That first Maura, that ghost of your suicide attempt, ended up being one of the worst Mauras to have around. She was awful. You kept having to take your knives away from her. She bit her own knuckles until she bled, and the blood got on your sheets in thin pink streaks. She took all your roommate’s aspirin and threw them up next to the toilet. Every time she opened her mouth, she cried. You had to wonder if you were being punished. Did you believe in God, or karma, or any sort of divine intervention? Did it matter? You believed in your ability to deserve punishment. You kept having to take your hand away from your mouth, so that you would not bite into your fist like an apple. Maura left one of the kitchen knives on the counter, with her blood still on the tip. You walked in on her in your bedroom, up on one of your chairs and knotting your bedsheets around the ceiling fan. She looked at you, shiny-eyed. You looked back. Your bedsheets were patterned with little sailing ships, done in blue outline. You shook your head. “Seriously?”

* * *

You did ask your mother not to write about you. When you were sixteen, after your grandfather died, and you read what she wrote about him. The person he became on paper and the person she became on paper, too solid and too fragile at once. “Please don’t write about me,” you said after reading it, when she wanted you to say something kind. When you should have said something kind.

You don’t get to read the copy of her collection you bought. You learn that she wrote about this conversation, too, when you come home and find yourself sixteen, gritting outrage through your teeth and burning ripped pages over your stove. You snatch Maura back by the hair before she can burn herself. Your smoke alarm goes off.

* * *

Part of your job involves dealing with parents. And it is mostly mothers you deal with. Mothers who come to hand you paperwork, to complain to you about grades or detention like you can do anything about it, to shoot apologetic looks at you while they wait to pick up their unruly sons. They ask you where the coffee is, they remember your name and bring you chocolates at the end of the semesters. Some of them are your age; why is it that they sometimes feel like a different species? Like they’ve sprouted claws or a horn from the center of the head. You’d like to think you’d be a good mother.