Sublime

We were all, at one and the same time, people she knew and loved but also objects of study,

have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be.

What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?

‘Okay, well, do you know who’s going to be the talk of the mum WhatsApp groups tonight? Do you know who’s going to get slagged off for being a plastic sugar parent?’ she asks, faintly demonically, as she opens a pack of the party bag sweets and starts chomping at them. ‘It ain’t you, Avi. It never is.’

She didn’t know who she wanted to be in that moment—Early or her mother, beautiful or beholding—

Makiko, the one visiting me today from Osaka, is my older sister. She’s thirty-nine and has a twelve-year-old daughter named Midoriko. She raised the girl herself. For a few years after I turned eighteen, I lived with them in an apartment back in Osaka, when Midoriko was just a baby. Makiko and her husband had split up while she was pregnant, and a

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.