the table, going over a recipe, or cleaning the floors. This is their routine attempt at peaceful domesticity ever at odds with the torment felt by each of them.

Kohar, the eldest, remembers incidents growing up where her mother controlled who she could have as friends, and later opposed her moving out of the house, but to what end? Kohar believes that if she were to confront Takouhi about any of it now, her mother likely would disavow each incident either as if it had not happened or that it must be misremembered. Kohar wonders, “If you can’t even remember what you did, what was the point of it all?” And there is no clear answer.

All the Ways They Lied is exquisitely written, using thoughtful descriptive language that comes across as fresh and innovative, and clear. As the three girls examine their relationships, both with their mother and with each other, it might prompt you, the reader, to rethink your own family conflicts. Very highly recommended.