These women emerged from a ladybug that a cricket saw. Cricket rearranged their dots, and they became women.

Or, as it actually happened, I showed a ladybug pattern to my cousin, Cricket Karty, over Zoom. She immediately saw them as women and instructed me to erase their antennae and add braids down their backs.

Once the women appeared my appreciation of others I’d seen on baskets and on skirts deepened. I felt a special kinship was bestowed. I didn’t know I’d been waiting for a visit from the women that came from ladybugs.