this whole exchange really (pgs. 207-209)

“Who? Who'd you want to be?”

"Not who so much as what. White. Light. Young again."

“Now you don't?”

"Now I want to be the woman my mother didn't stay around long enough to see. That one. The one she would have liked and the one I used to like before. . . . My grandmother fed me stories about a little blond child. He was a boy, but I thought of him as a girl sometimes, as a brother, sometimes as a boyfriend. He lived inside my mind. Quiet as a mole. But I didn't know it until I got here. The two of us. Had to get rid of it."

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I saw myself as somebody I'd scene in a picture show or magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am, it seemed wrong.

“How did you get rid of her?”

"Killed her. Then I killed the me that killed her."

“Who's left?”

"Me."

Jazz, Toni Morrison

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