At first it’s meaningless, frantic electrical impulses taking the form of memories—a Mexican lizard on an adobe wall, panting like a dog; a pair of dusty ankles; her father in a sports coat, nuzzling a kitten; her brother Sean with a sparkler framed against a night sky, spelling out her name with big cursive flourishes, the letters disappearing even as they are written. And then the pain is gone, leached out of her so completely that she feels hollow and weightless, borne aloft, the back of her head tucked into the crook of someone’s elbow, legs bent as they were in the womb, flannel feet cupped in the palm of a hand. Spellbound, she uses her last minutes to gaze up at her mother’s young face.

Cheri?

She nods, still watching her mother, and someone takes her arm.

The needle is cold, and in a moment she’s numb, separated from the men by a thick layer of ice. She breathes slowly in the narrow pocket of air, and the children in their bright skates congregate above her head. She lingers there for a moment, her cheek pressed against the underside of the ice, until a hand reaches down and pushes her under.

Maybe It Happened

Maybe she was a kid. Maybe she wasn’t quite housebroken. Maybe she was playing outside one summer afternoon with a couple of older cousins who were. Maybe they got deeply absorbed in a game where she was the baby and they were taking care of her. Maybe this involved cooing and her being pushed in a wagon and having bows tied into her slippery, nonexistent hair. Maybe when the moment came that the baby should have gotten up out of the wagon and excused herself to go indoors and use the facilities, the baby decided instead to really get into her role. Maybe she wet her pants.

It’s possible the older of the cousins was nine and possible that the younger of the cousins was seven. It’s possible that the nine-year-old wore a fashion-conscious sherbet-orange skirt and a ruffled midriff top, making her seem even more sophisticated than her actual years, and possible that the other one wore a sleeveless white blouse, gray pleated shorts, and glasses with light blue frames, making her seem like a seven-year-old teacher. It’s possible that they were bored, stuck at somebody else’s house for the afternoon with nothing to play with except a little kid who had just sat there and peed while they were petting her, like a puppy. It’s possible that they abandoned playing mothers then to go sit on the stoop and squint into the summer sunlight, waiting to have their pictures taken so they could be seen many years later as they looked that day, hugging their knees, silently sharing their pop-bead wardrobe, one wearing the bracelet, the other wearing the necklace.