And I do wonder if Mr. Clement intended to say anything about me, and if he is not the only one. Who do these reviewers imagine I am, I wonder? Do they imagine that I do not have a husband and children, like anyone? Does Mr. Clement imagine that his words do not have consequences for me?

Perhaps I have never, not in a word, been understood at all.

All this to say: I assure you that if I have produced something unholy, I did not mean it.

Yours, wearily, Anais

* * *

There’s a story at the end of Housecat, Wildcat titled “Friendly Strangers,” about a young woman who is disowned. Not by, or only by, her parents, though it begins with them. She comes home from college for a holiday. No one picks her up at the train station, but she is able to find a taxi, and when she gets to her house, her keys turn the lock on the door. The people inside, though, assure her that they cannot be her parents. She knows that they must be. She is in all their photographs; that face is her very own face. But they tell her, “No, you are not ours. We don’t know where you came from, but you are not ours.” And the thing is, they are very different from the people she remembers; she becomes convinced that they must not belong to her. She turns from them and attempts to go to the house of an old family friend, to her grandparents, to an aunt. They, each of them, turn her away. “We don’t know where you came from,” they say, “but you are not ours.” And she cannot disagree because they are not hers either. They are not the people she was sure she knew.

She boards the first train back to school, but when she reaches her dormitory, she is greeted by one of her housemates, who shakes her head and says, “I don’t know you. You aren’t one of ours.”

The girl finds that she is not able to recognize anyone, and when she goes to the housing office, confused and only wanting somewhere to stay for the night, she cannot give her name when they ask for it. She doesn’t know it, it isn’t hers, and she has nothing that belongs to her.

Esther goes back to the hotel, forgetting her jacket at the coat check. Cora is still lying in bed, watching a morning show with glazed half interest. She sits up a little, and here’s something nice: she doesn’t ask any questions when she sees Esther’s expression, just holds her arms out and lets Esther climb into them.

“Okay,” Esther says after a while, snuffling a little even though she hasn’t been crying.

“Okay?” Cora says. “So you read it?”

“It’s just what they said it would be. A little more, I guess.”

Esther buries her face in Cora’s shoulder, her warm skin and the cheap cotton strap of her tank top. She breathes. Cora’s hand strokes up her back, hovers at the crest of Esther’s spine, a warm ghost of a touch, and then settles on the back of her skull. Cora cups her gently as an egg, and Esther nearly cries from it.