I can remember her saying on the many occasions she scraped the fuzzy blue stuff off

Think of ingredients as words, and cooking as grammar, for a sentence to be clear we all have to follow the rules of grammar, don’t we?

Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less daunting than coming out about my legal status.

She began to be asked to perform at other high schools even in colleges, then at city and statewide affairs.

One of the things they promise when you quit smoking is that food will regain its flavor.

I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.

When he was in bed, where he sometimes prayed, he thanked God for his mom, who he loved, and apologized to Him for not talking to her, or to anyone, really.

José Raul! As if I had just fallen from heaven.

If anything were to happen to any of his girls, or to all of them, if all six were to simultaneously, fall victim to illness or injury – stricken with a hideous muscle disease or some rare toxic blood disorder, sprayed with semi-automatic gunfire while on a class trip – Larry’s girls would be taken care of

At this hour the men all look as if they’d never had mothers

I kept occupied with the things my mother usually did – the daily errands, the grocery shopping, the vacuuming and the cleaning and, of course, all the cooking.

He’d say something about her earrings, or her bracelet, or her hair, or her eyes, and if she had on her white uniform how nice it looked on her

The calendar on my wall predicts no disaster only another white square waiting to be filled like the desire that fills jail cells

Men surge to the factories and I’m too tired to look

Unknowingly I started sorting people by their tastes.

But I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday School

It’s not as if we’re on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town who haven’t seen the ocean for years

The more I achieved, the more scared and depressed I became. I was proud of my work, but there was always a cloud hanging over it, over me.

I was a listening child, careful to hear the very different sounds of Spanish and English.

His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just had an injection of iron

Español: the language that seemed to me a private language

That’s why fine restaurants are wasted on me. I suppose tI can appreciate the lighting, or the speed with which my water glass is refilled, but, as far as the food is concerned, if I can’t distinguish between a peach and an apricot I really can’t tell the difference between an excellent truffle and a mediocre one.

I can make a meal out of anything

Goodbye, daddy

Like sparrows hunting seed, boys gathered around the bus, calling out while the voice in the bus was yelling at him, “Hey! Big guy! Give it to her!”

I can use the churn top as a center piece for the alcove table

I used to watch my mother as she prepared our favorite meals. It was one of my daily pleasures.

But the voice is hers. And beneath her voice, beneath the tidal whoosh of static and hiss, the gurgling and crying of a baby can be heard.

When you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you’re eating it.

Sometime I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort

I would play after him, the simple scalde, the simple chord, and then just play some nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans

At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read

It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist

“Don’t argue with me,” my father said “Just do as you’re told.”

She might as well have done away with names and identified our meals by color: Golden brown. Red. Beige with some pink in it

She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.

On Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming

Unaware of what I was doing I heard myself say “aahhh…”

And I suddenly feel ill, I put the iron down

I was a distracted mother. There were other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was not.

I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile

An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white.

If anyone asked why I was coming to America, I should say I was going to Disneyland

I should have brought my whistle…

I have a whistle that is audible only to the ears of old waiters

She kind of led them, the other two pecking around and making their shoulders round.

My own secret feeling was that I had missed my parents greatly.

So unless you want to know exactly when and how you’ll die, never talk to Anika Bloom

No accusations, no blame.

And in a way, I felt disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting so that I could shout back and cry and blame her for all my misery