I stood in front of the vent for a minute, then peed, filled a water glass and sat at the kitchen table with my phone and my mom’s side by side on the tile surface. I checked my likes and requests and DMs as I listened to my mom’s voicemails, eager well-wishers, promises to visit. I deleted them all, then moved to her computer and let my stories run while I wrote her list an email: Cell service is bad in the hospital, but Naurene is on the mend! As I had with Leah, I left out the tumors, the long recovery and chemotherapy the surgeon said was coming next. It felt like a protective measure, guarding other people from preemptive grief. For now, better to strike a reassuring tone, a tone to suggest that I was in control, fully competent, not avoidant or afraid. On my phone, influencers shared serums, teas, lists of favorite activewear, workwear, loungewear. I closed Instagram. The silence throbbed. The silence spoke, reminded me to post, to rejoin my virtual world, add my voice to the conversation, keep content at the top of followers’ feeds, keep relevant. My mother had her community, I had mine, a gathering of fans I needed more than ever now. Only gone a day and I felt myself slipping, felt how easy it would be to simply fade away. Focusing on my platform was another protective measure. If I lost @annawrey, I would be one step closer to entirely alone.

But my body was unpresentable and I was high and tired. So I went the bookshelf, took out Women Who Run with the Wolves, The Feminine Mystique, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, my own mother’s favorites. I stacked them on the table, angled the twisty lamp from her desk for light. I took a picture, cropped it close, no background. “Current reads! #feminism,” I wrote and posted to my story.

I watched the rotation for a while, then went to the kitchen and unsheathed one of my mother’s Lean Cuisine chicken dinners from its plastic wrapping. The sauce simmered and snapped as the microwave twirled, cooked, beeped. I checked engagement while I ate. 500 views, 650 views, 700, I love that book! Followers wrote. Yes, queen, they said. Show us your body, they said. Are you a manhater? Stupid feminazi they called me. I flushed with their violence but tried to see it as a signifier of success. This is what Jake said: more exposure means more haters. “A growing pain,” he called my trolls who felt, from this perspective, meager. Like there should be more of them. I left the worst on “seen” for a while before deleting. I took another painkiller and slipped into my mother’s bed, placed my phone beneath her pillow, felt my brain slip under, too. Covers, blankets, drugs, all piled on and put me in the dark.