Fiction | June 01, 1989
Uncle Isaac
Steven Schwartz
This story is not currently available online.
My Uncle Isaac’s sexuality, according to my father’s theory, had been marked by the half-woman. Isaac, at thirteen, would sneak into the basement of the Philadephia Medical Museum where a woman’s torso floated in formaldehye. It was 1933, and here–beneath the museum’s upper floors with their public exhibits–reasearch and training about venereal disease was taking place. In a reinforced glass case, at the back of a laboratory room filled with charts and diagrams of progressive syphilis, rested the half-woman, clean of infection except for a lesion on her left breast.
If you are a student, faculty member, or staff member at an institution whose library subscribes to Project Muse, you can read this piece and the full archives of the Missouri Review for free. Check this list to see if your library is a Project Muse subscriber.
Want to read more?
Subscribe TodaySEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Eighteen People Every Hour
Eighteen People Every Hour Dennis McFadden The first time he saw her, asleep on the sofa when he came home from work, he honestly thought of an angel. Of… read more
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Motherlove
Motherlove Elisa Faison “I’m really sorry. No one told me you were here.” That was the first thing Lily ever said to us, that she hadn’t seen us. But now… read more
Fiction
Jan 08 2024
Song Night
Song Night Robert Long Foreman I thought about calling this “What We Do in the Basement,” because there are several things we do in our basement. It’s a good basement.… read more