When I handed my mother the green slip, she read the words back to me like she was returning borrowed things. She had kept her ugly close to her once, a toothbrush she returned to twice a day, a common ritual for the women with our faces. My mother knew she could smooth the ugly out of me as she did with her own ugly. She showed me pictures of Angela Davis, bought records with Diana on the sleeve, staring a hole through the ugly in me.
