There There: A novel

But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say “Get over it.”

the woman inside impatiently waves Opal across like she’s doing all of humanity a favor.

The trick is to stay busy, distract then distract the distraction. Get twice removed. It’s about layers. It’s about disappearing in the whir of noise and doing.

To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived, is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient?

It’s a secret she holds so tight to her chest she never notices it.

hope that in closing our eyes we might wake up to that other life, back on the other side of the screen, where we can watch from the safety of our couches and bedrooms, from bus and train seats, from our offices, anyplace that is not there, on the ground, playing like we’re dead so not playing at all, we’ll run like ghosts from our own dead bodies

The system scared you so you thought you had to follow the rules, but we were learning that that shit was fucking flimsy. You could do what you could get away with. That’s where it was at. —

If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name.

Our names are poems, descriptions of animals, images that make perfect sense and no sense at all. We are Little Cloud, Littleman, Loneman, Bull Coming, Madbull, Bad Heart Bull, Jumping Bull, Bird, Birdshead, Kingbird, Magpie, Eagle, Turtle,