The judge, angry as hell but looking very sophisticated in expensive shoes, slammed her gavel and shouted, “He’s the white Bill Cosby, only worse, because he has never said anything funny,” while the ugly murderer stood in his ugly orange jumpsuit, wet where he had pissed himself, and cursed everyone who had made this decision, but the people laughed and sang and danced and said they would have a huge party and everyone would pee on his grave like dogs to cover up his scent. “Don’t you agree?” the judge asked the young stenographer, whose shoes weren’t so bad, given her salary. The judge told the court that she relied heavily on the opinion of this young woman, who could take notes faster than anyone on the East Coast. “She’s brilliant,” the judge said. The stenographer gave the judge a high five and was applauded by everyone, and then the judge went on to explain how all the women who had fucked the ugly guy would have to go home and work out their own marriages. They’d be doing favors and chores forevermore, and happily so, and the old people would go back and pull out bottles of champagne for those not on heavy meds and raise a toast to “their girl,” her murder finally vindicated. They would laugh and say, “Good riddance, asshole,” but then, when alone in their beds, would cry for the young woman and the life that was stolen from her, and they would think up something new to distract them from what is just up and around the corner—game over.

It made Shelley cry to write that, though now she imagines the judge reading it and looking at her and thinking, You have the audacity to call others ugly? You? Who do you think you are? Meeting men in bars and growing up in racist squalor? You? The mother of a young man born with a birth defect that could render him the butt of teasing and cruelty, and yet you have spent your words talking about how physically ugly the man is?

Not long ago, she read how people have to learn how to reject others. That in fact learning to be rejected and learning how to reject is as important as any other skill you might have. But she didn’t learn it. Secure people have that skill, and she never learned it. She was intimidated by waitresses and salesclerks; beauticians, especially beauticians. She got to the place she was afraid to make friends, in case she couldn’t stand them and then wouldn’t know how to politely get rid of them.