The Office of Historical Corrections

by Danielle Evans

“They are not my family,” my mother said. “We’re just related.”

We had parted last on bad terms too inconclusive to be permanent.

It was a revelation to move through the world with Nick, to see how little attention a white man needed to devote to that kind of performance, how much of his worry about how other people saw him could be consumed by the frivolous, how easy it was for me to be assumed respectable merely by association.

“Genie,” I said. “Fuck those people. You’re smarter than all of them.” “I am,” said Genie. “But it’s never going to be enough.”

“Genie, you’re brilliant. You don’t need to rile up an idiot in order to validate your career.” “Don’t play stupid. Of course I do.”

Miranda coded