This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. I'm Debra Treesman,

fiction editor at The New Yorker. On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Rebecca

Curtis read her story, Hansa and Gretel and Piece of Shit, from the November 16th, 2020 issue of the magazine.

Curtis is the author of the story collection 20 grand and other tales of love and money,

and a winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award for Fiction.

Now here's Rebecca Curtis. Hansa and Gretel and piece of shit.

Gretel wakes at 6 a.m. as usual, but her stomach feels crampy. These are not what her mother

calls the normal cramps, which gnash her abdomen

for four days each month. These fissures poke her midsection with acidic fingers as she dresses.

She hunches while she brushes her teeth, unloads the dishwasher, and mops the kitchen. She walks down to the cellar, carries up stacks of logs, and feeds the wood stove.

She toasts bread, but finds she's not hungry, so puts it in her heavy school bag.

She doesn't ask to stay home. Her mother's warned her that she knows the girl feigns illness,

because she's unpopular, a loser, because she's lazy and

unlikable. The girl knows better than to whine about a stomach ache. As Gretel leaves, her mother

turns in bed upstairs, groans, and snorts. Ascrani Calico slinks out from an overgrown shrub.

Gretel retrieves a fistful of kibbles from her pocket, whispers to the cat, and tosses it

into the bowl hidden under the shrub.

Gretel hunches as she strides through cold October wind down the mountain road.

She passes her grandparents' chalet.

A sleek fox lopes through the meadow that abuts the road. The sky

is pale and crisp. Today again, at the bottom of the hill, sits the dented yellow Chevy. The man

in the bone-colored leather coat leans against it. He towers over the car and is skinnier than

...