“It smelled. It smelled bad.” My six-year-old self sniffed at the sticker in my hand again. “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside.”

Suddenly I had it. Like capturing a fly. One second, you didn’t have it, the next second, it’s buzzing and bouncing against your hot closed hands.

Star Wars. Luke is freezing to death, lying in the snow. Han Solo slashes the belly of his tauntaun, its bloodless innards spring out, dozens of white tubes the size of fingers. Han Solo, his expression fraught with nausea, says slowly, “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside.”

I smiled at the eureka feel of it, at the absurdity of my little kid self retelling a scene from a movie. It’s funny, it’s creative. Maybe I wasn’t as much of an idiot as I thought.

But the serendipity dropped, fast and hard, like kicking away a tree stump that someone was standing on.

I hadn’t meant to, but I’d slipped a noose around my mother’s neck and kicked the stump away.

“Very good. You are a smart girl. Here you go. Pizza! Tell me if it really smells like pizza.”

Little Heather took the pizza sticker, placed it on her thigh and scratched at it, bending it. Stupid kid didn’t even think to lay it against a hard surface. She smelled it and smiled.

“I have a grape one for you if you’re really smart. This is a tricky question. Kind of like a question for grown-ups. Can you tell me why your mommy slashed at the belly? If you can tell me that, you get the grape sticker. The grape has eyes and a mouth, see?”

Little Heather’s gaze shifted just left of the camera. “She did it for me. She was brave. I was cold and she wanted to save me.”

“Did she say the word ‘devil’?”

Little Heather said, “I don’t think so.”

“What about the word ‘Satan’?”

“No.”

“Oh, Heather,” he sighed. “I thought you were a smart girl. I know it’s not easy, but you can be a big girl, a brave girl. I have this sticker for you if you are brave and smart. I bet it smells so good, like grape bubble gum. Like grape jelly. I know you are a smart girl. Did Mommy say ‘Satan’?”

Little Heather stared left of camera, enraptured by the sticker. “Yes.”

“Did she cut that girl down the middle?”

“Yes.”

“What a good girl. Here you—”

I hit pause, and my six-year-old self’s hungry stare was fixed to the left, on that grape sticker. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore, but I could imagine the rest of it playing out. He’d probably showed my mom clips of this interview, and in her devastated, hopeless, and drugged state, she’d confessed to a murder she hadn’t committed.

My mom’s alcoholism, her meanness: it began with me.