SHE HAD BEEN HAVING SUCH DREAMS — a common phenomenon, said the books — but how could dreams like these be considered in any way common? She’d wake up late in the morning, throbbing with surprise and pleasure, aghast at what her subconscious was capable of. It seemed a good argument for sleeping even more than she already was. And that particular night, as might be expected, she dreamt once again of school, not one of the fretful dreams that used to dog her, even long after she had stopped teaching, but a gentle dream, a beautiful dream. When she woke her face was wet, and there was only one fragment she could remember: the long hallway outside her classroom, and the eerie light coming through the mottled glass of the doors that swung at the end of the hall, and the feeling of moving down the passageway very slowly and deliberately. There was someone beside her, also moving. A child — no taller than her shoulder, half a step behind, breathing hoarsely — whom she loved. Together they were walking down the hallway, headed toward some bright, severe place where they didn’t really want to go. It was her role to take the child there and then return; she could hear the muffled roar of her classroom at their backs, and all the kids stirring around inside, waiting. But for now she was alone with the child she loved, walking farther down the hall, deeper into the silence, the strange glow ahead of them, the child slipping his hand into hers and she holding it lightly, the whole dream filling with her wish that their steps would grow slower, and the passage grow longer, so that they might never have to reach the place where they were supposed to arrive.
Acknowledgments
I AM GRATEFUL TO the editors of the following publications, in which these stories have appeared: “Talent,” © 2000, Alaska Quarterly Review; “Accomplice,” © 2003, The Georgia Review and The Best American Short Stories 2004; “Sandman,” © 2006, Tin House; “Creep,” © 2005, TriQuarterly; “Crossing” (as “The Voyage Over”), © 2005, The Literary Review; “Yurt,” © 2008, The New Yorker.
I am especially thankful for the generous support and encouragement of the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House International Writers’ Residency, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.
A heartfelt thanks to Stuart Dybek.
About the Author
SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM’s fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.