White Ivy

by Susie Yang

“Let this be your first lesson: give with one hand and take with the other. No one will be watching both.”

Knowledge, like money, was foolish to give away for free. You could never get it back.

She had long ago realized that the truth wasn’t important, it was the appearance of things that would serve her. Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear.

All women, Ivy was beginning to understand, had a theme. The story they constantly told themselves. The innermost wound.

Magic, she’d realized then, was not inherent to a place, it emanated from the person viewing it.

She would never be able to make this plain, undeviating man understand that the most fragile inner parts of a woman were compiled from a million subtle looks and careless statements from others; this was identity.

Lives are like rivers. Eventually they go where they must, not where we want them to go.”