“I'd never cared much for my face before. I'd never cared much for beauty. I just wanted somehow to be loved and to be free. But to desire both these things at once seemed rather contrary. Love, I'd come to understand, was the benevolent choice to restrict oneself. I saw it in the many ways my mother steadied her rage, sighing instead, when she woke to a pile of dishes in the morning.
Her love almost always manifested itself in small acts of servitude.”