Sublime

In Savannah, she recommended that members of the writing workshop eat at the Grey Market, where she worked part-time. It is a New York bodega-inspired offshoot of the Grey, Mashama Bailey’s fine-dining Savannah restaurant. Bailey, a Black woman who moved between Georgia and New York throughout her childhood, learned to cook first from the women in

We had Madame Roullé in physics-chemistry again, who liked to return our tests in ascending order, from the worst grades to the best. Those who got lower than ten out of twenty had their tests thrown onto their desks. The others were handed theirs lovingly. It was almost impossible to get above fifteen in her class. She liked to tell us our work wa

I’m the first to admit I’m not for everyone. I’m more of an acquired taste.

You have an extraordinary mother, Father often said, as though she was better than all the others. A mother is not a friend, Anouk liked to say, proud of this distinction. What happened to daughters like us? Would we flee our families, wanting to be far away, wishing to carve out a life that was ours alone, far removed from where we came from? Or w

but then her little girl came along, and her little girl’s daddy left, and before you knew it . . . she was one of them. The needy.

As someone treated a certain way their entire adult life because they were voluptuous and pretty, it’s become a joy to be unseen. But it was a bit of a journey, letting go, and boy how I wish I could tell other women struggling with the fade of their bloom how great life is once you let go of the flower.