Triangulum

I remember one evening when she didn’t seem to care about my grades. I helped her make macaroni and cheese that night, and we both laughed when it came out lopsided from the microwave.

I remembered how she wouldn’t speak to me if I came home with less than 95 percent on a test. How she wanted to arrange me into a shape she approved of. How little I’d resisted.

when I reach the threshold of the library, I feel faint and lean against the door-frame; which is when I see the machine and pass out

I’d tell him, “Yes.”
I’d tell him, “I’m happy you’re my father.”

There were times Tata dismissed me if I couldn’t tell him in terms he understood what was wrong with me

Only when he’d been drinking, which happened on occasion, would he call me to his room and tell me he’d been reading about what was happening with me.

he detected vanity, where I felt curiosity.

The pain in my jaws changed my relationship with meat, though. It gave me a diet that trimmed my reflection to that of a stranger’s

Tata shrugged, but I could sense his relief. “You want to be even more beautiful than you already are,”

That from the vantage point of the universe, where light didn’t refract, the only permanence we could know was darkness—or what I’d come to think of as Mama’s home. I didn’t tell Tata that, though. Instead, when we drove into our neighborhood, I turned to him and explained I’d never liked my teeth.