“Mara, remember how you kicked sand into that neighbor child’s eyes? I yelled at you and made you apologize in your best dress, and that night I cried by myself in the bathroom because you are Bad’s child as much… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share Image
“She was a stranger because something essential was shielded, released in tiny bursts until it became a flood---a flood of what I realized I… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it,… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness.” — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“What I say: “Why did you leave her with me?” What I want to say: “This almost broke me, but it didn’t. It made… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“And there was nothing in my eyes. Or even worse -- nothingness. Not the presence of a thing but the presence of a non-thing.” — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“You never live with a woman, you live inside of her, I overheard my father say to my brother once, and it was, indeed,… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“That night, I wash myself. The silky suds between my legs are the color and scent of rust, but I am newer than I… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“A feeling settles over me—a one-beer-deep feeling, a no-more-skittering-feet-after-the-trap-snaps feeling.” — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“Will I ever be done, transformed in the past tense, or will I always be transforming, better and better until I die?” — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“She’s like dough, how the give of it beneath kneading hands disguises its sturdiness, its potential.” — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“Mara, remember how you kicked sand into that neighbor child’s eyes? I yelled at you and made you apologize in your best dress, and… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“(If you read this story out loud, please use the following voices: ME: as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same. THE… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“When you think about it, stories have this way of running together like raindrops in a pond. Each is borne from the clouds separate,… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
“I have always been a teller of stories. When I was a young girl, my mother carried me out of a grocery store as… — Carmen Maria Machado Copy Share
