Anna wanders around at night. Her full name, Reanima, was given to her by a grandmother who perhaps liked Rianna or Rihanna. Reanna has always reminded her of something dead that was brought back to life. Not like Rianna, or Rihanna. It’s closer to… reanimate. No one knows if her grandmother got it from first Americans, African-Americans. something at the cabaret—or if she had read Octavia Butler’s Fledgling or Toni Morrison’s Beloved one too many times. But now, these days

Cammie sits at the kitchen table with my manuscript, preparing to do battle with the forces of literary evil. I raise her Hare Krishna mug – an Earthday gift – to my lips and sip some bitter shit she’s forced on me again. I read somewhere that green tea, being both an appetite suppressant and a laxative, is like nectar to women. But I’m not a woman. And I need a beer. As if reading my thoughts, she looks up abruptly. Genghis Khan shouts an ancestral Holla! from her almond-sha