of a row between clearance racks I was struggling into one dress after another, and they all had

holes. Big, wide, moth-eaten holes, my bra and skin peeking through, and someone said, “You’ll

have to pay for that.”

The walls of the store receded, smears of red paint streaking them and turning into long screaming

faces. I felt the prickling buzz in my fingers and toes, like when your limbs go so numb you can’t

even walk.

I know that feeling. It comes with dreams that show me things. “True-seeins,” Gran called them.

“Real nightmares” might be a better term.

For a moment I thought hazily that it might be the most horrible dream, the one where my mother

picks me up out of my bed and takes me downstairs, tells me I’m her good girl, and tucks me in the

hidey-hole in the closet. I struggled toward waking, but the dream had other ideas. It was in the

driver’s seat, not me. I couldn’t fight it.

I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a regular popcorn ceiling, the kind with gold

sparkles. Fluid shadows from the tree outside danced between the sparkles.

The dream-me was a little girl. She was sleepy, drifting in and out of that quiet space where kids

suck their thumbs and their eyes stare without seeing from under heavy lids.

Mom had been anxious that day, cleaning everything. Tense, nervous. I was fractious, too, but she

had read me stories and rocked me for a long time, then laid me in bed and covered me up. I heard

her moving around the house downstairs, the regular noises of her fixing Dad’s late-night lunch—

because he was working long shifts at the base and sometimes came home for forty-five minutes or

so in the middle of the night on his break—somehow missing. I heard a jingle as she dropped one of

my toys. She was hurrying, putting them away. I heard her curse softly as she hid my high chair in

the pantry.

But I didn’t think about it. Instead I sucked my thumb and watched the ceiling.

Tap tap tap. A pause. Tap tap.

Someone at the front door. Not ringing the bell. That was strange.

Silence. The air itself seemed to be listening before I heard Mommy’s footsteps, quick and light.

She jerked the front door open, and voices drifted up the stairs.

Women’s voices.

“What are you doing here?” Mom sounded . . . angry. And a little surprised, like she hadn’t expected whoever it was. I could almost see her cocking her head a little, blue eyes turned cool and considering. She sometimes looked at people that way, especially when they wanted something out of

her. Grocery store checkers or salesmen paled under that look, especially if they were trying what

Dad called “funny business.”