Rotten Fruit

“Well you got a mighty fine memory, donchya?” Leland said. “All them Hargroves live down this way.” Sophie recognized the name as soon as he said it, the Hargroves, whom she knew as the main black family of Azalea.

Bessy Hargrove was her grandmother’s best friend, and the last time Sophie was in Azalea they attended her ninety-eighth birthday party in the Azalea Baptist Church. They had been the only white people there, occupying one table in the back near the buffet tables, yet Sophie distinctly remembered they were ordered to take their food first.

My Secret Place

“It's San Francisco,” she replied. “I've gotten raises and promotions and you're working, but we're struggling to get by. We couldn't even afford to take time off for a vacation last year.”

They both hated what the City had become, an overpriced playground for tech geeks working at Google, Uber, and Airbnb. Once sketchy nightclub areas had been gentrified into neighborhoods where newcomers fought over four thousand dollar a month, one-bedroom apartments.

Partir

I shed my layers like an old skin – my shawl, the netted muslin at my throat, my underskirt – until all that remains is the shell of my dress, as sea green as the gown of Loro Kidu.