Later, Nell came to the park. She walked right past me, close enough that I could smell her perfume. She opened her blanket and laid it out on the grass beside B, unwrapped the baby and put him down on it. I watched her carefully because I wanted to make sure that she was all right. I checked her arms for bruises, things like that, but there was nothing. She was humming some song to her baby, the older boy was already playing at the pump. Looking for him, her eyes caught on me and widened for a moment and she touched her cheek.

She was going to say something to me. She was going to say something to me and after all this time we were going to be friends, we were going to help each other easily. Can you? I’d say, reaching for something, and she would be able to reach it and hand it to me. The baby cried and Nell turned to him, whispering something in his ear. She turned back to me and touched her face, and the look in her eyes then was distant and a little afraid.

It was time to go. I stood up, not wanting anymore to linger, to be looked at. I collected E, crying now that we had to leave, tugging on my arm, really pulling me, and B who had been beginning to cry already, and we left the park. I regretted that we’d been there, put ourselves outside of the apartment to be seen and watched and spoken to.

Back inside the apartment I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The side of my face was covered in a dark spreading bruise. Purple black and yellow, swollen even, with veins spidering out, blood running away, or to it, depending.

There were small bruises on my left arm below the elbow. Like the shadows of blackberries, I thought. Like there is a vine growing inside my arm and the fruit is finally ready to come out. But of course, of course, I knew these marks were fingerprints, long oval fingerprints. Of course also, I knew that my arm must look exactly like Nell’s arm had, after that man, her man, had grabbed her in the park. I hadn’t felt a thing all day, but now looking in the mirror, my fingers touching my cheek just as Nell had touched her own, just as, I now realized, the checkout girl at the store had touched hers, I could feel how my cheek was. I could feel the bruise now, pulsing under my fingertips as if it were a thing complete with its own heart.

E was calling me. Calling me and calling me and calling me. I ran out of the bathroom. She was standing in the hallway holding lemons. The baby giraffe was thirsty, wanted lemonade. Could I make it? Her voice was fuzzy, far away, I could hardly hear it. I pressed my hands to my chest and calmed myself down. Overreactions were common enough, the point was to remain quiet about them.