“She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress”

“You want car?' Rena said. 'Artist college? You think I don't know? How you think you pay? So this dress. Pretty dress. Someone gave. But money is . . .' She stopped, struggling to find the words, what money was. Finally, she threw her hands up. 'Money. You want remember, so just remember.”

“She kissed me on the mouth. Her mouth tasted like iced coffee and cardamom, and I was overwhelmed by the taste, her hot skin and the smell of unwashed hair. I was confused, but not unwilling. I would have let her do anything to me.”

“I liked it when my mother tried to teach me things, when she paid attention. So often when I was with her, she was unreachable. Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.”

“She’s never where she is,' I said. 'She’s only inside her head.”

“To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful. ”

“I wished I could draw the way her broad-shouldered body threw a shadow on the moonpale dust. How brave she looked just then.”