Lycanthropy runs in my family

Mo'Nique has been in the news because of her hirsute legs on the red carpet. She said on Oprah that being unshaven was a black women's thing. Ahem. Maybe its just a Mo'Nique thing, cause I'm a black women and I shaved my legs as soon as I had hair.
I must have been twelve when I discovered the first hairs. I remember an oppressively hot day, mid-summer in the deep of Alabama. I was sitting on the porch in my grandmother's rocking chair, folding myself over to stop the beginnings of what...