Victor LaValle

My sister was enrolled in a beauty pageant for virgins, a contest I thought she could win. She was cute enough, but also, how many teenage hymens were left in America anymore? Even the emu-faced girls had been initiated by twelve. Fewer contestants fueled better odds.

- You might actually win, I told Nabisase.

- I’m glad that this surprises you, she said.

In front of me a cow was running toward a parked truck.

-Hey, I said, but the cow kept moving.

-Hey cow.

It stopped, but didn’t look at me. The truck was one hundred yards away, closer to the hills than to us. The cow was even more enormous than me.

-Keep quiet, it whispered.

There were black people and white, but I was confused by both. Being from New York, I was used to telling the difference between the two with only my sense of sound. It was just disconcerting to hear a man drawling sweetly with his wife and when I looked the guy was as likely to be blond as he was a brother. I was disoriented watching so many people act politely across the races. In New York there was no courtesy, only parallel worlds. We worked hard at ignoring each other. But down here black people and white people shook hands, greeted each other, and generally hid their mutual contempt.