You were pregnant and developed eclampsia that made you have a seizure. Because of that you lost the baby and your ability to form new memories. It’s hard and it sucks but it’s better this way. You couldn’t have been a good mother to her. Not like this. But you have Dad and Ruth and Sefina and you are organized and detailed and you have found a way to survive this through your lists and calendars and because it’s the only way you can be normal.

You lost the baby. I press a palm against my eyes to block out the truth, but the words hover in the darkness. I would have been a great mom. Loving, kind, caring, and all the things my mother couldn’t be to me. I close the journal and set it on my bedside table. Mirabelle. It means marvelous and wonderful, and it’s exactly what she would have been to me. I wipe at my eyes but they are dry. The information is not new; I can feel that it’s not and that it’s something I’ve mourned and grieved about and known for quite some time, even if it punches a hole in my heart every time. Something I don’t have to remember to just know.

I inhale a ragged breath and move on to the laminated card that sits on my bedside table. There’s a small clothespin clipped to the side and even with the words Step One: Read the journal, followed by Step Two: Shower, Step Three: Get Dressed, and Step Four: Check calendar for today’s schedule. I move the clothespin even with Step Two but hesitate before standing. There is a painful stiffness, an ache that spreads from my lower back, radiates up my spine and across my shoulder blades. It rushes up like a wave, pushes into the base of my skull, runs its frothy tips around the sides of my head. I press my bare feet into the carpet, let my head hang, grip the bed with my fingers until the pain retreats into the background. I have headaches now—it’s all in my notes—and I know to wait for the blur in the edges of my vision to sharpen before I push up from the bed and head for the shower.

Hot water runs down my back, at first spreading goose bumps across my skin until the heat seeps into my bones. I sigh and close my eyes, reveling in the sensation before I begin to wash my hair. Hanging beside the shampoo is a laminated card with another clothespin and a line of instructions. Wash hair, wash body, shave under arms, shave legs, done. I move the clothespin as I do each activity, making sure I don’t end up showering until the hot water runs out.