Lesley > Recent Status Updates

“ When I begin to braid my hair, she watches me, and I try to remain aloof, … I was sixteen. I could not have been a mother. The women in my family maybe should not have been mothers. This is not so much a judgment as a fact. They were dying inside their own bodies, and now all these dead components are my inheritance.” -p.195

“ I feel suckered into admitting it, that it matters, that I have thought about it, the apparent isolation of their [a] child, a thing immediately recognizable to me for being myself that thing which is both hypervisible and invisible: Black and alone.” p.99

“To grieve is to frighten the people you love.” -p.16

“ I interview well despite my nerves, and while I wish I could take credit for that, my ability to maintain human form and make a good impression is all about my skin. The expectations of me in these settings are frequently so low, it would be impossible not to surpass them.” p.83

“ And then I miscalculated. … but I’m sure she still finds this an acceptable price of admission. She still rearranges herself, waiting to be chosen. And she will be. Because it is an art - to be Black and dogged and inoffensive. She’s all these things and she is embarrassed that I am not.” p.22

“ P.S. It is my wish for you to be my fish.” p.320

“ [S]he’s 12. [S]he’s as good as he needs to be. Besides, the relationship you have with him isn’t his responsibility.” p.289

“ Yeah, but it was a long time ago. How he treats a son might be completely different from how he treated a stepson.” p.274

“ ‘Because you love him.’ Atlas’s eyes scroll over my face. ‘Is that why I always feel worried for you? Because I love you?’” p.270

“He’s a broken man, but he isn’t broken because of me. He was broken before he met me. Sometimes people think if they love a broken person enough, they can be what finally repairs them, but the problem with that is the other person just ends up broken too.” p.207

“ I want my friends to treat me the same way. I prefer honesty over loyalty any day, because with honesty comes loyalty.” p.168

“ I will always be grateful to you for somehow seeing something in me that my own mother was blind to.” p.97

“ We’re impressionable when we’re younger, and when you’re told you are nothing for years on end by everyone you should mean something to, you start to believe it. And you slowly start to become nothing.” p.96

“I want to be you when I grow up.” p.371

“I kiss her o the forehead and make her a promise. ‘It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.” p.361

“I thought I could hurt him like he hurt me, I would feel avenged. I don’t. Instead, I feel vindictive and mean. I feel like I’m my father.” p.326