Excerpt from Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

My mother is generally attentive to detail—my shoes are to be polished, my hair braided so tightly sometimes it hurts, my nails scrubbed, my handkerchief fresh, the clothes in my closet pressed and hung up or folded neatly, my bed made with square corners, but she has spent the last few days in her darkened room with a wet cloth over her eyes, which accounts for the lapse concerning my dress. When she is stricken with a migraine or when the phone rings and she must work extra at the club, either I am to fix my own supper and breakfast or else I am packed off to my aunts'.

"Best behavior!" my mother orders. "It's no easy thing, no matter what they say, to have a child underfoot, and I want you to make as little trouble for them as possible. No pestering, do not, under any circumstance, leave a ring around the tub, no prying, no personal questions, if your aunts offer you a gift, politely decline it—you have an unbecoming acquisitive streak and they can't afford to throw money away on foolish extravagances; moreover, we do not want to be beholden to them. Try not to get the hiccups, they're unattractive and could be interpreted as a bid for attention. Morrie has always been well behaved, and the coven will be brewing up reasons to find fault with me."

I protest—my aunts always say nice things about her, I tell my mother. "Hypocrites," she says.

Excerpted from "Cross Off and Move On" (pages 73-83), one of the stories in Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg. Copyright © 2018 by Deborah Eisenberg. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.