The Office of Historical Corrections

by Danielle Evans

There was always something they wouldn’t tell everybody, and she wanted to be told, which meant she had to look like a real person to them, like a person whose mother deserved to live, like someone who loved somebody.

She would nuzzle him, beginning to understand that just because he didn’t see something in her didn’t mean it wasn’t there, knowing there was still some freedom in the way he did not fathom yet how real and how necessary her ruthlessness would be.

Besides the tablecloths, the decor is all old photographs and postcards that they scrounged up from wherever, because you know how white people love their history right up until it’s true.