There were rotten gobs of hair mixed up with all sorts of other filth. I pulled these out bit by bit and set them in a line beside the drain like a tiny horde of stinking mice. When I’d pulled out all I could I dumped some bleach down the drain to take care of the rest. The micey filth balls I grabbed up in my hands and held them slimy-dripping for one long second before I dumped them all into the trash. I washed and washed my hands and even though it was filthy to do one thing and then another, I ran into the kitchen to make something for E to eat because she would need it and I was the only one there to get it for her.

When I was little, I saw my mother once, crouching naked and wet in the shower in our musty blue apartment bathroom. She had her back to me and her long wet hair streamed down across the secret map of her skin. She was picking long wet clumps of our hair out of the drain. She didn’t turn when I opened the door, she just got on with it. She might have been crying or it could have been the water from the shower on her face.

When she finished, she grabbed them all up, the grey flecked nests of dead hair, and flushed them down the toilet. Then she walked over to me, reached up above me and shut the door and didn’t come out for the rest of the morning. I had to pee in the bushes behind the parking lot.

Afterwards, I never wanted to be left alone in any place. It was something about the hair, how much of it there was. If we were always losing so much of ourselves, how could we be sure of what we’d have left, what would stick?

Also, naturally, I always had a horror of drains, it seemed to me the loneliest, the most unloved thing a woman could do, crouching naked over a pipe, fishing out wretched bits of her own hair.

I made E spaghetti with butter for lunch and cucumbers and carrots all cut up into the tiniest pieces. The cups in the kitchen were filled with ash, they kept filling up with the stuff and I kept dumping it all down the drain. Hot ash and cold ash. Ashes on fingers, ashes on our toes, ashes lining the tops of our lips like milk moustaches. Ring around the rosey, pocket full of posey … It was from the candles though, that I found sometimes burning in the kitchen or the cabinets.

We pretended the carrots were butterflies and we were frogs with long tongues. She slurped the pasta up, hunting the butterflies with her wide frog’s mouth.

That afternoon we played more games. I’ll be the mother bear and you can be the baby, I said. We’ll spend all winter in our cave eating berries. Outside it’s snowing, it’s all ice and cold and terrible things. Come here little bear, I said, and I’ll lick your fur and scratch your fuzzy ears. Come here little bear, I said, we’ll be so warm together in our cave.