Don't want to read? Listen to the story narrated by Natasha. By nine a.m., the air in Gloria’s House of Beauty was already sweet with pressing oil and grape soda. The door chime, that old brass bell that had dinged for forty years, sang its little two-note hello every time someone stepped in with a head scarf and a story. The gospel station played low, a choir holding a note like morning sunlight, and the curling irons clicked gently across the countertops like metronomes keeping time with...

“I Know We Hate Babylon…and valid!” Let me start here, sis: I know we hate Babylon. Believe me, I’m the first one side-eyeing every time...

There is an ancient rhythm to the way women lose things—quietly, instinctively, as if some part of us has always known that sacrifice comes before birth, shedding before song. In the ancient scrolls and sacred songs, the righteous woman walks humbly through the ruins of what once was—not because she is frail, but because she understands that even ashes are holy when they come from the hand of the Most High. She loses the child she once was. She loses the lover who could not stay. She loses...